I have recently made some trips out to some of the Indian mounds in Indiana and Ohio and was just awestruck at the scope of these complexes and mounds. I studied this stuff (I was 3 years into a degree in Anthropology) in school for 3 years before switching to computer science and that was nothing to seeing these things in person. Keeping in mind that they only had wood and stone tools (no metallurgical technology) and no horses, they build some really complex structures with pretty simple tools. The Seip Mound near Chillicothe, OH is about 50-60 ft tall. One of the more famous Hopewell artifacts, a clawed hand made from mica (that came from West Virginia) was excavated out of this mound. It is just amazing what people can do even with very primitive technologies. In Anderson, IN at Mounds State Park, they have a mound complex from the Adena culture (slight older and concurrent with the Hopewell) that accurately measures the solstices and equinoxes as well as the rise of a star (I forget the name offhand). For primitives, they were pretty advanced. Fort Ancient in Oregonia, OH is an 18,000 square foot complex with 3 1/2 miles of earthen wall surrounding it...some of which is still 20 ft tall. These mounds were something like 10-20 thousand years old, so I can just image what they looked like when they were being maintained. That would have been a truly impressive sight.
-----Original Message----- From: Larry C. Lyons [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 10:09 PM To: cf-community Subject: Re: 5000 year old wooden door found buried in Zurich Sorry about that, I didn't see the original reference. That said, neolithic people of that time period have been well studied. Also look a the equivalent of those groups now. Primitive does not mean simple, or stupid. Only the level of technology is different. That said, given the way it was put together, its no wonder they were among the first metal users in Europe. You'd need good tools to work wood that way. Either that or they didn't mind waiting a couple of weeks for a really nicely worked door. On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 10:03 PM, Larry C. Lyons <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Vivec <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I wonder what happened? > > Someone shut it? > > A link would help. > >> >> It seems that there were amazing architectural and engineering >> abilities available from ancient times. >> >> How did we lose it? >> >> Is it because of the Dark Ages and the rise of Christianity, book >> burning, hoarding of information by the church etc.? >> >> How did we lose so much knowledge? >> >> Why didn't something like the plans and methods for making this door >> survive down through the ages (I'm sure it wasn't unique) ? >> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:329686 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
