Actually I am not feeling better, pretty much bed ridden at the moment but what I am alluding to is the ability to cut and shape stone with such precision and on such a grand scale that we are told we can not replicate the results with our modern technology. I don't think it so far fetched to believe that a great culture lost its knowledge base. It happened in the middle east. At one time they had the most enlightened mathmatics and Astronomy known to man and they have descended into radical islam in the modern age seeking to quash higher education for its own people.

@misstuffy Experimental archaeology has answer nearly all of the questiosn, the perfect fit mortar less stone works have a remarkably simple solution. A friend of mine Dr, Damp was one of the leading experts on pre-Columbian civilizations Ecuador he was baffled by this. That was until they needed to build a retaining wall on site, he hired a local native stone mason to build a wall and build it he did exactly like the ancient pre-Columbian walls on site. He could not put a slip of paper between the stones and they did this without cutting tools or mortar. They would put coarse sand between the stones and slide them back and forth to level the sides of both stone. What they ended up with was regular six sided stones.

Most of the knowledge that the muslin scholar had was not really lost it lead to the enlightenment of medieval Europe of course medieval Europe would never admit to that fact.

Got the flue or something else? Being sick when you have animals that require care is a real bitch, I can totally relate a few years ago I came down with pneumonia in the beginning of calving season, I felt like the walking dead, little sleep hard work all the time sick as dog. Get better my friend.

@HeathenFarmer Now that is interesting with the sand in between the stones, my question is why didnt the cultures that built on top of that first architecture not do the same?

@misstuffy In this South American case they did as they were replaced by the Incas, that was up to the Spanish conquest at which point European architecture replaced it. For the most part contesting Europeans were not noted for having much respect for the conquered, their culture or their traditions.
Cultural replacement is a very messy process, this is often seen in the changing of ceramic evidence, where beautiful glazed ceramic are found below crude baked clay. Does that mean the ceramic culture was lost or does it just mean that some other culture moved into the area abandoned by the original culture? The thing is that in almost all of these cases a few miles away a culture continues to make the fine glazed ceramics and the crude culture begins to express these ceramics in there settlements through trade or adoption of the others technology. Good ideas are seldom lost; what one people think is a good idea others facing the same problems also think it will be a good idea, too. As long as the problem that the good idea is needed for exists so does the idea.
An other example often sited as mysterious means of carving and moving giant stones is the Egyptian obelisks, yet on the site of the largest one ever carve left unfinished because it cracked are the remains of the simple bronze and copper tools used to carve. Further investigation reveal the presence of extensions excavated extensions to the quarry sites of obelisks toward the Nile suggesting strongly that the annual flooding was the key to how these enormous stones were moved.

I believe these were built by an anciant advanced human culture now defunct

@misstuffy find and read Kon Tiki, its interesting,

I am also fascinated by the ancient maps that show the worlds topography from over 12K years ago the way it was then and it has only been in recent decades that we were able to verify the high degree of accuracy of these maps, they do exist.

This has been going on for decades and longer. John Glenn talked about watching alien craft when they were in space and told not to talk about it. They have released open mike dialogue not to be heard by the public. Logically we can not be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy and before anyone says alien visitors is nonsense, just remember we are out there visiting other planets ourselves with our probes.

He does have some interesting theories and I love that the Sumerian Tablets were also translated at the university in England and not just by him.

I disagree, I believe there was an advanced civilisation that predated these other well known cultures of the ancient world.

@misstuffy It's not completely out of the question, especially since sea levels were a lot lower before 6,000 years ago. Gobleki Tepe was very recently discovered, it was a huge surpise and it dates from 11,000 years ago. Still, there is no evidence for it that I am aware of.

@misstuffy I agree with that. I believe that mankind achieved a high degree of technology in the past, and some major catastrophe befell mankind and those who survived did not recover for several thousands of years and lost that knowledge. Thank of today's technology. A world nuclear war or a super volcano eruption or an asteroid hitting the earth. The first priority of the people who survive will be to feed themselves. How many people do you know can catch, kill or grow their own food in the developed world. All the scientist would probably be the first to perish. How many people knows how to build a car, build a computer from scratch, make a pencil and a piece of paper from scratch. Massive die off of animals and grains and the food chain disrupted. It would take thousands of years to recover, most of the human race dead. Cities abandoned for the woods in order to find food and drinkable water in streams and lakes. By the time mankind start to recover all the cities have crumbled and covered by overgrown vegetation as the planet start to recover. I believe that we were advanced over ten to twenty thousand years ago and something happened to the planet to set us back. Look at the dark ages, writing was almost lost and we lost a lot of that history.

WHat I am saying is there was an earlier advanced civilasation that is now gone and tat humanity started over from the ground up.

@misstuffy Could not have been advanced to our point. A nuclear war or even modern pollutants would of left unmistakeable layers in ice cores and lake sediment cores.

@noworry28 THere is evidence that a metero hit the glaciers which were two miles deep at the time and caused the floods that we know in Biblical stories as Noahs Ark flood. this precipitated a minor warm up before plunging us into a deeper ice age. THe geologists have found evidence and it is gaining in acceptability with more research.

@Druvius THey say there is evidence of Nuclear device used at Jericho, the stories of Lots wife in one of the cities that she turned into a pillar of salt, well the original word can be translated that she turned into dust and we know that happens if you are too close to the explosion.

I will look into it.

I sounds pretty condescending, I suspect... But seriously, the book literally changed my life.

If you buy it and read it, you will be asking "Why is this not taught in school?" I could not believe all the nonsense I was able to flush from my brain after reading it.

I'm sure a million people can come along and confirm what I say. I would bet something like 10% of the people here are here, at least in part, because of that book. It's not about religion at all, but it's the cause of a lot of very thoughtful atheism.

It's about all the myriad ways we're biologically programmed to leap to the wrong conclusion combined with a giant toolset for detecting bullshit. When you know how you're prone to failure, you're in a lot better position to avoid it.

Even they did not have the tools needed to build these structures, these predate all but the Anciant Sumerians and that civilisation appeared suddenly already fully formed,

Still you have to admit it is intriguing and yes I do see stuff that is obviously not true. As an RH Negative I don't believe I am an alien as the claim.

I tend toward disbelief, myself, but save room for the possible "extraordinary proof" . I like what you said @dc65

Yes let's deal with reality there's just so many interesting things in the present I prefer to direct my energies to learning and constructing useful things based on my knowledge.

@dc65 I an fascinated by the findings of renowned geologists and stone masons who say we can not replicate these results with modern techniques.

It is still something that we can't explain, the Easter Island heads have been excavated and are too large to have been moved by the humans of the era and the sediment fill dates them to before that culture and in fact tie them to silinilar pieces elsewhere.

@misstuffy yes it will be interesting when they figure out how human beings accomplished these construction projects.

@misstuffy I watched a documentary on moving the Easter Island heads. They recreated the process by 'rocking' the heads and 'walked' them to their positions. The theory was partially corroborated by the fact that some of the heads are face down, sometimes they pulled a little to hard on the ropes and they fell, never to stand upright again.

Heston was a staunch believer in Christianity and the NRA. What a combination!

@think-beyond THose old movies were something!