Unrelated, but is it just not possible any more for anybody to write a title for an article that doesn't sound like it was composed by a click-bait robot?
No, because they don't get read, they don't reach the front page, they don't get the engagement boost from people complaining about it and you would never see it.
Totally agree, I hate reading these titles. To the credit of the writer though, we get the answer fairly soon and the article isn't 24 paragraphs deep.
> that's where building materials for the site—large amounts of already fractured rock—were readily available [two paragraphs of somewhat supporting evidence]
Maybe we can dump several thousand tons of nuclear waste into a fault:
"In June 2012 S. David Freeman, the former head of the Southern California Public Power Authority and "a longtime anti-nuclear voice",[30] described San Onofre and Diablo Canyon as "disasters waiting to happen: aging, unreliable reactors sitting near earthquake fault zones on the fragile Pacific Coast, with millions of Californians living nearby".
The San Onofre plant used seawater for cooling, like some other seaside facilities in Southern California, lacking the large cooling towers typically associated with nuclear generating stations. Limited available land next to SONGS would likely have required towers to be built on the opposite side of Interstate 5.[32]
More than 4,000 tons of radioactive waste are stored at San Onofre."
Probably in many places along the Alpine Himalayan mountain range, including Algerie, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, among others. These mountainous areas are usually heavily fractured by faults and the resulting rock blocks have been used for millennia to build walls. It's rather hard to say if rock availability is the only reason that drove people to build in a given place: usually major faults zones are eroded by rivers and form valleys. this places are preferable building sites because of water availability, easiness of transportation along the river, etc. (sorry for my English)
In case you missed it, the article says the below:
Further evidence that the site selection for Machu Picchu may not have been an accident: Similar analyses reveal other ancient Incan sites, including Ollantaytambo, Pisac, and Cusco were also built at the intersections of fault zones.
I've been to all those places. They're in the same valley, so it's no surprise they're all built on the (same) intersection of fault zones and use similar architecture.
The construction of the buildings, you know, jigsaw pieces of rock, made perfect sense when I flashed on it the other day.
I've lived in the Andes. The worst earthquakes. A building made of tesselated bricks would not survive, whereas a building made of jigsaw rocks held together by gravity will allow the earthquake to lift its rocks, but they will fall into place in the exact same way they were when the earthquake's over.
Words don't quite do their stonework justice. Plenty of old-world architecture is made of whatever weirdly-shaped rocks they had lying around, but they use mortar to hold them together. The Incan mortar-less stone puzzle look is extremely cool: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mur_Inca_D%C3%A9cemb...
"Usually the walls of Incan buildings were slightly inclined inside and the corners were rounded. This, in combination with masonry thoroughness, led Incan buildings to have a peerless seismic resistance thanks to high static and dynamic steadiness, absence of resonant frequencies and stress concentration points. During an earthquake with a small or moderate magnitude, masonry was stable, and during a strong earthquake stone blocks were “ dancing ” near their normal positions and lay down exactly in right order after an earthquake."
Not to my knowledge. Almost all European stone walls all use mortar. Drystan is more like piling rocks together. They aren't shaped.
The Inca (or possibly their predecessor civilization) techniques at Sacsayhuaman and Machu Picchu are far more advanced. It is still unclear exactly how they achieved those structures. We're talking about 140 tonne rocks being put together to form those structures and assembled without mortar in such a way that one can't slip a piece of paper in between rocks.
When the Conquistadors encountered the structures, they had no idea how they were being made or put together. They pulled them apart and used the pulled apart chunks with mortar to build cathedrals that mostly fell apart every time there was a tectonic movement.
It breaks my heart that we don't know how to build such structures to this day. We use cement concrete which is a massive source of CO2 production. If we could have somehow preserved the knowledge of how those structures were built instead of burning their books-khippus, and killing their stone masons and scientists, we could have had a very different modern world today.
Darn, you have to love arches in buildings - do seem to stand the test of times well. Also wondering if that is a lime render being used and if that is useful in dispersing resonance in the structure - I'm thinking yes.
I was really confused the oldest building in California was a monastery from 1181. Apparently it was built in Spain in the middle ages, but in 1931 was purchased by an American billionaire and shipped to California!
Resonance would be a key factor as well, various sized rocks all at irregular angles would help greatly to prevent any overall resonance shaking and amplifying across the structure.
Now in contrast to standard sized bricks and regimental formations - like a row of pitchforks just awaiting the right note in many ways.
Then buildings of old had less engineering and material science to lean onto. That combined with a shift of building things to last forever towards a lifetime and even that lifetime gets shorter. We see things built with just enough materials to do the job and know more with a life of 100 years at best in so many cases (often half that with some housing).
Sadly it gets down to the numbers and odds as well - if there is say 1 in 100 years chance of a quake that would be over 6 on the scale and 1 in 500 of a 7 and the cost to build is 1m for upto level 5 survivability and 5 million for level 6 and 50m for level 7. You see how the insurance can push it towards going for the cheaper option on the bases that if you went for a level 5 - you could rebuild it 5 times in that 100 years. So money does play a huge part as always.
I do wonder, what would it cost today to build Machu Picchu as it is - a huge amount and can bet the modern approach would involve concrete and reinforced steel. Just can't beat natural stone still in many ways.
I am Peruvian. I wonder if the Incas built there buildings with irregular rocks only to prevent resonance or because it was too difficult to carve rocks of the same size...
This is not a entirely valid assumption. It has not been proven that these civilizations only had stone tools. Attempting to portray them as primitive people with only stone tools is highly reductive given the level of sophistication of the structures they managed to create. They may have had sophisticated chemical processes to shape and form rock structures. A simple proof is just by looking at these structures and seeing that even today in 2021, we are unable to form equivalent structures ourselves using modern cranes and rock shaping tools. It is terrible that the knowledge was destroyed by burning their books-khippus and extinguishing their stone masons, technicians and scientists.
> It has not been proven that these civilizations only had stone tools
It hasn't been proven that space aliens didn't create the masonry walls, either. (Yes, I've seen TV shows arguing that case.)
But archaeologists have shown that rocks can be shaped accurately in the manner of those walls by just banging them together. There is also the evidence of partially shaped rocks left behind.
There is no evidence of any other method.
I've been to Chichén-Itzá and have looked at the structures from an engineer's point of view, as I am a mechanical engineer. They are solidly built, massive, and well built. The scale is impressive. Very impressive. But the sophistication does not extend past the corbelled vault. They did not use an arch or a dome.
The Mayan script has been shown to be phonetic, so they certainly had a solid writing system. But, sadly, we know very little about what they wrote about, since the Spanish burned their books.
> It hasn't been proven that space aliens didn't create the masonry walls
There's no need to be disrespectful and attempt to portray my position as if it is something ridiculous and requires belief in space aliens. As I said, I think what was built was very sophisticated, and I don't find the claim that it was built just by "banging rocks together" to be satisfactory especially since no one has been able to reproduce an equivalent structure using this method.
> I never called them primitive.
How would you interpret and contextualize your remark "your only tools were other rocks"? To me, it seems like you're trying to insinuate and put in the mind of the reader exactly that you believe that they were primitive and lacked sophisticated tools.
> archaeologists have shown that rocks can be shaped accurately in the manner of those walls by just banging them together.
I have not seen such a conclusive proof. I'd like to see this proven by building an equivalent structure to Sacsayhuaman, at least perhaps even a corner. That alone would be impressive.
Yeah there is no simple answer for some of the monoliths. I have often wondered if they had a technique perhaps using vibrational energy to cut the rocks. Maybe they managed to find a vibrational frequency maybe by rubbing the rock with their stone tools in a certain way, or with water in between that would cut the rocks with ease.
I also saw a show once that said that in one of the Mexican sites they found an underground canal and a pool with mercury. Don't know if they somehow used that to cut their rocis.
Wouldn't it be easier to carve a rock to a standard shape than to fit one particular hole? As far as alternative explanations, maybe they did it because it's more material-efficient. I could see you having to remove a lot of material to turn a random lump into bricks. And small rocks may not give you even a single one.
I wonder what other cases have let humanity to do the absolutely wrong choice, because it was the easiest to way forward... It makes me think about evolution.
Mexico City built a hard way, searching for an eagle eating a snake on top of a rock. They found it on a lake bed. As a result, they built on some pretty soft sinking layers. Favorite city though, lived there last month and going to Machu Picchu again this weekend.
It didn't start bad. It used to be the highest point, and it didn't flood! Unfortunately the city grew. Eventually flood mitigations were added, this made the sinking worse.
New Orleans is a major port (coastal!) city that is largely below sea level, requiring a complex system of levees and pumps to avoid being under water.
52 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 56.8 ms ] threadyou're welcome
"In June 2012 S. David Freeman, the former head of the Southern California Public Power Authority and "a longtime anti-nuclear voice",[30] described San Onofre and Diablo Canyon as "disasters waiting to happen: aging, unreliable reactors sitting near earthquake fault zones on the fragile Pacific Coast, with millions of Californians living nearby".
The San Onofre plant used seawater for cooling, like some other seaside facilities in Southern California, lacking the large cooling towers typically associated with nuclear generating stations. Limited available land next to SONGS would likely have required towers to be built on the opposite side of Interstate 5.[32]
More than 4,000 tons of radioactive waste are stored at San Onofre."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...
Further evidence that the site selection for Machu Picchu may not have been an accident: Similar analyses reveal other ancient Incan sites, including Ollantaytambo, Pisac, and Cusco were also built at the intersections of fault zones.
I've lived in the Andes. The worst earthquakes. A building made of tesselated bricks would not survive, whereas a building made of jigsaw rocks held together by gravity will allow the earthquake to lift its rocks, but they will fall into place in the exact same way they were when the earthquake's over.
"Usually the walls of Incan buildings were slightly inclined inside and the corners were rounded. This, in combination with masonry thoroughness, led Incan buildings to have a peerless seismic resistance thanks to high static and dynamic steadiness, absence of resonant frequencies and stress concentration points. During an earthquake with a small or moderate magnitude, masonry was stable, and during a strong earthquake stone blocks were “ dancing ” near their normal positions and lay down exactly in right order after an earthquake."
The Inca (or possibly their predecessor civilization) techniques at Sacsayhuaman and Machu Picchu are far more advanced. It is still unclear exactly how they achieved those structures. We're talking about 140 tonne rocks being put together to form those structures and assembled without mortar in such a way that one can't slip a piece of paper in between rocks.
When the Conquistadors encountered the structures, they had no idea how they were being made or put together. They pulled them apart and used the pulled apart chunks with mortar to build cathedrals that mostly fell apart every time there was a tectonic movement.
It breaks my heart that we don't know how to build such structures to this day. We use cement concrete which is a massive source of CO2 production. If we could have somehow preserved the knowledge of how those structures were built instead of burning their books-khippus, and killing their stone masons and scientists, we could have had a very different modern world today.
Or have we surpassed and come up with better models?
Darn, you have to love arches in buildings - do seem to stand the test of times well. Also wondering if that is a lime render being used and if that is useful in dispersing resonance in the structure - I'm thinking yes.
Now in contrast to standard sized bricks and regimental formations - like a row of pitchforks just awaiting the right note in many ways.
Then buildings of old had less engineering and material science to lean onto. That combined with a shift of building things to last forever towards a lifetime and even that lifetime gets shorter. We see things built with just enough materials to do the job and know more with a life of 100 years at best in so many cases (often half that with some housing).
Sadly it gets down to the numbers and odds as well - if there is say 1 in 100 years chance of a quake that would be over 6 on the scale and 1 in 500 of a 7 and the cost to build is 1m for upto level 5 survivability and 5 million for level 6 and 50m for level 7. You see how the insurance can push it towards going for the cheaper option on the bases that if you went for a level 5 - you could rebuild it 5 times in that 100 years. So money does play a huge part as always.
I do wonder, what would it cost today to build Machu Picchu as it is - a huge amount and can bet the modern approach would involve concrete and reinforced steel. Just can't beat natural stone still in many ways.
The by far most likely explanation. Especially if your only tools were other rocks.
This is not a entirely valid assumption. It has not been proven that these civilizations only had stone tools. Attempting to portray them as primitive people with only stone tools is highly reductive given the level of sophistication of the structures they managed to create. They may have had sophisticated chemical processes to shape and form rock structures. A simple proof is just by looking at these structures and seeing that even today in 2021, we are unable to form equivalent structures ourselves using modern cranes and rock shaping tools. It is terrible that the knowledge was destroyed by burning their books-khippus and extinguishing their stone masons, technicians and scientists.
It hasn't been proven that space aliens didn't create the masonry walls, either. (Yes, I've seen TV shows arguing that case.)
But archaeologists have shown that rocks can be shaped accurately in the manner of those walls by just banging them together. There is also the evidence of partially shaped rocks left behind.
There is no evidence of any other method.
I've been to Chichén-Itzá and have looked at the structures from an engineer's point of view, as I am a mechanical engineer. They are solidly built, massive, and well built. The scale is impressive. Very impressive. But the sophistication does not extend past the corbelled vault. They did not use an arch or a dome.
https://www.maya-archaeology.org/pre-Columbian_Mayan_temples...
The Mayan script has been shown to be phonetic, so they certainly had a solid writing system. But, sadly, we know very little about what they wrote about, since the Spanish burned their books.
I never called them primitive.
There's no need to be disrespectful and attempt to portray my position as if it is something ridiculous and requires belief in space aliens. As I said, I think what was built was very sophisticated, and I don't find the claim that it was built just by "banging rocks together" to be satisfactory especially since no one has been able to reproduce an equivalent structure using this method.
> I never called them primitive.
How would you interpret and contextualize your remark "your only tools were other rocks"? To me, it seems like you're trying to insinuate and put in the mind of the reader exactly that you believe that they were primitive and lacked sophisticated tools.
> archaeologists have shown that rocks can be shaped accurately in the manner of those walls by just banging them together.
I have not seen such a conclusive proof. I'd like to see this proven by building an equivalent structure to Sacsayhuaman, at least perhaps even a corner. That alone would be impressive.
I also saw a show once that said that in one of the Mexican sites they found an underground canal and a pool with mercury. Don't know if they somehow used that to cut their rocis.
Presumably you go find the closest matching rock you already have and then work from that.
https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2019AM/webprogram/Paper330598.htm...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w82CqjaDKmA
First off, where was Old Orlean? And I take it... a sinking problem similar to Venezia?
Season 11, Episode 12, (2020-05-25) http://www.ufrgs.br/frontdaciencia/
Fronteiras da Ciência is a podcast that I can't recommend highly enough. In-depth science interviews that don't dumb it down or stray off topic.