kisma Johnson's blog: "Ancient Technology"

Ancient Egypt's fantastic and weird history By Terry Deary Pyramids and Tombs • Pyramids were a big signal to tell grave robbers where the pharaoh's treasure was hidden. That's why, by Tutankhamun's time, pharaohs were buried underground. Ancient Egypt's fantastic and weird history Napoleon's engineers said the stones of the Great Pyramid would build a wall around France • Some people believe the young Tutankhamun was murdered by his uncle, Ay, who went on to take the throne. But in 2005 the mummy was given an X-ray, and they found he had a broken leg, which probably led to his death. • Tombs held everything a God would need in the next life, including a toilet. Even the pharaoh's cats were mummified to keep him company. • Pharaohs were buried with models of their servants. But early pharaohs were buried with real servants - knocked on the head. • Why does the Sphinx have no nose? Legend says Napoleon's army used it as target practice. The truth is it was wrecked 500 years before by Mohammed Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi fanatic. • In the 1800s, some people believed pyramids could focus invisible forces, preserving dead bodies and even sharpening blunt razor blades. A Czech engineer, Karel Drbal, even patented the idea - in 1959! • Napoleon's engineers told him the stones of the Great Pyramid would build a one-metre wall around France. Cut into 6cm rods, they'd reach the Moon. advertisement • Pyramids have been said to be all sorts of things: stone computers, observatories for astronomers or astrologers, and, of course, alien landing sites. • Napoleon entered the Great Pyramid and came out pale and shaking. He refused to speak about it, but hinted he'd seen a vision of his future. • The Ancient Greeks said the pyramids were built over 10 years by 10,000 slaves. In fact, they were built by 25,000 or so free men, who were well fed with beef and ale - and each one probably took just five years. Tomb raiders • Every pyramid discovered in Egypt has been robbed. That's why the discovery of Tutankhamun's rock tomb was so important. • A caliph of Baghdad broke into the centre of the Great Pyramid. He found Cheops's coffin - but it was empty. • Tutankhamun's tomb was robbed shortly after he was buried. The thieves appear to have been caught in the act: they dropped a bag of rings in the tunnel they'd dug. • Lord Carnarvon, who funded the Tutankhamun excavation in 1922, died a year later. As he died, the lights in Cairo failed and his dog back home howled. "It's a curse!" superstitious people claimed. • Mummies were buried with "Books of the Dead": these weren't full of curses on grave-robbers, but gave advice on how to get on in the afterlife. • In 1901 a British historian, Flinders Petrie, was exploring Pharaoh Djer's tomb. He found an arm wrapped in bandages that had been stuffed into a crack in the wall, perhaps by an early robber. • A robber in the 1880s was caught after selling the treasures of 30 mummies. The Egyptian government "forgot" about his theft and gave him a job… as a guide, showing tourists round the tombs. • In 1944, a robber reached into a coffin to steal some gold. The lid fell and trapped him, then the roof fell in and killed him. They know when he died because they found that day's newspaper in his skeleton's tattered coat. • So many mummies were dug up in the 1800s that they had no value: some were even used in the boilers of railway engines. • The sinking of the Titanic has been blamed on a curse from a mummified priestess that was being shipped to America. It's a great story, but not true. Mummies • Mummies were embalmed in a special tent or house called "The Beautiful House". Nice name for a butcher shop. • If clumsy priests knocked off the fingers or toes, they would replace them with a wooden spare part. • To make a mummy, "they first take an iron hook and draw out the brain through the nostril" - at least according to the Greek historian Herodotus. • The eyes can be replaced by black stones - though for Ramesses IV, they used small onions (it's enough to make you weep…). • The spirit of the mummified pharaoh had to pass through the Duat, a place of boiling lakes, rivers of fire and poisonous spitting snakes. • From the 1300s, people ground mummies into powder as a cure for illnesses. • King Charles II would collect the dust that fell off mummies. He used it on his skin, believing the "greatness" would rub off. • "Mummy" is an ingredient in the Witches' brew in Macbeth. • In Victorian England, people flocked to watch a Dr Pettigrew unwrap a mummy at the Royal College of Surgeons. Places were so scarce that even the Archbishop of Canterbury was turned away. • Stolen mummies were sent to the US in the 1890s to be mashed and made into wrapping paper. But customers started to die of cholera. The mummies' revenge! Pharaohs • Some historians think the first pharaohs were invaders from the East (and some potty historians say they were from another planet!). • Early pharaohs would marry every royal princess to make sure there would be no young rivals born. • After a pharaoh had ruled for 30 years, he had to prove his fitness by running around a fixed course. • Scribes described Ramesses II's great victory over the Hittites at Qadesh in Syria… even though the Hittites won. Was this the oldest case of spin-doctoring? • King Pepy II came to the throne aged nine, and ruled until he was 100. They say he had a great system for avoiding insects: he would cover a slave in honey. Flies swarmed to the slave and left Pepy in peace. • Pharaoh Hatshepsut, a woman, wore a wig on her chin so she looked like a man. Later kings were so shocked at the thought of a woman ruler that they hacked her name off monuments. • Thutmose II was a great pharaoh who conquered all of Egypt's enemies. But he had a few close shaves: in Syria, he was almost trampled to death by a herd of wild elephants. • In 1375BC King Akhenaten argued with his daughter and sent her for execution. He also cut off a hand, so she couldn't go into the afterlife. • In the 16th century BC, Tao and his Egyptians rose up against invaders known as the Hyksos. The skull of his mummy showed wounds from a dagger, an axe, a spear and a mace. • Egypt's most famous queen, Cleopatra, was a Greek. Peasants • Egypt had the world's first bakeries... around 2000 BC. • Peasants weren't allowed to call pharaohs by their name: they were gods. Even "pharaoh" means "great house", because his body is the house of god. • Labourers had to pay taxes to keep the Nile's irrigation ditches clear. Tax dodgers were whipped. • Peasants were not "slaves" – but, like cattle, they were counted as part of a landowner's wealth. • A really lazy peasant could be punished by having a finger or toe chopped off. • The world's first labour strike was held on the site of a pyramid. • Peasants ate bread that was so coarse it wore away their teeth. • Egyptians made the first sweets in the world: they came from dates picked from trees by trained baboons. • A "cure" for blindness was to mash a pig's eye, mix it with red ochre and pour it into the patient's ear. A bag of mouse bones, fastened round the neck, cured bed-wetting. • Peasant children were set to work in the fields as soon as they could walk. They acted as scarecrows.

GRAND CANYON NOT FORMED BY LONG-TERM WATER EROSION How awesome! It just kept dropping below me… down… down… down. I drank in the majesty of the canyon. “Grand Canyon”… so well named! My friend Thomas stood beside me. He broke the silence. “Did you know that this Grand Canyon most likely started as a crack in the earth?” “Oh come on, Tom, the Colorado River did it. Everybody knows that.” Tom shook his head. “There is reason to believe that the canyon was originally cut by an electrical discharge from a passing heavenly body.” “You mean, by a huge lightning bolt?” “That’s right,” said Tom. “Those cracks perpendicular to the canyon resulted from an electrical arc. They are not water-caused rills.” And he added, “I believe it happened during the latter part of the Great Flood.” Tom was a well respected scientist. But I still had to ask him: “Are you serious?” “Definitely,’ he responded. WHY NOT WATER EROSION OVER LONG AGES? “Of course,” he admitted, “I realise that most people assume the Colorado River formed the Grand Canyon.” And it is also assumed that this took millions of years. After all, isn’t the canyon in parts up to a mile deep? Water erosion would take ages… well, wouldn’t it? Not necessarily. Because if there really was a global flood disaster, on the scale implied by the evidence now coming to light, it could be an enormous, rapid event. Just imagine it… continents and seas churned up together. Water-laid sediment tens of thousands of feet deep, stratified during 12 months by water movements on an unimaginable scale. Then, finally the violent run-off into the tectonically enlarged ocean basins. Volumes of water, laden with rocks, gravel and debris, running over newly-deposited, still unconsolidated soft ground, could easily scoop out a Grand Canyon in a short time. Yes, it’s possible. But, as Tom pointed out, this Grand Canyon was not scooped out that way. The perpendicular cracks give us the clue. PROBLEMS WITH THE POPULAR THEORY Tom stared at me, grinning. “Okay”, I said. “There’s something else you know… right? Spit it out.” Tom beamed. “Were you aware that the Grand Canyon humps in the middle, and that it stretches HIGHER than the upstream Colorado River?” “No,” I confessed. “You mean…” “Yes, to start cutting the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River would need to flow uphill! Do you see? “Also, there is very little downstream detritus… which gives no support for the erosion theory. “No – the Colorado River did NOT cut the Grand Canyon.” I had to investigate this further. Back home, I began researching. And discovered something else. It almost blew me away! Did you know this? In reality, the Grand Canyon seems to be part of a crack in the earth’s crust. It starts in Mexico and runs underground all the way up to Yellowstone Park. It seems likely that the retreating Flood waters did pour down into the crack from all directions in great abundance. And then erosion did take place – but it was rapid erosion. CANYON WATER LEVEL MUCH HIGHER IN 2000 BC? Are you ready for another bombshell? Could the river now flowing through this crack have been - as recently as 4,000 years ago - at a much higher level? Now that’s a staggering thought! You may already be familiar with the newspaper report that follows, but most people are not. So I shall repeat this news item to you now, then follow up with my bombshell. On the front page of The Phoenix Gazette, on April 5, 1909, there appeared a most intriguing news report. G.A. Kinkaid, an explorer working with Professor S.A. Jordan of the Smithsonian Institution, allegedly discovered a network of caverns, artificially hewn into the side of the Grand Canyon. His report began as follows: “First, I would impress that the cavern is nearly inaccessible. The entrance is 1,486 feet down the sheer canyon wall…. I was journeying down the Colorado river in a boat, alone, looking for mineral. “Some forty-two miles up the river from the El Tovar Crystal canyon, I saw on the east wall, stains in the sedimentary formation about 2,000 feet above the river bed. “There was no trail to this point, but I finally reached it with great difficulty. Above a shelf which hid it from view from the river, was the mouth of the cave. “There are steps leading from this entrance some thirty yards to what was, at the time the cavern was inhabited, the level of the river. “When I saw the chisel marks on the wall inside the entrance, I became interested.” (Nexus, April-May 1993, pp. 36-39) Following several hundred feet of passage, the explorer found himself in a network of passages and hundreds of rooms radiating from a central point like spokes in a wheel. The relics seen (some of which he photographed by flashlight) were astonishing. There were mummies, images and artefacts of a high technology. And an unknown grey metal resembling platinum. Everywhere he looked, hieroglyphics were to be seen. Does that awaken your appetite? But here is the bombshell that blows to pieces our ideas on how long it took the canyon to form. The point is that this archaeological site is some 2,000 feet above the present river bed. And it has steps leading a short distance to the former river level. Do you see? This would mean that the water in the river was about 2,000 feet higher only a few thousand years ago. If this is true, then the water level cut through the soft strata 2,000 feet lower in just a few thousand years since those first explorers were here. That erosion would have been rapid at first – the bulk of the cutting being done in just the first few years, while the sediments of the plain were still soft. Of course, the entire story could be an elaborate newspaper hoax. However, the fact that it was on the front page, named the prestigious Smithsonian Institution, and gave a highly detailed story that went on for several pages, lends a great deal to its credibility. It is hard to believe such a story could have come out of thin air. POSSIBLE CONFIRMATION More recently, two backpackers who entered the Grand Canyon claimed that at an elevation of some 800 feet, they saw several cave entrances, just as reported in the newspaper article. But the entrances all seemed to be sealed shut or destroyed, as if to keep everyone out. (This raises the question, Why would anyone want to deliberately seal off caves in such a remote area, so difficult of access?) Being expert rock climbers, the two men climbed toward the most promising looking cave entrance. Upon reaching the entrance they discovered that, several feet in, it had likewise been sealed off with native rock. The entrance itself appeared to be man made. A 6 foot circular pattern was clearly hewn into the ceiling. The question arises, if the newspaper article was a mere hoax, then what did these more recent backpackers stumble upon? And why were the entrances to such extremely remote caves sealed? And something else. The backpacker’s discovery was made at least 40 miles from the location given in the newspaper article. So, if the newspaper report was not a hoax, and the backpackers had found the real location, could the newspaper location have been misinformation to keep people away? But the point of my mentioning the story, is this. If the report is genuine, then those early post-Flood, Egyptian-style visitors were in a canyon whose water run-off was still copious, the Flood-laid sediments still relatively soft. And in the few millennia since that time, the river has dropped anything up to 2,000 feet lower. Or 800 feet lower. It doesn’t matter how much. It has not taken millions of years. I notice that most inhabited areas of the planet are reported to be drier than they were even a century ago. Water shortages will feature in coming media news broadcasts. There is more to our future water shortages than meets the eye. For one thing, the slow drying out of the continents has been a feature of our planet ever since the Great Flood… at first, trapped Flood “puddles” left as inland seas and lakes on every continent, then their retreat, and the consequent drying out. This has impacted on the fates of cities and civilizations, both in desertification and sea level rise. What is in store for our civilization in the near future? What do you think?

Considering space travel on one of Virgin Galactic's new ships? The sales pitch goes like this: The first hour will be relatively painless, a graceful ascent in a spaceship attached to a mother ship. Once the vessels reach 50,000 feet, the ship containing you, five more tourists and two pilots will detach and fall for a moment. Then, the thrusters will propel it up for 90 seconds, traveling three times the speed of sound. All of the spacecraft's fuel will burn away, leaving its tanks empty. The G-forces on your body will push your blood toward your feet. It is hoped that you won't black out, but if you do, you'll come to when you're at zero gravity. Once above the undefined line that delineates Earth from space, your craft will arch to a height of 360,000 feet for about four minutes. You will be weightless and have stunning views of Earth's curvature, 1,000 miles in any direction. And then gravity will beckon the vessel down to Earth, the human bodies within it feeling pressure six times their weight, sort of like a "big, hairy, fat cat sitting on your chest." Total approximate time: two hours and nine minutes. All this for only $200,000 -- a lot of money to most folks, but a mere fraction of the millions spent by previous space tourists. Bothell travel agent Angie Lepley is getting quite good at making the pitch: Earlier this year, she was chosen as one of 45 agents countrywide who are permitted to sell Virgin Galactic tours. She is the only agent in Washington, Idaho and Oregon who sells the trips. "People do yachts and private villas and first-class airfare," Lepley said. "In the scheme of how people travel nowadays, I don't think (the price) is a lot." Being chosen is a boon for Tangerine Travel, which Lepley founded in 1988. Her company, originally named ETI Travel, is one of 907 licensed travel agencies in Washington. Last Thursday, Tangerine held a stylish client-appreciation event at a still-under-construction, 12,000-square-foot office in Bothell. Her business, with 57 employees, has outgrown its Kirkland location.

One of Western Europe's earliest known urban societies may have sown the seeds of its own downfall, a study suggests. Mystery surrounded the fall of the Bronze Age Argaric people in south-east Spain - Europe's driest area. Data suggests the early civilisation exhausted precious natural resources, helping bring about its own ruin. The study provides early evidence for cultural collapse caused - at least in part - by humans meddling with the environment, say researchers. It could also provide lessons for modern populations living in water-stressed regions. The findings were based on pollen preserved in a peat deposit located in the mountains of eastern Andalucia, Spain. The researchers drilled a sediment core from the Canada del Gitano basin high up in Andalucia's Sierra de Baza region. Sediment cores were drilled from peat deposits By studying the abundances of different pollen types - along with other indicators - preserved in sedimentary deposits, researchers can reconstruct what kind of vegetation covered the area in ancient times. They can compile a pollen sequence, which shows how vegetation changed over thousands of years. This can give them clues to how human settlement and climate affected ecosystems. Copper objects like this axe were common until the Argaric era The Argaric culture emerged in south-eastern Spain 4,300 years ago. This civilisation, which inhabited small fortified towns, was one of the first in Western Europe to adopt bronze working. But about 3,600 years ago, the culture mysteriously vanished from the archaeological record. "Archaeologists are convinced that something happened in the ecological structure of the area just prior to the collapse of the Argaric culture," said Jose Carrion, from the University of Murcia, Spain. "But we previously lacked a high-resolution record to support this.

Chemical and archaeological evidence has pushed back the earliest known use of cacao, the key ingredient of chocolate, by 500 years. The chemical compound, theobromine, which only occurs in the cacao plant, has been found on pottery vessels dating back to as early as 1000 BC. Experts say the vessels were used to serve a fermented cacao drink that was made from the sweet pulp of the plant. The vessels were unearthed at sites in Puerto Escondido, Honduras. "The earliest use of cacao in Mesoamerica is likely to have been for a fermented drink," lead author Professor John Henderson wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Such drinks may contain up to 5% alcohol in volume," the Cornell University, US, academic added. Frothy chocolate Map of Puerto Escondido, Honduras As well as chemical evidence, a change in pottery vessel shape allowed scientists to pre-date the use of cocoa. It had been known that the seeds were used to make a frothed chocolate drink which became central to social life throughout Mesoamerica. It was drunk at important ceremonies to mark weddings and births, especially by elites. As the drink was frothy, it was served in a spouted bottle with a flaring neck. However, long-necked bottle samples that pre-date the spouted bottle were also found to contain cocoa residues. The researchers suggested that this vessel type was inappropriate for frothing but better for pouring. This led the authors conclude that "early cocoa was consumed as a fermented beverage made from pulp", rather than seeds. During the time of the Aztec empire, chocolate seeds were used as an early form of money.

Carbon dating tests and excavation of a colorful pre-Incan temple indicate that it was built thousands of years ago by an advanced civilization, a prominent archaeologist said in comments published Sunday by a Peruvian newspaper. Unearthed in Peru's archeologically rich northern coastal desert, the temple has a staircase leading to an altar that was used for worshipping fire and making offerings to deities, Walter Alva, who headed the three-month excavation, told El Comercio. Some of the walls of the 27,000-square-foot site — almost half the size of a football field — were painted, and a white and red mural depicts a deer being hunted with a net. Alva said the temple was apparently constructed by an "advanced civilization" because it was built with mud bricks made from sediment found in local rivers, instead of rocks. "This discovery shows an architectural and iconographic tradition different from what has been known until now," said Alva, who discovered and is the museum director for another important pre-Incan find, the nearby Lords of Sipan Moche Tombs. The carbon dating tests, conducted in the United States, indicate that the site is 4,000 years old, he claimed. The oldest known city in the Americas is Caral, also near the Peruvian coast, which researchers dated to 2627 B.C.

In the early years of the 20th century an artifact was recovered from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera. Dated to about 80BC, it was considered a mere artifact. However in 1971 research on the Antikythera Mechanism showed it to have an intricate arrangement of gears, dials and graded plates. One theory is that it was a computing device to work out the movement of the Sun and planets. If this idea is true, then the ancients had a degree of technology way above previously imagined. MYSTERIOUS MECHANISMS This is further shown by a crystal skull found in 1927 belonging to the Maya civilisation of ancient Mexico. The skull is carved from a single block of quartz crystal. So perfect is the skull that it would have taken some 300 years to carve by known means of the time. If a light is placed below it, a prism in the mouth directs the light through the eyes, lighting up the skull. A further hint of advanced technology used by the ancients comes from the Baghdad Battery found in 1936. Said to be at least 2,000 years old, fruit juice was added to a replica and it produced half a volt of electricity. Archaeologist Flinders Petrie added to the controversy with his words on certain elements of ancient engineering. A most systematic and exacting man, he wasn’t prone to flights of fancy, but he noted grooves and inscriptions on pottery and other artifacts that could not have been produced by modern precision engineering techniques. SOUNDS GOOD Modern toolmaker Christopher Dunn suggested a possible explanation for such precision engineering. He puts forward the possibility of the ancients using the vibrations produced by ultrasound. Just how sound could have been used is unknown, but as to its power, the singer Caruso was said to have shattered a wineglass by singing a certain note at the correct resonance. Could the ancients have had technology such as ultrasound that we know nothing about? Modern technology is based on certain principles discovered as we went along. Had we not have discovered pneumatics, for instance, could we have later stumbled on the powerful properties of sound? Could the ancients have simply taken a different path, suggesting that other technologies could exist even cheaper and simpler than the methods we use? MYTHS OF ANCIENT TECH Some myths speak of stones on pyramids and stone circles being levitated into position as if by magic. We laugh at such stories. Yet we are well aware that sound vibrations CAN seem to lift pebbles off the ground. One theory offered for the Great Pyramid is that it was a mechanism to amplify the natural sounds of the Earth, the granite inner construction vibrating in tune with natural vibrations. Even the paranormal could be less mysterious if we accept the possibility of some unknown form of sonic power. Consider the poltergeist, and the way objects seem to fly about a room. THE STORY OF TECH Sceptics will, of course, treat such ideas with disdain. Technology is a means of adapting the forces of nature to man’s use, and he has done a good job at utilizing all the forces that can be used. However, there is another story to tech they ignore. Take, for instance, computing. When first envisaged, it manipulated the forces involved in mechanics. The next stage was electric, before going hi-tech with modern electronics. However, the future of computing is said to be a manipulation of the digital code within DNA. Computing may soon cross over to biological forces. This can be said of many technological innovations. The telescope used basic light, then advanced to radio waves. Who knows what forces may be used in the future. Writing was initially done on stone, then paper and now electronics. Science is forever working out new ways of adapting forces of nature to man’s use through technology. And it is quite feasible to suggest that all forces can be so used. And sound is one of those forces. So it is not scientifically ridiculous to suggest the ancients understood the properties of this force, even though scientifically unproveable at this time. Perhaps we need to do more research into the properties of sound. We may discover that the ancients, if they could see our machines, would offer a wry smile at our stupidity. © Anthony North, November 2007