Ancient Engineering

Nice one Ed, I’ll read that when I have time.

An interesting revue of an interesting subject. It is hard for many to appreciate that some ancient societies had remarkable skill levels developed via the school of hard work and finding what works, works well. Mining and I guess be extension tunnelling is something that has been carried on for thousands of years. I suggest that then as now it was an occupation that featured various levels of specialisation and this might be why the old skills were either passed on, master to subject and frequently lost when the master had no further subject due to death, invasion, illness or lack of interested parties. Skilled ‘masters’ could and did and to some extent still do achieve remarkable accuracy with minimal high tech guidance – I remember a few years back someone introduced a last great whizz bang set up, the accuracy of which was rather less than a far less high tech system. The practitioners of low tech offered to try to recalibrate the high tech but less accurate system to improve its performance.

I should admit that I was not in the most receptive of moods while trying to read the link. I have just returned from an appointment for an injection to sort out a trigger finger problem. Unfortunately the lump at the base of the digit was impenetrably hard frustrating all the doctor’s attempts to get the needle into the required area. So I have to be referred onwards to a superior force and continue with a well below par, painful left hand for the time being.

Or this chap, who moves large blocks with ease.

“One man proves massive stones and weights can be moved without machinery by building his own Stone Henge moving huge blocks using timber and stones. He moves the huge loads by himself demonstrating how the Pyramids and places such as Stone Henge could have been built.”

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P4HwmmhykI

Thanks Ed, yours is very interesting. 🙂

If you have ever had any manual handling training or seen the manual handling videos this will not have been a complete surprise. The careful shaping of the ‘stones’ to allow them to create a finished structure was of course selling a feature for the cement industry, but none the worse for that. For me it was rolling large oil drums, or walking packing cases was enough, 25 tons would have caused me a little too much excitement!

What interested me was that according to locals on Easter Island and their oral traditions the Moai walked into their positions.

Youtube. 

(Site won’t let me embed video)

Of course we’ll never now for sure how it was done but it’s a viable solution IMO.