Pre-Biblical Archaeology

Post by **Minimalist** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 11:15 am

....and, of course, you need copper and tin to make bronze.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 11:20 am

Now I am probably wrong here, but I don't know of bronze use in pre-Columbian America.

Post by **Minimalist** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 11:26 am

Exactly.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-74054

While they had some skill in the use of copper and tin there is no mention of combining them into bronze.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 11:30 am

Thanks. Any idea as to the earliest date of copper use in S. America? Anybody?

Frank Harrist · Post by **Frank Harrist** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 2:09 pm

Beagle wrote:Thanks. Any idea as to the earliest date of copper use in S. America? Anybody?

The Inka used copper to make their gold stronger, so they did know something about alloys. As far as I know, no tin has ever been found.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 3:34 pm

Thanks Frank.

stan · Post by **stan** » Mon Jun 19, 2006 8:10 pm

Are you guys fishing for the source of metal tools used to carve those big rocks?
Surely someone has studied this in the field by close examnation of the stones. There would be chisel marks, or marks of cutting or grinding. And there would be small remnants of the material of which the
"chisel" was made.
I would think that, since a lot of them are still in situ, their
sides of contact would still be intact..but how to move them to check there?

So maybe there are three steps to consider:
1. Quarrying
2. Moving
3. Shaping and fitting

Seems like these are all still mysteries!!

Post by **Minimalist** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 12:16 am

Add in "4. Lifting."

The problems of moving a stone are multiplied when you have to bring it uphill. Or, downhill, if the truth be known as gravity works both ways.

stan · Post by **stan** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 5:24 am

Right!

4. Lifting

By the way,notice that one of Pippin's pictures on the "Glacier-Stonehenge" thread shows one way of doing that....Could they have done something like that In Tihuanaco? I suppose they had some big trees to make derricks or cranes out of.

Post by **Minimalist** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:33 am

I suppose but it suggests an engineering knowledge that no one credits primitive people with possessing. The stones at Stonehenge are relatively small... As noted above, just because you can move a one ton stones with ropes and sleds does not mean you can move a 50 ton stone in the same way.

stan · Post by **stan** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 12:21 pm

Mini, after my post above, I realized I made an erroneous assumption, which I was afraid you would catch.
BUt you didn't!

Perhaps you were being kind.

That was the assumption that there were big trees near Tihuanaco!
I was thinking "rain forest." BUt I think that, like much of Peru, that area is high and arid...
Don't know about ancient times, though.

suppose but it suggests an engineering knowledge that no one credits primitive people with possessing.

I credit them with being able to do it, but i don't credit us with being able to understand how.

Post by **Minimalist** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 2:27 pm

No, no, that wasn't it, Stan. First off, if Posnansky is right and Tiahuanaco dates from 15,000 BC there could well have been big trees in the area. The fact that the Bolivian Altiplano is too arid now to support tree growth seems irrelevant.

In any case, I don't know that one could lift a 100-150 ton stone with a wooden crane and ropes. On the face of it it seems as useful as a ceramic hammer!

stan · Post by **stan** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 7:46 am

The problems of moving a stone are multiplied when you have to bring it uphill. Or, downhill, if the truth be known as gravity works both ways.

A friend of mine has a house on a hillside near Asheville. Several years ago we were collecting rocks for his gardens from local streams, and we spotted a nice big one near the road, about the size of a bathtub.
A few weeks later he hired a guy with a winch and a truck to bring it to his house and selected a place for it. The truck carefully backed to the spot and somehow proceeded to drop it in place...but it kept rolling down the hill, smashed through a few things, and finally stopped...where it sits to this day.

Post by **Minimalist** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 10:34 am

LOL.

You know, Stan, I was thinking about your wooden crane idea. Assuming that it worked, in the sense that it could support a huge stone in the air, it is still an unpowered device which means that guys pulling on ropes have to do the lifting. Further, everytime you wanted to move a stone you would have to re-position the crane which does not seem like a great time saver.

I suppose, as in this medieval trebuchet, a counterweight could have been used....

but this is strictly medieval technology. Even Roman seige artillery was powered by twisted ropes...not counterweights.

stan · Post by **stan** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 6:04 pm

Minimalist:

That's a cool trebuchet.

If not cranes, how about levers? Bunches of levers. You can get alot of power that way, if you have long enough and strong enough ones, and enough counterweights (personnel?), as you suggest.
But I'm sure there are limits.

I remember on the PBS show about the obelisk a few months ago, a painting in a tomb was found that showed a very long ship that was said to be capable of carrying an obelisk along the Nile. I'm not sure, but I think the painting depicted some kind of rock or rocks in the boat.

I can hardly remember which thread this is, since the Giza one is converging with the Stonehenge/Glacier one.

Here are a couple of points:
The recent book Seahenge, by Francis Pryor, points out that Salisbury plain is covered with hundreds of barrows, small henges, and the like. I'm fuzzy on the dates, but It appears that this site (although flat, as somebody said, ) was a sacred site to a lot of people over a long period of time.
He also pointed out the evidence for roads in Bronze age England.
I think you alluded to the difficulty of moving the bluestones overland without roads....but perhaps there were roads.
The roads in the book were mostly cattle lanes, but they were made by
ditching both sides so that the surface would get dry and hard.

The digging of ditches brings up the matter of labor. Apparently there were a lot of henges and circular enclosures there. Some of these ditches are very large and deep...20-30 feet deep and up to 150 feet in diameter. THese required a lot of guys to dig. The author thinks they gathered annually to celebrate the annual cycle and work together on them.

Another interesting thing about the Seahenge itself was that when they pulled that 3000 or so year-old oak stump out of the mud, the
"rope" that was used to lower it into place was still intact, looped around it. The rope was braided honeysuckle vine. Today we'd use a steel cable.

This is the big one, "Woodhenge" near Stonehenge, I think.

The one below is "Sea Henge," which is rather small.

(Please forgive my rambles.)