I’m convinced the whole “they couldn’t do this today” is subtle anti-modernity propaganda whether they are saying it about movies, or ancient megastructures. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human progress, wrapped up in weird conservative anger about how it will never be 40(00) years ago again.
What’s worse is, not only can we do it, so could the Egyptians.
Concrete. We build skyscrapers out of it. We make it from sand and various other common minerals. If you make it from Cretian volcanic ash, like the Romans, you get concrete that is even more stable if you use it with seawater, and can be used to construct submerged concrete structures in shallow coastal water without draining away any of the liquid.
And if you grind up Egyptian sandstone and add freshwater like from the Nile? You can make huge blocks as smooth as polished marble that a razor blade can’t fit between, transport it in more manable quantities and forms than giant stone blocks, and it will last tens of thousands of years (not including the ~5,000 it has already lasted) unless the humidity of the Sahara goes through the roof.
I’m not saying Egypt was or wasn’t advanced, just that they were sufficiently advanced to convincingly look to a more advanced civilization like magic. Or in this case, “aliens” or “ancient astronauts”.
The only reason I would not be surprised if hieroglyphs were found on the moon is because we did it before we could fake it. If faking the moon landing couldn’t be done without modern computer software or LED lightbulbs yet actually doing it is trivial enough that it was done 55 years ago, why resort to aliens to describe how that’s possible? For all we know you could get to the moon with a railgun built from hand-smithed iron and the lumber of California Redwoods, doesn’t mean its superhuman if you figure out how to actually do so.
I’m convinced the whole “they couldn’t do this today” is subtle anti-modernity propaganda whether they are saying it about movies, or ancient megastructures. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human progress, wrapped up in weird conservative anger about how it will never be 40(00) years ago again.
It’s as stupid as holding up a floppy disk and saying “modern computers can’t even read this data, they’re all garbage”.
What’s worse is, not only can we do it, so could the Egyptians.
Concrete. We build skyscrapers out of it. We make it from sand and various other common minerals. If you make it from Cretian volcanic ash, like the Romans, you get concrete that is even more stable if you use it with seawater, and can be used to construct submerged concrete structures in shallow coastal water without draining away any of the liquid.
And if you grind up Egyptian sandstone and add freshwater like from the Nile? You can make huge blocks as smooth as polished marble that a razor blade can’t fit between, transport it in more manable quantities and forms than giant stone blocks, and it will last tens of thousands of years (not including the ~5,000 it has already lasted) unless the humidity of the Sahara goes through the roof.
I’m not saying Egypt was or wasn’t advanced, just that they were sufficiently advanced to convincingly look to a more advanced civilization like magic. Or in this case, “aliens” or “ancient astronauts”.
The only reason I would not be surprised if hieroglyphs were found on the moon is because we did it before we could fake it. If faking the moon landing couldn’t be done without modern computer software or LED lightbulbs yet actually doing it is trivial enough that it was done 55 years ago, why resort to aliens to describe how that’s possible? For all we know you could get to the moon with a railgun built from hand-smithed iron and the lumber of California Redwoods, doesn’t mean its superhuman if you figure out how to actually do so.