Exoticizing ancient and foreign cultures is bullshit.
Yeah they believe dtuffthat sounds crazy to you,but they aren’t fucking aliens. Having people with actual relevant experience participate in archaeology is essential. Wjenlooking at stonework, bring a mason. When looking at hair, bring a barber. When looking at textiles, bring a seamstress.
Early humans are just that, humans. Their brains worked basically identically to how ours work, they just had wildly different lives. If you plucked a baby from today and time swapped it with a baby born 10,000 years ago, they’d be fine and grow up as if they didn’t know (disease notwithstanding)
This is a difficult concept for Westerners (including myself at one point) since Western historiography has a tendency to portray history as linear and unidirectional.
You say aliens but there are many archaeological engineering marvels from the ancient world that don’t fit the “primitive” narrative and so there are conspiracy theorists that believe it must have been aliens. One example would be the Kailasa temple in India which was carved out of the face of a cliff
I know you are partly joking but there are three reasons why this a marvel of the ancient world.
It is carved from Deccan Trap basalt, a volcanic rock that is extremely hard and dense, far tougher to work than softer limestones used in many other rock‑cut monuments.
The construction method is unique: artisans began at the top of the cliff and excavated downward, removing material from a single massive block rather than assembling stones piece by piece.
This top‑down approach required careful and unconventional forethought in order to maintain structural integrity and for efficient systems of removing debris. The debris is thought to have been moved particularly effectively as it has never been found.
It the largest monolithic rock‑cut temple in the world at 100 by 300 feet.
No, but it takes years of full time labor in a time where most human labor had to be spent on subsistence. That a community at that low tech level would feed and house someone doing something decorative for that many years is really cool. And I guess to some not believable.
Exoticizing ancient and foreign cultures is bullshit.
Yeah they believe dtuffthat sounds crazy to you,but they aren’t fucking aliens. Having people with actual relevant experience participate in archaeology is essential. Wjenlooking at stonework, bring a mason. When looking at hair, bring a barber. When looking at textiles, bring a seamstress.
Early humans are just that, humans. Their brains worked basically identically to how ours work, they just had wildly different lives. If you plucked a baby from today and time swapped it with a baby born 10,000 years ago, they’d be fine and grow up as if they didn’t know (disease notwithstanding)
This is a difficult concept for Westerners (including myself at one point) since Western historiography has a tendency to portray history as linear and unidirectional.
I’m reading the two perfect books about this at the moment:
https://www.buch7.de/produkt/a-history-of-the-world-in-500-maps-christian-grataloup/1043022620?ean=9780500252659
https://www.buch7.de/produkt/horizons-james-poskett/1043666144?ean=9780241986264
Both book kinda deconstruct the western linear history storytelling
You say aliens but there are many archaeological engineering marvels from the ancient world that don’t fit the “primitive” narrative and so there are conspiracy theorists that believe it must have been aliens. One example would be the Kailasa temple in India which was carved out of the face of a cliff
It almost always boils down to “nonwhite people couldn’t have done this” and it pisses me the hell off
Yeah, because they’re racist as fuck
Carving stone isn’t even really that hard.
I know you are partly joking but there are three reasons why this a marvel of the ancient world.
It is carved from Deccan Trap basalt, a volcanic rock that is extremely hard and dense, far tougher to work than softer limestones used in many other rock‑cut monuments.
The construction method is unique: artisans began at the top of the cliff and excavated downward, removing material from a single massive block rather than assembling stones piece by piece. This top‑down approach required careful and unconventional forethought in order to maintain structural integrity and for efficient systems of removing debris. The debris is thought to have been moved particularly effectively as it has never been found.
It the largest monolithic rock‑cut temple in the world at 100 by 300 feet.
No, but it takes years of full time labor in a time where most human labor had to be spent on subsistence. That a community at that low tech level would feed and house someone doing something decorative for that many years is really cool. And I guess to some not believable.
You do it then
If I didn’t have to pay these damn taxes maybe I would
When looking at statues of “fertility goddesses”, bring a teenage boy. That shit wasn’t evidence of a “cult of fertility”, it was porn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution
That you think there must be a separation of sexuality and religion is a product of your own cultural biases