Sometimes we’re a little bit mean to engineers here — there’s the Salem hypothesis, for instance, that notes that creationist apologists who claim to be scientists often turn out to be engineers. In compensation, though, watch this video of a Michigan man with simple, clever strategies for moving massive objects. I was impressed. I guess the ancients didn’t need the assistance of high-tech alien astronauts to build impressive stone structures, all they needed was a Wally Wallington.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Pretty cool.
Well, he’s found a method for standing stone blocks up on end, but in the case of Stonehenge, I’m not sure that explains how the large caps were raised to complete each triptych. I suppose his “jacking” method of rocking and shimming the stone could have been used to raise the caps into place.
The Stonehenge article in Wikipedia mentions that Wally intends to eventually add two lintels to his model, so we’ll see how he manages it.
As an engineer, I wish I had the right to be offended by the common criticisms that are leveled at my profession. Unfortunately, I am left standing frustrated and embarrassed by engineers who think they can lecture people on topics they are not familiar with. I am particularly embarrassed by engineers who attack life sciences.
Sadly, I think this kind of arrogance is too common among engineers. My only consolation is that the past arrogance of engineers is currently being over-shadowed by that of medical doctors.
So many Woo Types want to believe that the pyramids/stonehenge/etc. were created by Ancient Astronauts.
Dear Evolutionary Psychology folks: Why is Magic/Mystery so stinkin’ attractive to so many people?
Seems to me that Practical Strategies Which Work, like those exhibited by our man Wally here, would trump Magic/Mystery over time.
Is it perhaps because we are so young as a species? And not enough time has passed?
Tony, you have nothing to apologize for. The world is full of conceited asses and many become doctors or engineers. Historically, many doctors (especially neurosurgeons) and engineers have claimed the street cred to pontificate about almost anything, as if they knew it all–and the unwashed have ceded it to them. Go to almost any government meeting where the public is invited to speak and one will find at least one doctor or engineer claiming special knowledge on a subject about which they’re no more informed than John/Jane Q. Public. We have one, and EdD no less, who speaks at every township meeting and always introduces herself as “Doctor ________” even though her field (classroom technique) is not remotely related to the topic under discussion. And I have a couple of engineer cousins who behave the same way. (I always shoot them down in flames without mercy when they’re beyond their expertise.) I don’t see it as having anything to do with doctors or engineers. It’s just people who’d much rather live in the 19th century when the doctor or engineer was likely the only person in town with an education beyond grade school. Many still think they’re special.
As for Wally, Wallington, I say “fabulous.” The world is richer for people like him.
Cool! I love to see clever engineering stunts like that. And so wonderfully down to earth, too.
No doubt, however, someone will soon point out that Wally hasn’t provided an explanation for all of the psychic “vibrations” that permeate Stonehenge. Maybe the aliens were responsible for that, huh?
If you want some woo vs reality check out this link:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/coralcastle.htm
This place is not too far from where I live in South Florida.
I’ve been there a few times with my 11 yr. old to teach him critical thinking skills and engage in conversations with the people who go there to be infused with mystical energies. It can be quite a hoot.
Damnit! I goptta be quicker on the draw. For my comment please see comment 1.
Anf I havea to remembar to uss speel checkk.
Anf I havea to remembar to uss speel checkk.
Hahaha
Now it is there TWICE! Please remove one or both. Whichever is considered the more appropriate.
That’s funny that you mention that. I’ve noticed the correlation before in engineers, but I didn’t know that there was an agreement or an obscure hypothesis.
I think that it has to do with the fact that engineering usually doesn’t have any application that requires you dismiss a deity. I always wonder, “how can they be so intelligent and yet so dense.
Great stuff. No ancient astronauts or Atlantean psychics need apply. Just curious, observant and practical human beings.
I’m glad to see Wallington has a good-sized batch of descendents. One can hope that some of them carry the genes that helped to shape his shrewd, clear-thinking mind.
I think my fellow engineers-in-training and I tend to recognize when we’re in over our heads in unfamiliar territory… but maybe it’s just the college exams that keep us humble.
Re: raising the caps, courtesy “Jeff Hebert” from linked site:
Not bad at all, but don’t forget that from Stonehenge to the pyramids to Angkor Wat, the ancients also had a simple, clever strategy for moving massive objects, which has stood the test of time: whips.
Wow! You mean they whipped the stones, and they walked from Wales?! :-)
I guess it may not shock you to learn that other people have looked at strategies for moving stones around the British countryside (I suspect Baldric must have been involved at some point). I’m sceptical of the rotating idea: it looks like you would need a pretty flat surface, and it won’t work very well in mud. I also wonder if the method for righting the stone scales up (I suspect you would need some pretty strong supports).
Oh, and I’m not an engineer so of course I’m not arrogantly lecturing people on a subject I know nothing about. :-)
Bob
Thanks for the great link!
I’m sceptical of the rotating idea: it looks like you would need a pretty flat surface, and it won’t work very well in mud.
If I recall correctly, there has been archeological evidence that implies that a wooden plank road was constructed along at least part of the route from Wales to Salisbury. But I haven’t looked at this sort of thing for many years and that notion may no longer be popular.
The guy seemed to be able to move a barn across grass, so it may be that turf is not as great an obstacle as it might seem. Perhaps temporary, reusable, wooden or smooth stone surfaces could be placed at key points to provide a more stable surface. Or maybe just use rocks that are large enough to provide a pivot point, regardless of their sinking somewhat into the earth.
Whatever, it was a fun video. Now, despite my herniated discs, I want to go move a big rock.
I am not an engineer, but one of my friends who is female, is an engineer. She has recently decided to become an archaeologist and is in the process of completing her PHD. This has been noted not only by others, but by herself as well, as having an incredible change upon her worldview. She thinks differently now about so many things. Perhaps the change from a ” I build things perspective” to a “who built this or made this and why” is the difference, I don’t know.
But she is noticeably less conservative and more liberalised as a result. I have the solution. Bush needs to become an archaeologist.
It is suprisingly easy to move heavy (flat) objects across country, if you use ROLLERS – i.e. smallish tree-trunks.
BTW, the methods used by Wally were discussed many years ago in “New Scientist” – this is a re-re-discovery, so to speak.
But I loved the initial shots of the great Henge – just as I remember it from a grey day in the 1950’s, when we stopped off on the way to Cornwall, with the great stones alone on an empty landscape, and the wind whipping over the grass and flowers and between the stones.
No visitor’s centre or tourist information then – just the stones.
The How of Stonehenge (lots of people, boats, ramps and levers) is so much less interesting than the Why. Sadly both fields of study are populated by an excess of Woo, and the former makes for better television.
Personally, I blame Thor Heyerdahl. He invented the publicity-stunt style of reconstructive archaeology in order to prove a point. Since then the market for television specials on the How has been buoyant.
In another post you were talking about how our reading of Darwin’s views on the Irish need to be tempered with the understanding that he was a typical Victorian, with all the prejudices about lesser people common to the age. And yet people seem to suffer from he same lensing when dealing with people from pre-literate societies. They weren’t dumber than we are, they weren’t necessarily less organised.
OK, based on the film, it was a cooperative effort, right? The ordinary humans erected the verticals by normal human methods, and then waited for the space aliens to put on the cross pieces.
That makes sense to me. It’s not an either-or question, but a both-and question with a moderate compromise solution.
There have been some great “proof of concepts” on neolithic engineering over the years, and I know megaliths have been raised several times before (don’t know what methods). IIRC, the potential for “shim and lever” was mentioned by G S Hawkins decades ago, and he didn’t originate it.
the ancients also had a simple, clever strategy for moving massive objects, which has stood the test of time: whips.
…and when we find any evidence that the labour involved was coerced, we’ll include that on the list of teqhniques. So far the evidence has been to the contrary.
“Fantastic, building a henge, are we? That’s a fantastic idea! That’s a marvelous religion the Druids have got! Yes, got a lot of white clothing, I like that. There we go!”
…
“Help you push ’em along? It’s not far, is it?”
And the Druids going,
“Heave, everyone, heave! Well done, everyone, you’re doing very well! You’ll love it when you see it. I’ve seen some of the drawings already, it’s very special.”
After 200 miles…
“You fucking bastards! You never told us 200 miles! 200 miles in this day and age – I don’t even know where I live now! ( sighs ) I wish the Christians would hurry up and get here!”
I work in the IT department of a very large oilfield equipent and services company. The somewhat complicated software app I support is used primarily by Engineering, but also by a significant minority of marketing people. The difference between them is this: when I get a call from a marketing person about a problem, the issue arises because they don’t know something, forgot their training, or the system gave them an error, and they’re stuck and scared and don’t know what to do and gave up. When I get a call from an engineer about a problem, it’s because they don’t know something, forgot their training, or the system gave them an error, and they spent a half an hour designing and implementing an intelligent, creative “solution” that at best didn’t solve anything.
Guess which I like better. :)
I was going to praise Heyerdahl for debunking some of the “ancient astronaut” garbage floating around. Of course if you want to talk about quote mining, look to Von Danikin and his ilk. In Von Danikin’s books he quotes from Aku-Aku to imply that Heyerdahl has NO CLUE how the Easter Island monuments have been placed.
And now we’re getting a second wave of that with Slave Species of god, by Michael Tellinger, a book which is touted as ““enables evolutionists and creationists to finally co-exist in one pond. The
arguments are compelling, simple and refreshing, retracing the path of human evolution from the murky distant past to the religious dogma that haunts humankind today.”
If this thing is REALLY a best seller in South Africa, it’s proof positive that stupid isn’t confined to the US.
That’s a marvelous religion the Druids have got!
OK, it was funny, but as a note of historical accuracy, there were no Druids involved. The henges predate those Celtic-type folks.
National Geographic did a very good documentary about the “why” of Stonehenge that did not involve any supernatural “woo” (like “energy fields” or “vibrations” etc.), but well reasoned speculation about the belief system of the neolithic Britons that built it. I thought that their hypothesis that one motivation was to create a spiritual connection between Moon worship to Sun worship that represented the transition from hunter-gatherer (night hunting) to agriculture (daytime cultivation). FWIW I recommend it, look for “Who Built Stonehenge”, I think it was part of the “Naked Science” series on the National Geographic Channel
Black Adder and Python both in one thread!
Thursday’s looking up!
There was a recent show about a relatively new discovery of “Woodhenge” not too far up the road from Stonehenge. Big area full of postholes in a circular arrangement. They theorised the first was a Spring gathering place (birth) while Stonehenge was Fall (death), if I remember correctly. Anyone else see this?
Architects get a lot of the arrogance training too, I think.
Problem solvers have to believe their solutions will work and it’s easy to carry that outside their field of expertise.
For those wondering how he could place a lintel, here is one possible solution. Using his jack method, get it above the uprights. Using his spin method, move it into place.
Note, that this is one man doing all this! Incredible.
Also, for those that think that slaves built Stone Henge or the Pyramids, think again. It is much easier to get highly motivated individuals to partake in such a momentous undertaking by convincing them it is ‘God’s Will’. Thus, religious fervor was the motivation. Slaves would do a half ass job of it. Pyramids and other religious monuments were way to important to be done by the unwashed unbelieving slaves.
While I certainly agree that engineers have a tendency to try and lecture on all sorts of topics outside their primary area of knowledge, I don’t think the behavior is by any means restricted to them. I think it’s pretty rampant among just about every technical/scientific discipline, and that the Salem Hypothesis is just a very special case of the more general hypothesis:
“In any ::specialized field:: debate, a person who claims scientific credentials and sides with ::viewpoint contrary to experts in the field:: will most likely have a/an ::unrelated specialized field:: degree.”
The whole evolution/creation debate just happens to be one in which almost everyone has an opinion, and which incorporates a disproportionate amount of woo into the contrary viewpoint. Not to mention that those holding the contrary viewpoint tend to cling to it desperately like some kind of security blanket.
Just felt the need to stand up for my fellow engineers. It seems like most times they are mentioned around here, it’s with a good degree of condescension and sweeping generalities, both of which I’m just generally opposed to.
I agree with your generalization of the hypothesis, but I wonder how accurate it is. Are there many instances of biologists, to name a familiar example, pestering electrical engineers with strange assertions about how electrons work? It may just be that I don’t frequent the company of engineers, but I don’t know of any comparable instances. And personally, if I said something on a topic outside my knowledge base and a physicist or engineer or chemist with relevant expertise told me I was wrong, I wouldn’t retreat to my irrelevant degree…I’d defer to the expert.
I think I know the reason behind Stonehedge:
“Hey, you wanna make a big pile of stones?”
“Why?”
“In a couple thousand years, it’ll confuse the hell out of archaeologists.”
Questions@theforgottentechnology.com
if anyone want to ask him how he got the cap stone up on the pillars.
theforgottentechnology.com is his website.
It certainly happens that biologists/chemists talk with seeming authority on things they don’t understand. As an electrical engineer doing imaging research in a lab comprised largely of biologists and chemists, I’ve had to sit through plenty of such talks. In general though, it’s more a matter of talking authoritatively in the absence of experts (or absence of commentary from them), rather than directly challenging them.
Maybe I just associate with the wrong engineers, but all the ones I know do as you suggest and defer to the experts when shown evidence. I think the issue with the Evolution/creation debate is if that a Right-wing creationist is going to end up in a technical career, it’s more likely to be engineering rather than biology. Just because most vocal creationists with technical degrees are engineers doesn’t mean that most engineers are vocal creationists (or even just vocal egomaniacs).
One of the occasional anthropology programs that show up on PBS had a segment devoted to an old geezer somewhere in the wilds of Indonesia, who got a great big rock, and had it moved a pretty good distance so it could serve as a memorial to his deceased father (well, it was for some relative, I don’t remember the exact details). Anyway, the key was that he called in all his debts, in the sense of favors that were owed him by various people he’d helped over the years, and so he ended up with this massive group of people who were prepared to indulge his rock-moving proclivities. With sufficient time, and sufficient people, there’s quite a lot that you can do. In those areas of the world where technology has replaced human power, there is tendency to forget this simple rule.
OK, I thought that was obvious, but I guess it wasn’t… I like the engineers better because they actually give a damn, unlike the rabbits in marketing.
Okay now. It may be okay to make light of us engineers. But please, we are some of the staunchest supports for science in schools. We donate a great deal time and energy to schools including gifts of equipment. I believe that most all of us support scientists efforts to keep foolishness such as creationism outside science. Don’t label us as a group for a few bad apples, otherwise every group becomes so labeled.
This is what we call redneck engineering. Redneck engineering can result in broken stuff (you know the famous last words of a redneck — “Hey, watch this!”), but it can also result in simple solutions that evade more sophisticated approaches. It’s not surprising that he might have rediscovered techniques. There have been an awful lot of smart, practical people in the world, and they don’t all live now.
PZ, I am a EE and while I don’t encounter many biologists, I have worked with a lot physicists who think that a PhD in physics is an automatic authority on all things electronic. It’s also true, though, that most EE’s seem to think they are also Mechanical Engineers (myself include, my bad).
19, 25: The who and why of Stonehenge are extremely interesting. They seem to be pre-Indo-European and are definitely not Celtic. There are good reasons to believe that they were aligned to observer solstices and equinoxes, but there are those who doubt this. Large projects like this would seemingly require a fairly sophisticated society with large-scale organization, but no one knows much about what the society was like. This sort of structure is scattered from Malta to Denmark and are apparently older than the pyramids (the recalibration of radiocarbon dating destroyed the old diffusionist explanation.)
Well, not really. We do have lots of big stones on top of a bunch of smaller-but-still-quite-big stones here in Denmark but they are not arranged like those of Stonehenge at all.
Except for being stones and big, of course.
The Count is an Electrical Engineer, and I was taught that Scientists perform the research and Engineers implement the research. Does not take away from either field.
On the other hand, I cannot fathom why people always act amazed at what ancient peoples were able to accomplish… they were your basic person like today, some clever, some not, etc. If someone can be clever at thinking outside the box they were likely to do so as well. Perhaps more so since basic observation was more likely the happen in a life with fewer distractions or with not much else to do but wait for the crops to grow.
I don’t follow it closely, but as far as I know the European megalithic sites are thought to be related, though non-identical. Elsewhere in the world, no. Dating is what decides it.
As some others here I’m in favor of a generalized Salem hypothesis, since as you note misplaced authority isn’t confined just to engineers. I too have worked in environments with plenty of chemists (semiconductor and biotech industry) and as you so keenly note the behavour is also and more generally replacing absent authority.
I entertain the hypothesis Gray Lensman stated, about the need for problem solvers to act with confidence. But I also think this habit for engineers is well developed by being often placed to solve new problems quickly. And a market situation means that any loosely grounded ad hocs are only tested in known situations, making it easy to make the mistake that this is enough to base predictive knowledge on.
There are of course exceptions. For instance, when (neuro)surgeons are egnorant about evolution, it is perhaps not only because they are problem solvers when planning and performing individual operations.
It could also be that the burden of treating life and death situations, or merely the continued life quality of others, needs quite a bit of arrogance thrown into the mix. At least that is what it seems like, looking at the performances of some of DI’s latest sideshows.
Yes, it seems like there are different structures and purposes that should not be conflated. I skimmed the swedish Wikipedia, and it claims that the first megalith structures were for burial purposes. The first Nordic agricultural society, “Trattbägarkulturen”, originated in Polen under early neolithicum, started to implement them during middle neolithicum.
These so called “dösen” (“dolmen” outside Sweden) seems to be most often a stone on top of a set of 4-7 loadbearing ones, of varying sizes. Most of them were surrounded by earth and stones to the sides, and some were reused in later burials.
These structures were developed first into “gånggrifter”, with an entrance so it looked like a “T”. The next development was “hällkistor” with 2 or more rooms, which could be totally covered by earth. Also so called “skeppssättningar”, looking like ships outlined by stones, could in some cases be associated with burials.
Nowhere do I see any mentioning of religious functions, which I suppose henges and especially Stonehenge is claimed to be about, typically being 20 m or larger, and containing 1 to 4 portals, timber circles, monoliths, posts, pits, coves (burial chambers looking like collective “hällkistor”, btw), burials and and central mounds.
If any of these informations are wrong, or if henges are seen outside of Britain, I would like to know.
As some others here I’m in favor of a generalized Salem hypothesis, since as you note misplaced authority isn’t confined just to engineers. I too have worked in environments with plenty of chemists (semiconductor and biotech industry) and as you so keenly note the behavour is also and more generally replacing absent authority.
I entertain the hypothesis Gray Lensman stated, about the need for problem solvers to act with confidence. But I also think this habit for engineers is well developed by being often placed to solve new problems quickly. And a market situation means that any loosely grounded ad hocs are only tested in known situations, making it easy to make the mistake that this is enough to base predictive knowledge on.
There are of course exceptions. For instance, when (neuro)surgeons are egnorant about evolution, it is perhaps not only because they are problem solvers when planning and performing individual operations.
It could also be that the burden of treating life and death situations, or merely the continued life quality of others, needs quite a bit of arrogance thrown into the mix. At least that is what it seems like, looking at the performances of some of DI’s latest sideshows.
Yes, it seems like there are different structures and purposes that should not be conflated. I skimmed the swedish Wikipedia, and it claims that the first megalith structures were for burial purposes. The first Nordic agricultural society, “Trattbägarkulturen”, originated in Polen under early neolithicum, started to implement them during middle neolithicum.
These so called “dösen” (“dolmen” outside Sweden) seems to be most often a stone on top of a set of 4-7 loadbearing ones, of varying sizes. Most of them were surrounded by earth and stones to the sides, and some were reused in later burials.
These structures were developed first into “gånggrifter”, with an entrance so it looked like a “T”. The next development was “hällkistor” with 2 or more rooms, which could be totally covered by earth. Also so called “skeppssättningar”, looking like ships outlined by stones, could in some cases be associated with burials.
Nowhere do I see any mentioning of religious functions, which I suppose henges and especially Stonehenge is claimed to be about, typically being 20 m or larger, and containing 1 to 4 portals, timber circles, monoliths, posts, pits, coves (burial chambers looking like collective “hällkistor”, btw), burials and and central mounds.
If any of these informations are wrong, or if henges are seen outside of Britain, I would like to know.
“There are of course exceptions” – There are of course other exceptions.
“There are of course exceptions” – There are of course other exceptions.
Why do engineers tend to gravitate towards creationism/IDC? Uh, isn’t it kind of obvious? It has nothing to do with authority.
Scientists discover the how and why, but engineers design, implement, and fix. If all you do daily is design, implement, and fix (DIF) things, many of them quite complex, you would tend to see a need for DIF in anything else complex around you. I’m guessing engineers see God as the Great Engineer, so to speak, and that’s why many of the IDC advocates are engineers.
Of course, I’m the except that proves the rule. Engineer, been called arrogant by some, but also atheist. Go figure.
Ya know, if watching football every weekend is enough to convince the average yay-hoo that he’s Steve Flippin’ Spurrier, I don’t see why it’s so unusual that a surplus of engineer-type folks have the propensity to talk about shit they know very little about. None of y’all never worked with some jackass who’s convinced that although he’s in advertising, he knows how to fix the air conditioner better than the guy who actually gets paid to fix air conditioners every day?
Sometimes a degree is just a way to be able to talk out of your ass with authority.
I saw this video clip a while ago, and I remember watching some sort of crappy documentary on the history or learning channel that was talking about the “alien” theory as if it were a legitimate theory, and slapping my head the whole time.
Sometimes it can be hard to remember that the Seven Wonders of the World were built before we had huge machinery and computers. Sometimes a load of slaves and a little ingenuity is all it takes.
There are good reasons to believe that they were aligned to observer solstices and equinoxes, but there are those who doubt this. Large projects like this would seemingly require a fairly sophisticated society with large-scale organization
I don’t see why there’s much justification for doubt about those alignements, it’s not woo that our ancestors might have an interest in such things, and these alignments are incredibly obvious (especially at Stonehenge, with the trilithons). Nor does it follow that large scale organization would be mandatory. Going back to G S Hawkins (who did his work as a direct reaction to Von Daniken), you don’t need anything more than patience and a couple of sticks to mark these events accurately. You don’t need anything more than trees, rope and some rocks to construct Stonehenge, or any other megalithic project. Now we have even more evidence that we don’t even need that many warm bodies.
Doubting that a neolithic culture would notice that the sun and moon swung in a regular pattern north to south smacks of the assumption that our ancestors were dumber than a box of rocks.
BTW, I hate to interupt the celebrations, but this guy isn’t an engineer.
He’s a carpenter.
He has a website
Marking the equinoxes doesn’t require large scale organization, but I’d say constructing Stonehenge would. You’d need a fair number of people working for awhile full time who had their material needs taken care for during that time and afterwards (since they wouldn’t be growing crops or doing anything else productive during that time.) Quarrying large stones (not shown in the video) is a laborious and time consuming task.
You seem to be tripping over your own feet. Are you convinced for some reason that the Stonhenge builders (maybe our ancestors, maybe not) did NOT have large scale organization? Large symbolic public works projects are usually considered to be evidence for large scale organization.
There’s more at issue here than refuting Van Daniken.
Don’t forget Eddie Izzard!
The most fascinating thing about ancient technologies isn’t that people who lived thousands of years ago could do very clever things, nor that so many people today assume that they couldn’t. It’s that the very clever things never sparked off wholesale. The Antikythera mechanism, the Baghdad Battery, the Pyramids, and any number of really clever Roman inventions, all sit there as hints that the Greeks could have done mechanical calculations like Babbage, the medieval Persians (I know that’s wrong, but can’t come up with a better term) came within a whisker of Volta, the Egyptians could have built skyscrapers and the Romans could have segued into an energy society.
But all these things sit there as anomalies. None transformed society, none escaped from their particular settings, none achieved the potential we can read into them today. And artistically, you can find equivalent bursts of superb achievement which stand comparison with the best we can do today – if you get the chance, go to the British Museum and look at the Assyrian lion hunting panels. (Actually, if you have the chance, just go to the British Museum. Nothing like it could be created today, and I doubt it’ll survive another hundred years. Neither will cheap air travel, so… just do it now).
The reason why none of these things kicked off, whereas the discoveries and inventions of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries combined into a perfect firestorm of change and innovation, is that we had the Enlightenment. We lost our fear of gods, and our willingness to accept that those gods were personally responsible for maintaining the social structures which those in charge were so keen on perpetuating.
As long as you’ve got slavery, who needs machines? As long as you have a priesthood maintaining society, who needs free thinkers? As long as you can cast the folks next door as the biggest threat to your security, who needs equality?
As long as we have the technological accomplishments that the Enlightenment made possible, who needs the Enlightenment?
Or so the consensus in the US seems to be going…
This may depend on culture, but here development engineers or technicians may have to do a lot of the empirical work needed to design mechanisms.
I have seen them design and help explain the workings of liquid cold fingers to transfer minute amounts of trace chemicals into liquids, or observing problematic bubble nucleation in such systems.
All in a days work. :-)
Nitpick, which doesn’t affect the argument: this is an unproved idea.
In fact, since the vessels doesn’t work as batteries without modifying them, and since they mostly resemble storage vessels for scrolls, it seems archaeologists dismiss this interpretation. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_battery )
This may depend on culture, but here development engineers or technicians may have to do a lot of the empirical work needed to design mechanisms.
I have seen them design and help explain the workings of liquid cold fingers to transfer minute amounts of trace chemicals into liquids, or observing problematic bubble nucleation in such systems.
All in a days work. :-)
Nitpick, which doesn’t affect the argument: this is an unproved idea.
In fact, since the vessels doesn’t work as batteries without modifying them, and since they mostly resemble storage vessels for scrolls, it seems archaeologists dismiss this interpretation. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_battery )
OK, for Baghdad Battery read rubbed amber! There really was a lot of knowledge spread out over the ancient world.
I suppose the most vivid example, and one of which still endangers us, is when the Ottomans decided they had to decide between science (the most advanced in the world at the time) and fundamentalist religion, and went with the religion.
Don’t have my books to hand, but this quote from Wikipedia of “The Incoherence of the Philosophers” by al-Ghazall, an 11th century book which became wildly popular and is thought by many to mark the beginning of the turning away from natural philosophy, will seem awfully familiar to those who have delved into the heart of ID:
“…our opponent claims that the agent of the burning is the fire exclusively;’ this is a natural, not a voluntary agent, and cannot abstain from what is in its nature when it is brought into contact with a receptive substratum. This we deny, saying: The agent of the burning is God, through His creating the black in the cotton and the disconnexion of its parts, and it is God who made the cotton burn and made it ashes either through the intermediation of angels or without intermediation. For fire is a dead body which has no action, and what is the proof that it is the agent? Indeed, the philosophers have no other proof than the observation of the occurrence of the burning, when there is contact with fire, but observation proves only a simultaneity, not a causation, and, in reality, there is no other cause but God.”
(I reckon that’s about a 90 on the scale: certainly the highest I’ve seen)
Rupert
You’d need a fair number of people working for awhile full time who had their material needs taken care for during that time and afterwards (since they wouldn’t be growing crops or doing anything else productive during that time.)
It helps if you remember that Stonehenge was constructed over 10 centuries in several phases. The labour requirements would nat have been particularly onerous.
Quarrying large stones (not shown in the video) is a laborious and time consuming task.
Again, look at the time frame. If you have a few decades “lead time” before transport, it’s not a big deal.
You seem to be tripping over your own feet. Are you convinced for some reason that the Stonhenge builders (maybe our ancestors, maybe not) did NOT have large scale organization? Large symbolic public works projects are usually considered to be evidence for large scale organization.
I think it depends on what you mean by “large scale organization”. That makes me think of a single heirarchy, and there is no evidence for that anywhere in this timeframe and area. A common organizing *principle* among smaller “political” units seems more in line with the evidence, and I don’t think a single “large scale organization” could last over a millenium.
I don’t think that large scale public works need kings and overseers, whips and taxes. I think that a sufficiently strong non-political motivator/organizing principle can do it.
There’s more at issue here than refuting Van Daniken.
Oh, I was just noting what “inspired” (annoyed the hell out of) G S Hawkins, and it *is* important to smack down the woo.
J L Smith: T. Heyerdahl should also be remembered for illustrating that one can do experiments in history.
Rupert: Unfortunately occaisonalism seems to have been (and still is, in some respects, as far as I can tell) a dominant theological position in Islam.
I often think what came together to form science as we know it, and a lot of it seems to be luck – affluence, relatively open societies, mathematics, the alchemical tradition, greek philosophy of many kinds …
Some people have hypothesized that an engineering mindset might predispose people to anti-scientific thinking, but I think people who can’t defer to authority when they lack information on the subject may make bad engineers as well. You have to be willing to accept advice and criticism from others with more experience in whatever area your current project involves. Otherwise, you end up re-inventing a wheel with flaws that have been well understood and easily avoided for ages.
I have had the displeasure of working with one such engineer who refused to listen to the rest of the team members, and it turned out that he also had some interesting views on climate change. No idea about his take on evolution…
Use nutating gear technology to move big rocks,
has prehistoric people did!
Henges – Engineering in Prehistory
Would like to see him move the 1200 ton stones at Baalbek 4 miles with no steel rollers or such. Romans did not do that. Nor did Herod’s experts move the 600 ton stones at the Temple Mount.