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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

I’ve known a few people like that, and it had a darker undercurrent: they didn’t disbelieve that, say, the Greek or Roman monuments were built by those civilizations because they viewed those as predecessors of their own, but they considered the pacific or Central/South American cultures inferior and didn’t want to believe they were capable of great engineering.

Beyond the strong whiff of racism, I think there was also this idea that civilization went on a single path (grain, the wheel and domesticated horses/oxen/mules, bronze, iron, guns, steam, etc.) and so anyone which didn’t follow that path was basically developmentally challenged. This definitely did not consider the possibility that not every region had the prerequisites to follow the same path.

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I've heard this claim many times, and yet I remember VD books (and similar ones like Kolosimo's) discussing Prehistoric Europe including cave art and megaliths. The Ancient Aliens TV series does have episodes on Ireland, the Norse and Graeco-Roman mythology.

Even today, these types bring up Baalbek's massive triliths on a regular basis, and state they could not have been built by such classical civilisations.

There you go trying use logic on racism. Of course it's not going to work.

The question isn't whether the ancient aliens framework logically supports racism, since it's false anyway and racists don't care about logic (otherwise etc etc). The question for racists is which frameworks most conveniently provide tidbits for them to distort for their own purposes. No logic, pure association and confirmation bias.

It’s a group of idiosyncratic people so there are not hard guidelines but there’s definitely a hierarchy of who they are more likely to describe as advance civilizations and who they question were capable of major engineering projects. This can bring out really weird stereotypes: I’ve heard people make arguments where they positively describe American Indians as living in harmony with nature, etc. but question the estimated populations, trade networks, etc. for e.g. the Mississippi tribes from what appears to be a mix of “noble savage” mythology and sort of mentally having slotted them into a larger model which made it easier to doubt one detail than reconsider their larger intellectual framework. The “aliens did it” people are far out on that spectrum but less extreme versions aren’t uncommon.

An interesting observation, that racism link. Fills a glaring gap in a sad part of my own family history.

My own favorite example of this is how the pyramids (and all the advanced trigonometry required) were built by the Egyptians prior to their discovery of the wheel

> advanced trigonometry

There's a ratio involving pi between the base lengths of the pyramid and its height. This is been interpreted by enthusiasts that the Egyptians knew about pi.

But, consider a measuring wheel, where you can mark off distances very accurately by counting revolutions of the wheel, say, 1 cubit in diameter (I know, I know, what's a cubit?). Then, if the height is laid out in cubits, the ratio of pi is there while being completely ignorant of it.

But that doesn't explain things if it's true that they hadn't discovered the wheel!

It is as far as I understand only wheeled transportation that was late in Ancient Egypt. They used wheels for pottery before they had wagons.

Most civilizations discovered. No one care about a wheel. The wheel itself is useless. Not everyone discovered the axle though, and even less created roads.

I have responded to a sibling comment with more information or examples. I hate this because I don't care about pyramids or Egypt, but I feel myself compelled to respond, I'm so sorry it's not against you, It's a recent pet peeve.

The pi ratio is strong evidence that a wheel is used somewhere in their surveying tools.

When I was a boy, I asked my mom how the Egyptians made their pyramid foundations straight. Without looking up from her book, she replied "pull a string tight". Then I thought I'd trip her up with how they made the foundation level. Without hesitation she said "dig a trench and fill it with water."

She shoulda been an engineer!

> This is been interpreted by enthusiasts that the Egyptians knew about pi.

Well if you want to calculate the circumference of earth and know the distance between Alexandria and Syene, where the sun casts no shadow at noon during the summer solstice, you also need to know pi.

No need for pi.

If you know the angle and the distance between the two cities, you can just multiply the distance by [full circle divided by the angle], and that's the circumference.

Even if that were true, it wouldn't disprove the link to racism: Eratosthenes was Hellene, not native Egyptian. He "counts as white"; ancient Egyptians may or may not.

> what's a cubit?

What's an ark?

Discovery of the axles and roads.

The 'wheel' itself was discovered everywhere. Round things are easier to move, but you need an axle to make it useful. And roads or flat terrain to make use of that. Incas had pulley systems, which indicates they could probably have built an axle quite easily too, but had no use for it, because, well, no flat roads.

And even then Northern Manchurians knew about the wheel for sure, and knew about roads, but still used sleds until at least the Russian conquest.

Sorry, I'm quite boring about this, but it bothers me when people talk about 'inventing the wheel' like it was something special. The wheel itself is meh. The axles are what makes it usable, and the roads make it useful.

Roads were also innvented everywhere. There were cultures with flat roads and no wagons. I would say the axle and then the spoked wheel were likely the big deals.

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