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Comment by robinsoh | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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.

> 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.

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