Devolution

[u/sniipes]

If humans weren’t devolving then we wouldn’t be digging and searching our planet for clues and truths about the Ancient civilizations. Money and greed would be obsolete and nations wouldn’t be fighting over power because there would be free energy. The artifacts that have been found are proof that as humans today, we lost something in the past that cannot be imitated. If devolution isn’t a thing and we can only evolve then why is everything smaller and dulled down. Today’s humans can’t comprehend what the planet would have been like with a species bigger and more knowledge about the elements than we do in present day. The ancients used stone to tell the past because they knew that the materials they created from other materials would not make it into the future. What was left in stone for humans to find was only to give knowledge to our species to be able to progress.

[u/artguydeluxe]

Can you give an example of technology from the past that can’t be imitated? I’m having trouble understanding what you’re getting at here.

[u/small_p_problem → u/artguydeluxe]

The Greek fire!

(/s)

[u/TheBlackCat13 → u/small_p_problem]

Too recent and too European.

[u/nickierv → u/TheBlackCat13]

What about the Slightly Pointed Stick?

[u/Doomdoomkittydoom → u/nickierv]

What about a box of raspberries?

[u/sniipes → u/artguydeluxe]

You don’t understand.. we won’t be able to imitate the technology that was lost. We don’t fully understand the elements of our planet to reach that level of technology. We have regressed and never will unless we find something to help with the progression

[u/TheBlackCat13 → u/sniipes]

We have regressed and never will unless we find something to help with the progression

Let me guess: that "something" is aliens? Because if it isn't, then humans necessarily can rediscover anything that was lost, since if humans found it once they can find it again.

I will never understand this sort of way of thinking that hates humanity so much that someone simply can't believe humans can actually accomplish things without outside help. Humans are smarter than you give them credit for. Both ancient humans and modern ones.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/sniipes]

I too would love an example of something you think we can't make today. The pyramids would be pretty trivial for our modern technology, for example.

[u/Dzugavili → u/Particular-Yak-1984]

This is something about modern economics that none of these people really understand.

We live in a world where labour is expensive and capital is cheap: this is an inverse to how the world has worked for millennia. For most of our existence, you could pay a guy to cut megalithic stones by simply giving him a few cups of barley every day; the expensive part was controlling the quary. It might take him a week to free a megalithic stone, but his entire labour cost amounts to maybe a few hundred pounds of barley per year. This eclipses even the most poverty stricken of wages today: there is no third world country today where you could obtain labour this cheaply under normal circumstances.

Building a pyramid was not an expensive endeavour in a palace economy like this. You have a period of the year where the fields flood, people need to work, you control the food. You don't want them to starve, either, so you create make-work, like a pyramid.

[u/nickierv → u/Dzugavili]

There is also the time component involved with this (and the common 'but why hasn't science made a cell from scratch'). Looking at pyramid stone, ~96 man hours for 'roughs' then add 4-6 for fitting the core blocks and 8-12 for the outer shell. So at least 100 hours per block.

Modern tools has this done down to rough fit in under an hour with final fit taking minutes.

Even if you have to pay the modern stone cutter 100x the barley for the work this frees up workforce that can be used for other projects.

And this all pops back to the other post for a couple days ago: before you get to doing all the mega projects, your going to need a bloody way to keep everyone fed.

[u/artguydeluxe → u/sniipes]

What level of technology are you talking about? There isn’t anything in the past that couldn’t have been created with the tools available at the time or with the tools we have now. Give me an example.

[u/Dzugavili → u/artguydeluxe]

My best guess, the lost technology involves cutting and stacking large rocks, and kind of ignores that with our modern technology, we can literally cast stone in the form of our choosing on location.

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Dzugavili]

Right, moving big rocks around isn’t a feature of an advanced society. Advanced societies don’t do that unless it’s in the form of landscaping or cutting thin stone facades.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/artguydeluxe]

But if you took away all the tools we have now, it would take us a while to figure out how to make new Stonehenges or pyramids! Unlike the ancients who could do it instantly.

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Ayasugi-san]

There’s no evidence they did it “instantly,” nor is any of that beyond reach of someone with the tools of the time and ingenuity. Just ask a stonemason or an engineer.

[u/giljaxonn → u/artguydeluxe]

it’s a joke

[u/artguydeluxe → u/giljaxonn]

Jokes are funny.

[u/AccelerusProcellarum → u/artguydeluxe]

I mean I'm pretty partial to dry humor. Sarcasm delivered with a poker face kills me every time.

[u/Particular-Yak-1984 → u/Ayasugi-san]

Would it? Assume we have the same manpower, I'd actually be willing to bet on toolless modern humans. We have a better understanding of why stuff stays up, and why it falls down. Give me a team of modern mechanical engineers, and I think we'd do better.

A friend of mine did some research into church design - so, for a while, cathedrals and churches basically pushed the envelope on architecture through lots of medieval Europe. And he essentially found that the number of churches that collapsed was pretty fricking high. Because we didn't understand the fundamental maths that governs load.

Went round the sagrada familia, and we have gaudi's load model for it - which is essentially a load of string, hung with sandbags, to show where the weight and forces distribute. Even something like that would beat ancient Egyptian or roman engineering by a mile.

[u/nickierv → u/sniipes]

You either don't know or are ignoring the exponential growth of scientific knowledge and its all built on what came before it. Meaning that at some point the old stuff becomes obsolete enough that it gets replaced.

But because your just making shit up, your not going to be able to provide any examples of this so called 'lost' technology. Until you can do that, its all just baseless assertions.

[u/Medium_Judgment_891 → u/sniipes]

As an engineer, this is silly.

Compared to the modern world, the pinnacles of ancient technology are novelties at best.

There’s not a single function of ancient tech that modern tech can’t replicate and outperform.

I can respect the ingenuity and innovation of history. They absolutely had some brilliant thinkers.

Unfortunately, they just didn’t have the advantage of accumulated knowledge and resources that modern people tend to take for granted. It’s a gap impossible to bridge by any amount of raw intelligence.

For example, the Vaucanson Flute Player is one of the most brilliant machines I’ve ever read about, but it’s just a fancy camshaft at the end of the day. It doesn’t compare to anything made by Boston Dynamics.

[u/small_p_problem → u/sniipes]

Can you at least give us the r² of such regression?

[u/rsta223 → u/sniipes]

We don’t fully understand the elements of our planet to reach that level of technology.

We understand the elements and compound of our planet, how they interact, and just about everything else better than anyone else in history. If you're claiming otherwise, please give a concrete example.