Ancient Unusual Construction Technologies Used

We will discuss briefly a few subtopics below (3 minutes read):

• Why build?
• Technologies and their goals
• Surprises of some observed ancient architectural artifacts
• References

Why build?

From ancient times till nowadays people constructed architectural buildings for various purposes:

• Mainly for protection (basic shelter or sophisticated defensive systems): to be protected from weather, like wind, rain/snow, temperatures, from animals, enemies.
• To take care of Infrastructure and Utilities: Structures like Roman aqueducts, bridges, and roads were vital for transport and water management, facilitating the growth of cities and empires. Modern highways and bridges, train stations and airports, water distributing systems, and so on are critical to the infrastructure, ensuring efficient transportation, communication, and utility distribution.
• Cultural Expression and Preservation: Temples, statues, tombs, etc. were created to reflect the culture, beliefs, and achievements of civilizations. Modern architecture, such as museums, theaters, and memorials, continues to reflect cultural identity, and preserve history.
• Power, Prestige, and Authority: monuments like the Great Wall of China, palaces, and fortresses were built to demonstrate the power and authority of rulers. Grand architecture showcased wealth and control. Modern skyscrapers, governmental buildings (e.g., the U.S. Capitol, parliament buildings), and luxurious homes serve as symbols of power and economic dominance.
• To reflect Innovation and Technological Progress: specific high-tech items, like arch and dome, reflect advances in engineering and construction techniques, improving the scale and complexity of buildings. Modern achievements, like Smart buildings, eco-friendly architecture, and skyscrapers reflect state-of-the-art technology and sustainable solutions in construction.
• And some others: Religious and Spiritual Purposes, Community and Social Interaction, Economic Activity, etc.

Technologies and their goals

For humans, building architectural structures requires certain techniques and technologies to be involved.

• Technique, simplified, is a procedure, purposeful activity that allows us to accomplish a task in a skillful efficient way. Efficiency, for example, could be measured by time and efforts spent on constructing certain buildings. Technology term came during industrial revolution and the era of manufacturing, usually refers to use of science and industrial tools; it includes technical methods and techniques in the first place, as well as skills, procedures, organization (industrial management), tools, raw materials and resources to produce desired products (architectural buildings for our topic). And of course, technology improved efficiency even better. Imagine how long it could take to build a home with just hands, without any tools, techniques, or modern technologies.
• We all know Science and Technology live side by side. What do they both have in common? They need to answer old philosophical questions (raised even by Aristotle more than 2300 years ago): "What is it? What is it made of? Who or what made it? And what is its purpose?"
• What makes them critically different – is purpose.

  Science is the field of human activity, aimed to form and systematize knowledge about reality. But results of scientific research may be unpredictable and unexpected; or even without clearly seen practical final goal from the beginning. For example, "Dalton's atomic theory" was made accidentally, there were no plans to discover it. At the beginning they could not have foreseen the outcome of their research.

  "The technologist, the inventor, on the other hand, almost always works towards a foreseen objective. It would be difficult to imagine how an engineer setting out to design a new type of bridge or build revolutionary new heat engine could end up producing a new type of ship, or freezer". "Technology is purposive, and criterion for this purpose is simple, does it work" as preliminarily planned or intended? Technological "working hypothesis need not be 'correct', it is only required to be practical".

• With focus on architecture - people, technologists (architects, civil engineers, etc.), and the whole society – they all invest a lot of time, resources and efforts to achieve specific goals, purpose of constructing architectural buildings. We need to clarify and stress out to ourselves: even if we have technological advancements and can construct certain buildings within reasonable time of months or a few years – it is a very serious commitment to achieve discussed above goals (to handle Protection, Infrastructure and Utilities, Cultural Expression and Preservation, and so on).

Surprises of some observed ancient architectural artifacts

• Unknown reasons for building. While we explicitly mentioned a few goals/reasons for constructing architectural buildings above, based on our best understanding of architecture these days, historical archaeological artifacts, which were built hundreds, thousands of years back observed to be too complex, meaning that even if we assume they would be built using modern technology, it would still take a lot of time and efforts.

  

  And in the meantime, the purpose of certain buildings is not identified. For example, ancient people build walls of exceptionally high quality around mountain rock, leaving nearly no space for anything else inside such buildings. Then question it: why to spend a lot of time and resources to build something, that you don't plan to use as per modern goals of architecture (e.g. for living, or storing anything there)?

• Reverse evolution. For every live creature certain technics (namely biological built-in instincts) used as the tactics of living. The most important purpose for such technics is to survive. They are genetically come from parents to offspring, they are pre-determined and not alterable.

  On top of such genetic techniques, people invented hand-made human techniques. The unique fact about human invented techniques, on the contrary to biological instincts, that it is independent of the life of the human genus. Technics in man's life are conscious, alterable, personal, inventive. They are learned and could be improved. Man has become the creator of his tactics of living."

  Science (History and Archeology) consider human evolution as a linear one: since the early hand-made techniques invented long time ago, such technics and later added technologies have been only evolving, from simple to more complex, and not the other direction.

  See how lifting weights increased over the time. Ancient Greeks in the 6th century BC used simple devices to lift stones weighing up to 0.3 tons using human or animal power. Over time, crane technology evolved, with the Romans eventually building treadwheel-powered cranes capable of lifting up to 6 tons during large construction projects like temples and aqueducts. This laid the groundwork for modern crane technology. The very 1^st industrial crane powered by a steam engine was designed and built by the Scottish engineer William George Armstrong in 1838 and could lift up to 5 tons.

  "Langer Heinrich", completed in 1915 in Germany as the largest floating crane in the world that time, with capability of lifting 250 tons, which means such weights are not supposed to be lifted before 1915. In 2014 "Honghai Crane" was built in China, which can lift incredible 22 thousand metric tons for a height of 200 feet (65 meters), and no one can lift such weights before 2014.

  In the meantime, we can observe stones up to 120 tons weight in Sacsayhuaman archeological site, and official Science tells us that it was build by Incas in 15^th century. Or stones of Jupiter temple and stones in its quarry with weight up to 1200 tons, which official science tells us were lifted by ancient Romans more than 2000 years back. See picture with such a stone seen in newspaper dated 1900, way before "Langer Heinrich" crane was built.

• Facts of unknown tools use.

  Also, it's important to pay attention that any technological tool leaves evidence of its work on the material. Does not matter, is it kitchen knife cutting soft butter, manual hammer handling a stone, or mechanical saw with diamond edge cutting a stone. There is certain evidence of working with tools still can be observed on archaeological artifacts (with correction to erosion over the years, depending on how material was preserved, e.g, above or under the soil).Some traces look like traces from mechanical tools use, while archaeological sites were built way before industrial revolution. And what is more intriguing, sometimes traces of tools work cannot be compared with any known up-to-date tools and technologies used! Meaning that highly likely we do not have similar technologies nowadays, which were, however, available a long time ago.

• Evidence is critically important for science. And observed facts with traces of tools work tell us a lot. Keep in mind: if facts contradict scientific hypotheses (e.g., about linear historical evolution), such hypotheses need to be thrown away as rejected.

We will discuss traces of tools work in more detailed description of different architectural technologies observed, along with suggestions, why we consider such evidence to be too advanced even nowadays. We put certain naming conventions for such technologies used. And for lots of archaeological artifacts on our website we will put one or more tags (corresponding to such technologies):