How Do Historical Sites Become Mysteries Despite Continuous Habitation?

[Proton Soup]

Some think they were built by aliens. 'Nuff said.

Classic human trait there: If you don't know it and can't work it out, 'fill in the blanks' yourself.

i would agree with you about the aliens theory. that's about as useful as saying "magic elves".

a water pump would at least have some purpose

http://sentinelkennels.com/Research_Article_V41.html
http://www.thepump.org/Joomla/index.php

 

[chiro]

You should watch Idiocracy.

Hilarious and based on a true story.

As funny as that movies is, it also scares the absolute crap out of me because of the chances of it happening.

 

[Grep]

I suppose in a society where paper (or whatever) is very expensive, you would only write things you think are very important. And the chances of it lasting thousands of years is pretty remote unless it's deemed important enough to copy and preserve. Or you like carving on rock.

Literacy rates must have been terrible. I bet people wouldn't generally bother to write things down that everyone already knew, or which was common knowledge at the time. Things like Stonehenge and the pyramids seem to be exactly in that category, to me.

 

[Evo]

I suppose in a society where paper (or whatever) is very expensive, you would only write things you think are very important. And the chances of it lasting thousands of years is pretty remote unless it's deemed important enough to copy and preserve. Or you like carving on rock.

Literacy rates must have been terrible. I bet people wouldn't generally bother to write things down that everyone already knew, or which was common knowledge at the time. Things like Stonehenge and the pyramids seem to be exactly in that category, to me.

My point was that it would be an oral history, which was common, if only by storytellers, I'd think something so labor intensive would have a story passed down and was curious as to the reasons it would have vanished, but as has been said, it could be religious, political, or societal breakdowns.

 

[EnumaElish]

How did Native Americans "forget" how their ancestors got here? Each Native American is a descendant of someone who was not born in the Americas; so there's a geneological continuity. Their ancestors arrived here long time ago by canoes, or by sailboats, or on foot, either from the east or from the west, or the north, but which? My theory is, it was forgotten for the same reason that Egyptians forgot how the pyramids were built. Imagine what would happen if all of our electronic data storages were instantly erased and our written records perished. How many people would remember who built the statue of liberty, and teach their children the same, even as they would continue to see it as a national icon?

 

[Proton Soup]

My point was that it would be an oral history, which was common, if only by storytellers, I'd think something so labor intensive would have a story passed down and was curious as to the reasons it would have vanished, but as has been said, it could be religious, political, or societal breakdowns.

i think a great deal of it would be that being a priest was a pretty sweet gig in those days. knowledge was considered sacred and guarded zealously, because knowledge was power. this makes for great currency as long as you're ruled by pharaohs, but it only takes one invader to come in and slaughter your order out of spite for your gods. and, deprived of an aristocracy and government to fund great projects, skills would become obsolete and craftsmen would tend to scatter and assume more agrarian lives.

also, language only makes sense in context. folklore would rapidly evolve into myth.


as for the burial chamber idea, i thought all the burials were in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Kings" , though.

 

[caffenta]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voyager_golden_record_82_feeding.gif

Yeah...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voyager_golden_record_77_supermarket.gif

Aliens must think we do nothing but eat... Which I guess is not that far from the truth.

My point was that it would be an oral history, which was common, if only by storytellers, I'd think something so labor intensive would have a story passed down and was curious as to the reasons it would have vanished, but as has been said, it could be religious, political, or societal breakdowns.

I think a lot of information gets lost when civilizations get decimated, by war, cataclysms, disease, etc. If you're holding on to dear life, teaching your kids who wrote the declaration of independence is not really that high on your list of priorities.

 

[ThomasT]

I've always wondered about how thing like the pyramids, the sphynx, stonehenge, etc... become mysteries although the area has supposedly been continually occupied since their creation. I mean in every generation aren't these things odd enough that someone would ask "what is that and where did that come from" so that the knowledge would never be lost?

I can understand ancient ruins in Peru where the people left and the jungle swallowed the buildings so that they vanished from memory, but these others, how is that possible?

What mysteries are you referring to? Why they were built, or how they were built? Neither are really mysteries. Mankind has continually built large edifices, from Egyptian to Greek to Roman to Mayan to European to American to Malaysian to Chinese to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. And lots in between. There's no mystery as to why any of these structures were built. And, any mystery wrt how ancient massive structures were built has been resolved by investigating how they might be built using man and animal power and then calculating how much man and animal power would be necessary to build them. It turns out that the necessary resources were well within the means of ancient civilizations. Hence, no mysteries there.

As to how the specific details of, ie. the info regarding, the building of ancient massive structures got lost -- that really doesn't seem too mysterious. And what other posters said.

Just a thought. Might a more mysterious consideration involve how information gets found?

 

[Evo]

What mysteries are you referring to? Why they were built, or how they were built? Neither are really mysteries. Mankind has continually built large edifices, from Egyptian to Greek to Roman to Mayan to European to American to Malaysian to Chinese to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. And lots in between. There's no mystery as to why any of these structures were built. And, any mystery wrt how ancient massive structures were built has been resolved by investigating how they might be built using man and animal power and then calculating how much man and animal power would be necessary to build them. It turns out that the necessary resources were well within the means of ancient civilizations. Hence, no mysteries there.

As to how the specific details of, ie. the info regarding, the building of ancient massive structures got lost -- that really doesn't seem too mysterious. And what other posters said.

Just a thought. Might a more mysterious consideration involve how information gets found?

The info was rediscovered by archaeologists, the people living there had forgotten.

 

[Stonerazor]

This is a very interesting question, I have often wondered about it myself. If we take the example of Stonehenge, its very intriguing indeed. I think what happens is that through time people fabricate new ‘explanations’ that fit the contemporary cosmological models, often overlooking earlier material as ‘folklore’.. In his book ‘Solving Stonehenge’ the author, Anthony Johnson, argues that in fact the earliest account of Stonehenge, written in the 12th century contains as much potential truth as many modern interpretations. The ‘new’ theory that Stonehenge was a funerary monument is in fact the oldest documented one, put forward the medieval writer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, who also said that the stones had once been set up elsewhere (in fact the worked bluestones certainly had - and Johnson argues not at Stonehenge). Also the medieval account tells us the stones came from a great distance (again true of the bluestones). So it may well be that we overlooking many potential truths about Stonehenge, after all Geoffrey of Monmouth was almost 1000 years closer to the event!

 

[Newai]

It only takes one generation to pollute a report. We have enough of that with our own reporters. Heck, my dad can't get facts about himself straight. Add in hundreds or thousands of years of oral history, and there's no way to know the original story.

 

[Antiphon]

Show me the photmask for the 6502 microprocessor. It's lost already.

People don't save things. The Internet will slow but not stop the rate of information loss.

 

[EnumaElish]

A related and somewhat more involved question is, why certain types of information (pyramids, stonehenge, migration routes) get lost while other types are not (e.g. medicinal). For example, we know that "Humans have used plants and herbs for medicinal purposes for thousands of years ..." (http://www.ehow.com/medicinal-plants-and-herbs/)

We know that ancient Chinese used ginger to treat a stomachache. We are still using it. We probably didn't reinvent ginger's use for an upset tummy; it was passed down through generations.

It's as if the second law of thermodynamics (increasing disorder) applied to only certain types of data, but not to others.

 

[JaredJames]

Well medicinal knowledge is needed and in some cases vital to be maintained. It would have been something they would make sure people knew.

How to build a pyramid only serves as useful so long as your building a pyramid.

Consider a crude example such as the knowledge for making paper. If we got to the point we no longer need or use it, the knowledge may die out. There would be no reason to keep it. Heck doing so could take valuable resources and time to maintain - especially so in the days of passing knowledge down the generations. The only reason we may have it in a few hundred years would be thanks to our improved technology.

Stone henge is something of a one off affair, so once you've done it there's really no need to maintain the knowledge. You have to look at the difference between now and back then. Now, we can keep knowledge easily. Store it away for future reference. Back then, if it wasn't taught it wasn't remembered. So if there's no need to remember it (we're not planning another stone henge) there's no need to waste time teaching it. The mythical stories cover that area.

 

[Proton Soup]

i think we've come pretty close to losing most of the medicinal knowledge of the native americans. were it not for the fact that we came in with the technology to record much of it, it'd be gone already.

 

[rootX]

We are also losing some languages as well cultures due to things like globalization.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8311000/8311069.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8498534.stm

"Most people are not at all interested in the death of languages," he says. "If we are not cautious about the way English is progressing it may eventually kill most other languages."
...
133 languages are spoken by fewer than 10 people

 

[JaredJames]

I personally don't see the death of languages as a problem. Yes, it's nice to have records of them so we can still translate them. But I just see translation as a costly expense.

Look at Welsh, they force us to learn it in school to "keep it alive", but all it does is waste a number of hours that could be used for other more valuable (and useful) subjects. I honestly have never found a need for welsh in 21 years, and I live in Wales. Unless I suddenly decide to go to extreme west / north, it really is a non-issue.

 

[AlephZero]

Stone henge is something of a one off affair, so once you've done it there's really no need to maintain the knowledge.

Hmmm - isn't the point that Stonehenge was most likely built to serve some purpose over a fairly long timescale (and not just for the purpose of amusing future archeologists!), therefore the question is not so much "how was it built" but "how it was used". Considering some of the much simpler solstice-marking devices that were built at different locations within Britain, Occam's razor would suggests it was for more than just looking at the sunrise on one or two days each year. But we don't have the user manual any more.

Now, we can keep knowledge easily. Store it away for future reference. Back then, if it wasn't taught it wasn't remembered. So if there's no need to remember it (we're not planning another stone henge) there's no need to waste time teaching it. The mythical stories cover that area.

Actually, the reverse is not true. Stone inscriptions and paper records have survived for centuries and even millenia. Much information about the 20th century history of computing is already irretrievably lost, either because it was only stored on materials with a short life, or because there is no longer any technology to read it, or even to read the instructions for re-creating the technology.

The fact is that in 2011, we have a far more complete knowledge of the thought processes of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, etc, from their surviving writings, than we do about the early pioneers of electronic computing. This does not necessarily seem like "progress" to me.

 

[JaredJames]

Hmmm - isn't the point that Stonehenge was most likely built to serve some purpose over a fairly long timescale (and not just for the purpose of amusing future archeologists!), therefore the question is not so much "how was it built" but "how it was used". Considering some of the much simpler solstice-marking devices that were built at different locations within Britain, Occam's razor would suggests it was for more than just looking at the sunrise on one or two days each year. But we don't have the user manual any more.

Like I said, once you've built it (whether for long or short term use) you don't need that specific knowledge again unless you plan on repeating it. The use of something has little to do with the knowledge required to build it, if any.

The 'architect' and constructors of stone henge may have been the only ones with the knowledge how to do so. Once they die, that knowledge is gone. Many people may have known about it's use so it remains. However, uses evolve over time and so information is subject to change with it.

Actually, the reverse is not true. Stone inscriptions and paper records have survived for centuries and even millenia. Much information about the 20th century history of computing is already irretrievably lost, either because it was only stored on materials with a short life, or because there is no longer any technology to read it, or even to read the instructions for re-creating the technology.

The fact is that in 2011, we have a far more complete knowledge of the thought processes of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, etc, from their surviving writings, than we do about the early pioneers of electronic computing. This does not necessarily seem like "progress" to me.

Well that all comes down to what you consider the progress to be. You pick a very specific example, but the fact is we only have records from the past of very specific people. There is little recorded about joe blogs down the road and his random experiments in his garden shed. But now, you only have to be in the internet and you could find all about it.

My point being, we have a lot of information stored now about a multitude of things, where as previously there was only a few records from rather specific subjects.

 

[EnumaElish]

I imagine records about the pyramids could have been lost when the ancient library of Alexandria burned down. Then there were things like book burnings and buried (or burned) scholars, for example by ancient Chinese dynasties, to ensure that history before the current dynasty had been erased, at least officially.

http://history.cultural-china.com/en/34History2954.html

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning?wasRedirected=true

Another instance of libraricide is record-burning by the conquerors, as in the burning of Mayan records:

The infamous Maya “book burning” of July 12, 1652 marks a very sad date in the history of the Yucatan Maya under Spanish rule. The Catholic*Friar Diego de Landa ordered the burning of some reported 5,000 idols and 27 hieroglyphic scrolls, stating that they contained the work of the devil and prevented them from learning/accepting Christianity. Landa could not read the scrolls, but he assumed that they were full of witchcraft and evil knowledge. Landa*might*not known what was in the scrolls, but he did notice the reaction of the Maya while they burned:

"We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction."

http://www.examiner.com/ancient-may...vent-of-july-12-1652?do_not_mobile_redirect=1

 

[Evo]

I imagine records about the pyramids could have been lost when the ancient library of Alexandria burned down. Then there were things like book burnings and buried (or burned) scholars, for example by ancient Chinese dynasties, to ensure that history before the current dynasty had been erased, at least officially.

http://history.cultural-china.com/en/34History2954.html

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning?wasRedirected=true

Another instance of libraricide is record-burning by the conquerors, as in the burning of Mayan records:
http://www.examiner.com/ancient-may...vent-of-july-12-1652?do_not_mobile_redirect=1

This is such an atrocity, the stupidty is beyone belief. This has always upset me. Destroying knowledge, some rulers hoped to make people think all knowledge started under their rule. The religious wanted no knowledge that was not published by them.