The Blocks Of Sacsayhuaman

13 Replies to “The Blocks Of Sacsayhuaman”

1. Something we tend not to consider when boggling “OMG how could they have ever done such a thing, it would have taken FOREVAR”

   Yes. Most of these megalithic structures took generations to build or reach the form we see today, and these civilizations were okay with that. Our dating techniques can’t narrow the age down to less than a thousand years or so and that’s ample time for a civilization to build something in a way that seems very odd to our modern sensibilities.

   Ditto the “it’s just too perfect”. We used to think that about Stonehenge – until we found the botched stones buried some ways away. When you’ve got generations you can take the time to keep at it until you get it right.

2. This never gets old for me. I’ve had 40 plus years in the building trades with the exception of the electrical and plumbing end and all I can say is that this is simply mind blowing.
   Slaves with stone hammers and lots of time? Absurd.

3. This is old. About 11,000 -16,000 years old.

   The world’s first village ever: Karahan Tepe

   Amazingly, after it was built and inhabited for a while, it was all buried and covered over until it was recently discovered.

4. Yeah, the aliens came, put some rocks very neatly one on top of another.
   Then they went off, got some popcorn and beverage sat back and watched what will the carbon units do.
   If you observe closely, you can even get a glimpse of them.
   Isn’t that cool?
   Or what?

5. These are not as hard to carve as you might think and don’t take as long as you might think. The Greeks and Romans, Egyptians and Persians and others carved massive objects from solid rock. So why not the Incans, the aztecs, the Olmecs and the many other American native peoples. Yes they are beautiful but it’s not a big deal.

   1. No big deal at all. I routinely transport, shape and set megalithic blocks by hand. Me and my bud, Tom, do it all the time!
      Pssst….wanna buy a bridge….cheap?

6. I couldnt get past the narration. I couldn’t decide if the voice was boringly annoying or annoyingly boring.

   1. Sounds like the Monty Python accountant sketch.

   2. This seems to be a trend in narration nowadays, where your voice, instead of being monotonal, is bitonal, going up and down between the two. Very annoying. But not annoying enough to keep me awake. The stuff he wanted to try and get across, I think could have been done in 4 minutes and he could have provided links to the supporting materials.

   3. The ‘reverse valley girl’.

7. I worked alone a lot out in the field.
   After a while you get better at using your brain to figure out how to do stuff instead of asking for help.
   We can become too dependent on tools.

   I also worked with a one armed welder who was simply amazing in what he could do with one arm and his brain.
   He lost his arm when he was about two so he had all his life to figure it out.

   Here’s a good example of one guy doing the impossible and raising huge blocks by himself.

   https://youtu.be/-K7q20VzwVs

   How did the Easter Island statues get to their spots?
   Legend says that they walked.

   https://youtu.be/YpNuh-J5IgE

8. I watched the whole video so I probably shouldn’t comment 🙂

   This is definitely constructed from natural rocks. The difference in composition between the rocks in the quarry and the wall is easily explained as sedimentary composition changes rapidly with depth below sea level. The stones used to construct the wall are probably now mostly missing from the quarry (hint: they are in the wall).

   Plus imagine all the firewood needed to fire that much limestone. It would be ten times easier to carve the stones than to grind them down, form them, and fire them. Plus where are the air bubbles? Aren’t man-made lime products quite porous (on a micron scale)?

   My only quibble (aside from the narration) was the use of GPR (ground penetrating radar) to analyze the composition of the base rocks. I don’t see this as being possible (for a hundred reasons including its limited resolution (cm and not microns), dependence of GPR on rock conductivity and not composition, the fact that GPR transmitters and receivers are not designed to be placed against objects as much as dragged along surfaces, etc etc). You would need an x-ray machine or something similar to see inside the base rocks, or drill a core right through).

   But I wish the people who built those walls were still around. We could use their craftsmanship.

9. I am a geologist and this Youtube guy is full of it.
   He doesn’t “like the look” of the limestone blocks? Limestone doesn’t have “a look”.
   Limestone comes in all colors and a huge amount of differing textures. Everything from light chalk to dense marble to fine stalactites. All are types of limestone.

   Limestone disintegrates in the presence of acid. This can be a slow process, like smog and acid rain eating away at European buildings for centuries. It can also be rather fast. Mix a bunch of citrus fruit pulp with water and sand (ie. quartz, much harder than limestone), place between building blocks (that have been carved roughly into final shape), and rub together. It would take a large amount of laborers but would be a relatively fast way of producing well-fitting joints.

   Any hobbyist who tumbles small rocks in grit understands this principle.
   Ancient societies built monumental things on a completely different time-scale (decades, centuries) than we can fathom today.