History Fix

Ep. 68 Lost Technology: How Ancient Knowledge Has Been Erased By Time

• Shea LaFountaine

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Elias Stadiatis broke through the surface of the clear turquoise water, his heavy copper and brass helmet and canvas diving suit challenging the natural buoyancy of the salty Mediterranean Sea, threatening to pull him back down. Adrenaline pumping, he fought his way to the boat where his fellow divers helped pull him aboard. The year was 1900 and these men were searching for natural sponges near the tiny island of Antikythera, between Crete and mainland Greece. But they chanced upon so much more than sponges. Elias’ hands were shaking as he removed his helmet. His face was pale, his brow furrowed. “What happened?” one of the men asked. Elias paused and then replied, somewhat dazed “heap of dead naked people,” was the best explanation he could give. The dead naked people Elias was referring to were marble sculptures scattered along the seafloor. For this group of unassuming sponge hunters had stumbled upon an ancient Greek shipwreck. This find would prompt the first major underwater archaeological dig in history where artifact after artifact would be pulled from the sea. But none would baffle the modern world quite like the Antikythera Mechanism. It started as a calcified lump, roughly the size of a dictionary. But, once broken open, bronze gears were revealed. It was clearly some sort of machine. Except, gears like this didn’t exist at the time this ship went down. Gears like this weren’t supposed to have existed until centuries later. Did you know, we still don’t fully understand how the Antikythera Mechanism worked? And, did you know, it’s not even the only advanced ancient technology we haven’t been able to crack? Let’s fix that. 


Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. This week we are talking about lost technology - devices, materials, methods, and even plants that existed in the ancient world that have been lost to time. I’m fascinated by human intelligence, I guess maybe that’s why I became a teacher. I’m fascinated by what the human mind can do. And I think we think of advanced technology as a modern thing like everything back in the day was just whittling wood and chipping away at stones, basic, simple, archaic even. Like it started simple and has been advancing linearly ever since. But then we come across something like the Antikythera Mechanism. Something that makes no sense at all within the context of the time period it was made and it challenges everything we think we know about the evolution of human intelligence. Andrew Gestalt writes in an article for listverse I used as a source for this episode quote “History slowly and inevitably decays into mystery. As time passes, we lose knowledge and culture to the invisible realm of the forgotten. The more we dig into history and the more we uncover, the more we realize how much we’ve already lost. Much of the evidence for lost ancient technologies and artifacts suggest that our development as a species may not have been strictly linear,” end quote. 


This was the exact realization I came to in episode 10 about the Great Pyramid. Whatever theory you subscribe to about how it was built you are forced to come to terms with the fact that its builders were accomplishing something remarkable. Something that would be very difficult to replicate, even today. Something that some engineers argue is actually physically impossible. I’m referring to the 70 ton granite slabs, that’s 140,000 pounds per slab, 5 of them, suspended above the king’s chamber, 350 feet in the air that they first had to transport from 500 miles away. None of the mainstream theories on pyramid construction really satisfactorily explain hoisting 140,000 pound rocks 350 feet into the air. But one fringe theory I stumbled upon seemed somewhat promising. And that was the use of sound waves, acoustic levitation. Which seems insane right and even more far fetched than ramps and mud. But acoustic levitation has been proven possible on a small scale. Two separate teams of researchers have successfully levitated tiny balls several centimeters using sound waves. So it’s possible the ancient Egyptians used some sort of technology we no longer have knowledge of. It was forgotten between then and now. 


And you may be thinking, you know, how can that be? How can we just forget how to do something so useful, so important. Well, we know for a fact, that it has happened with other technologies. Take concrete for example. You know, like what sidewalks are made of. What we use now is called Portland cement and it’ll last around 50 years before it inevitably needs to be replaced which is why sidewalks need near constant maintenance to keep from crumbling. But then there’s the Pantheon in Rome, a remarkable, megalithic building constructed during the time of the Emperor Hadrian in 125 AD, just under 2,000 years ago. It has a domed concrete ceiling 142 feet across with a 27 foot hole called an oculus in the center and the whole thing is suspended 71 feet above the floor. It is the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built and it survives to this day, I’ve been inside it. And yet, according to David Moore, author of the book The Roman Pantheon: The Triumph of Concrete, in a Smithsonian Magazine article “no modern engineer would dare attempt such a feat… ‘Modern codes of engineering practice would not permit such mischief.’” 


A primitive form of concrete began long before the Romans, way back in 6500 BC in Syria and northern Jordan. For a long time, it was mostly used as mortar to hold stone structures together, as flooring material, and to waterproof underground water cisterns. The Egyptians used a concrete-like mortar to hold the casing stones together that covered the outside of the pyramids. The ancient Chinese used a cement containing glutenous sticky rice in boat building and in the construction of the Great Wall. But the Romans really perfected concrete, obviously. The Pantheon is a testament to that. Then, when the Roman Empire collapsed in 476, the technique for making this Roman concrete was lost. We descended into the dark ages, a period marked by backwards movement, technological regression. They start making buildings out of straw, wattle and daub, cob (which is a mix of clay, sand, and straw), and wood. Straw, like the dumb pig from the story of the three little pigs. And the pantheon is still there, right? So they’re probably looking at it like “how the heck did they do that?” Because, the method had been lost. We no longer knew how to make concrete. The technology was lost for a thousand years until 1414 with the discovery of Roman manuscripts that described the process and then we start messing around with concrete again. But even today the formula, the mixture isn’t quite the same. And, it isn’t quite as good as what the ancient Romans were using. Roman concrete was made of a specific blend of limestone and volcanic ash. And over time, a reaction would take place between the two leading to the formation of crystals of a mineral called stratlingite. Stratlingite is apparently a very durable mineral and these crystals helped prevent the spread of microscopic cracks in the concrete which researchers have called quote “the weakest link of modern cement based concrete,” end quote. So not only did we straight up forget how to make concrete for a thousand years, when we finally rediscovered it, we made an inferior version that we still use today. Can you imagine discovering some ancient Egyptian papyrus that describes, in detail, how those 70 ton granite slabs were hoisted above the kings chamber? What if it was something like sound waves? Something we don’t know how to use for that purpose today. What if we were able to use sound waves all of a sudden again to lift heavy things. That’s basically what happened with concrete. Pretty wild. 


Lots of weapons. Lot of weaponry that has been lost to the ages. Greek fire, for example, is a mysterious substance used between the 600s and the 900s that ignited, caught on fire, and could not be extinguished with water. So, this wasn’t the first time fire was used as a weapon. It goes way back. Ancient writers mention flaming arrows, firepots, and the use of combustible materials like pitch, sulfur, and charcoal being used as weapons. Later, saltpetre (which is potassium nitrate) and turpentine were used which were kind of a step up. The Crusaders referred to this as Greek Fire or wildfire, yes Game of Thrones stole that from real life. But Greek Fire got leveled up even more during the reign of Constantine the fourth of the Byzantine Empire. This is the version of it that is a mystery to us now. It was developed by a Greek speaking Jewish refugee named Callinicus of Heliopolis. He was seeking refuge from the Arab conquest of Syria at the time. So he’s in the Byzantine Empire just, you know, trying not to die and also, I guess, experimenting with combustible liquids and he comes up with an upgraded version of Greek Fire. Experts believe it was a petroleum based mixture most similar to today’s napalm but we don’t actually know what it was. They would throw it in pots like a grenade or shoot it out of tubes and once on fire it basically could not be extinguished. This is also, I’m realizing, fiendfyre from Harry Potter. So they would mount these tubes on their ships and shoot this inextinguishable fire out of them and this is how they fought off the Arab fleet that attacked Constantinople in 673. It was used by Leo III in 717 against the Arabs again and then Romanus I used it against a Russian fleet in the 10th century. According to Encyclopedia Britannica quote “Its deadliness in combat, especially at sea, has been cited as a prime reason for the long survival of the Byzantine Empire in the face of many enemies. The art of compounding the mixture was a secret so closely guarded that its precise composition remains unknown to this day,” end quote. 


Which might honestly be a good thing. I don’t know that we necessarily need Greek Fire. Which brings me to an interesting side note. Apparently Leonardo Da Vinci designed an early version of a tank which was called “Leonardo’s fighting vehicle.” According to Gestalt in that listverse article quote “the heavy proto-tank had a conical shell of armor and looked a lot like a giant turtle. Perhaps too like a turtle, as the vehicle’s schematics suggest it would be too heavy and too slow to be effective in any form of combat. Further adding to the mystery, the gears necessary to power its movement were designed in reverse order. This mistake seems unlikely for the brilliant engineer da Vinci, and some historians think he deliberately sabotaged the vehicle’s design to prevent its use,” end quote. And this sort of makes sense because, while da Vinci was interested in warfare sort of theoretically he was also mostly a pacifist writing about war in his notes and calling it quote “bestial insanity.” So it kind of makes sense that he’d want to invent a tank, because he liked inventing things. But it also makes sense that he didn’t actually want the tank he invented to be used in war because then he would have blood on his hands. So he just invented a crappy tank. And it makes me wonder if he knew exactly what needed tweaking in order to make the thing functional. Like he made it perfect at first and then was like “I’ll just put the gears on backwards so they won’t actually be able to use it.” 


Then there’s Damascus steel. Starting in the 500s, swordsmiths in the Middle East started making knives and swords out of a material that came to be called Damascus steel because it was first forged in Damascus which is in Syria. But these were not ordinary knives and swords. It was said that a Damascus steel sword could cut straight through stone, that it could slice a silk scarf clean in two as it fell through the air. The blades, with their characteristic wavy shape, were harder and sharper than any European weapons. European steel wasn’t capable of anything close to this. This is like Valyrian steel from Game of Thrones, very few original ideas in that show I’m realizing. True Damascus steel was made all the way up until the 19th century, according to an article by the engineering department at Purdue University that I read. J. Horning writes quote “Though there was a demand for Damascus steel, in the 19th century it stopped being made. This steel had been produced for 11 centuries, and in just about a generation, the means of its manufacture was entirely lost. The reason it disappeared remained a mystery until just a few years ago. As it turns out, the technique was not lost, it just stopped working. The "secret" that produced such high quality weapons was not in the technique of the swordsmiths, but rather on the composition of the material they were using. The swordsmiths got their steel ingots from India. In the 19th Century, the mining region where those ingots came from changed. These new ingots had slightly different impurities than the prior ingots. Because of the new composition, the new ingots could not be forged into Damascus steel. Because the swordsmiths did not understand the nature of the material they used, when that material changed Damascus steel was lost,” end quote. So it kind of reminds me of the concrete thing. The impurities, the microscopic composition of the material itself changed and that compromised its integrity. Although Horning says some dude discovered the ideal composition in 1998 and that it’s possible to make true Damascus steel again. But, I mean, show me a sword that can cut through a rock and maybe I’ll believe that. That would completely throw off rock, paper scissors. Right? Like “rock, paper, scissors, shoot… Damascus steel scissors, I win no matter what.” But that’s basically what they’re claiming.


And then there's an ancient weapon that may be a bit more mythical than it is historical. We don’t know if this was actually used or if it was just more of an urban legend. The Archimedes heat ray was reported by both Greek and Roman historians, two different sides, and you know how I feel about multiple independent sources. Apparently, during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes, a Greek mathematician, physicist, and inventor, used a quote “burning glass” to set Roman war ships that were anchored within bow and arrow range so fairly close, he used a “burning glass” to set them on fire. So this is essentially like burning ants with a magnifying glass in the sun. Don’t do that. That’s terrible. But it’s this on a small scale. I remember experimenting with this with my fourth graders, not intentionally, we were doing some science thing outside with magnifying glasses and paper towels. I don’t even remember what it was. And then they started burning actual holes in the paper towels, like little charred black around the edges smoking holes with the magnifying glasses and the sun. And I was like “okay, let’s stop while we’re ahead.” But I mean it was actually a genuinely cool accidental experiment I just, you know, I didn’t bring the fire extinguisher out with us so we had to stop. But it works. You can actually start a fire with a magnifying glass. So these historians were claiming that Archimedes did something like this on a large enough scale to set a Roman warship on fire. But these claims are much debated. Actually the show Mythbusters did this. They tried to test out an Archimedes Heat Ray and they declared it busted. But that did not stop a 2009 engineering class at MIT from giving it a go. There is a lovely article about this experiment, it’s a fun read, I’ve linked it. They were basically like, “um, I know the mythbusters guys are like the smartest dudes ever, but we don’t actually trust their conclusion so we’re going to test it ourselves.” Cause, I mean, these are MIT engineers. They’re a little bit closer to Archimedes than the mythbusters. No offense Adam and Jamie but you’re special effects technicians, not actual scientists. 


So basically what they did is they got all these one foot square mirrors, one hundred and twenty some of them. And they lined them up all pointing at this wood boat replica prop that was made out of oak and covered in like a wax stain. Now, they do note that Roman ships were probably planked with cedar or cyprus which are both more combustible than oak so it was actually a fairly conservative test because of that. They are using oak which is harder to catch on fire. It was believed that Roman ships were painted with colored wax which is why they coated their test ship in a wax stain. So they angle all one hundred twenty some mirrors so that they are reflecting the sunlight towards the same spot on the side of the ship. They do one mirror at a time and after it’s angled just right, they cover it with a cloth. So they have all the mirrors directing a beam of sunlight at the same spot on the ship, covered with clothes though so they aren’t currently reflecting the light, they’re on the roof of a building. Then they uncover the mirrors and there is immediately smoke on the side of the ship. But then some clouds cover the sun for like 20 minutes and then end up actually having to readjust all the mirrors as the sun moves, well, I mean the Earth moves, but you know what I mean. And then, the clouds clear, the mirrors are repositioned perfectly and the side of the ship starts smoking hard which means that carbon in the wood is burning and this only happens at temperatures of at least 750 degrees fahrenheit. After smoking for a bit, roughly 10 minutes, there is an ignition and the side of the ship, the place where the sunlight is being reflected by all these mirrors actually bursts into flames which would require temperatures of around 1100 degrees. So, I mean, it is possible. Myth un-busted. They caught a ship on fire with mirrors. But, I mean 127 I think it was mirrors they used to do this. They needed a cloudless sky. They had to reposition all the mirrors a bunch of times. I assume the Roman ship would have been moving, bobbing up and down at least. I think this is possible but I’m not sure how logistical it is, how feasible this would be in practice. So I don’t know, did Archimedes really invent a working heat ray? I don’t know. Like I said, I like that both the Greeks and the Roman historians wrote about it. I don’t think the Romans were likely to make up a weapon that defeated them. That seems out of character. Did Archimedes develop something better than 127 mirrors on the roof of a building at MIT. It’s possible. It’s possible he did and we just don’t know what it was. 


While we’re on the topic of mysterious ancient Greek inventions, let’s go back to the Antikythera Mechanism from the intro. No, I did not forget about it. The Antikythera shipwreck discovered in 1900 by sponge hunters was full of ancient wonders. It was a trading ship, a cargo ship from the first century and amongst the wreckage they found three life sized marble horse statues, all kinds of jewelry, coins, glassware, hundreds of works of art, and a 7 foot tall “colossus” statue of Heracles, which is just Hercules. Heracles is the Greek version. Hercules is the Roman version. Now, 70 years later famous oceanographer Jacques Cousteau explored the wreck again and found all kinds of other stuff including the ancient remains of 4 bodies. But you know, even at the time, 1900ish they were pretty pleased with what they had found. One of the seemingly less impressive artifacts they recovered was just a lump of bronze and, you know, it’s covered in all these concretions which is this plaster like cement so it doesn’t look like much. But they take it back to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens with the other stuff and when they remove the concretions, they are blown away. What they have found is this set of intricate interlocking gears, something that was not thought to have existed when this ship sank in around 60 some BC. But further testing suggested that the mechanism itself was actually even older than the shipwreck, likely made around 200 BC. So immediately they’re like, “well what the heck is it, what does it do?” But over the next few decades, now removed from the sea, it started to basically fall apart into 82 different pieces which made it even harder to figure out what this thing was. But, long story short, it appears to be, in the words of Tony Freeth in a Scientific American article a quote “geared astronomical calculation machine of immense complexity,” end quote. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute describes it as quote “a complex set of interlocking gears capable of predicting the movement of the sun, moon, and several planets, as well as the timing of solar and lunar eclipses years into the future,” end quote. It’s a computer, basically. It’s a very early computer. It kind of reminds me of like a clock right, a mechanical clock, with all the gears and such. Except the first mechanical clocks like that weren’t invented until the early Renaissance in like the 1300s. So this thing was around a thousand years before we managed to make a clock that could like keep track of a single day and this thing is timing out astronomical events throughout time. It’s very impressive. The Woods Hole article concludes quote “The artifacts recovered from the Antikythera Wreck make it one of the most important finds in modern archaeology. The Antikythera Mechanism alone has changed our views of the limits of ancient technology, since it predates anything else approaching its level of sophistication by more than one thousand years,” end quote. They also give us a tantalizing little morsel to cling to, stating that, still, the Antikythera wreck has not been fully explored because it’s too deep for SCUBA divers but too shallow for submersibles. So they did the original 1900 excavation and then again in 1970 with Jacques Cousteau but they have not fully excavated the whole ship. According to that article quote “most of the artifacts recovered in the 1970s came from the stern and galley of the ship. The section identified as the ship's hold, which is where the Antikythera Mechanism was found, remains largely unexplored and likely to contain additional significant artifacts. Also, several large boulders moved by the Greek Navy during the first excavation may actually be large statues similar to the colossus of Heracles featured in the National Museum of Archaeology,” end quote. And it gets even better. During a 2012 survey of the sea floor they found what appears to be a second completely unexplored wreck about 800 feet south of the Antikythera wreck. They were able to make out an anchor and containers similar to those found on the original wreck. Like, what is in those containers. But it’s just tricky. There’s like this perfect storm of conditions making these wrecks really hard to access. They’re both too shallow and yet too deep. They’re at awkward angles, near steep underwater cliffs in a very storm prone area. Ironically, our technology is lacking to be able to fully explore these wrecks right now. 


Here’s another urban legendy one - flexible or unbreakable glass called vitrium flexile. So according to legend, this was invented in the Roman empire. Glass itself is believed to have been invented by the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians ruled the Mediterranean area before the Greeks and Romans. But supposedly, during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar, so like somewhere between the year 14 and the year 37, this is Jesus time, right? Tiberius was emperor when Jesus was crucified. Supposedly, a Roman glass maker invented this unbreakable vitrium flexile or flexible glass to please the emperor. And there are two written accounts of its existence. The first comes from Pliny the Elder who I’ve mentioned multiple times he was like the Roman chronicler, died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79. Pliny wrote factual information, as far as we know. He wrote, basically encyclopedias. They are at least supposed to be factual. In his “Natural History,” Pliny wrote that, instead of gaining the favor or the emperor with his invention, Tiberius had the glass maker’s shop shut down because he feared that the invention would threaten the value of gold, silver, and copper. Now Pliny does note quote “this story, however, was for a long time more widely spread than well authenticated,” meaning he has no idea if it’s actually true. It was a story people told. It was mentioned again in a work called Satyricon which is mostly believed to be fiction. These were satires written by, we think, a Roman courtier named Petronius. And in this version, the glass maker was granted an audience with Tiberius to show him the invention. To demonstrate its unbreakability, he threw it on the ground and then showed the emperor how it was only dented, not broken. He then used a small hammer to beat it back to its original shape. Hoping to be rewarded, he excitedly awaited the emperor’s response. Tiberius asked him if anyone else knew how to make the glass to which he answered “no.” He was the only one who knew how to make it. So Tiberius had him killed in order to take the knowledge of how to make vitrium flexile to the grave with him. Once again, because he didn’t want it to devalue gold. So, remember, Satyricon is a work of fiction. So this is a fun story but it’s not compelling evidence. The fact that Pliny wrote about it is a bit more compelling but even he noted that it was not well authenticated. So this one may genuinely be a myth.


This next one is less of an invention and more of a resource that was, possibly lost. There was a plant, an herb, called silphium that was apparently incredibly valuable to both the Greeks and the Romans. So much so that the Greeks depicted it on their coins and Roman emperor Julius Caesar kept a cache of it in the Roman treasury. It was pretty unassuming looking. It kind of looks like a weed, like something you would find growing in a ditch, thick roots, stumpy dandyliony looking leaves and yellow flowers that sort of fan out like Queen Anne’s Lace if you know what that is. Silphium kind of looks like that but with yellow flowers instead fo white. But it was literally worth its weight in gold and that’s because of how useful it was. According to a BBC article by Zaria Gorvett quote “to list its uses would be an endless task. Its crunchable stalks were roasted, sauteed or boiled and eaten as a vegetable. Its roots were eaten fresh, dipped in vinegar. It was an excellent preservative for lentils and when it was fed to sheep, their flesh became delectably tender… Perfume was coaxed from its delicate blooms, while its sap was dried and grated liberally over dishes from brains to braised flamingo… Then there were the medical applications. Silphium was a veritable wonder herb, a panacea for all manner of ailments, including growths of the anus (the Roman author Pliny the Elder recommends repeated fumigations with the root) and the bites of feral dogs (simply rub into the affected area, though Pliny warns his readers never, ever to try this with a tooth cavity, after a man who did so threw himself off a house). Finally, silphium was required in the bedroom, where its juice was drunk as an aphrodisiac or applied “to purge the uterus”. It may have been the first genuinely effective birth control; its heart-shaped seeds are thought to be the reason we associate the symbol with romance to this day,” end quote. 


So it’s tasty, it has a lot of food related applications you can put it on your butt or whatever. But I think that last bit is really the key to why this plant was so valuable. Silphium was, apparently, an effective contraceptive. Pregnancy and childbirth related deaths were the leading cause of death among Roman women. Add that to the fact that there were a lot of prostitutes in ancient Rome and just a lot of poor women who couldn’t afford to care for an endless amount of children. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the plant was used as a form of birth control. It grew naturally in a small area in northern Africa called Cyrene. And it became so popular in Rome that the Cyrenians became very wealthy exporting it. They too pictured it on their coins. There is one coin with just the plant on it. On another, a woman is depicted next to the plant, and on a third, a woman is shown touching the plant while pointing to her reproductive area. A lot of ancient Greek and Roman physicians wrote about it. Soranus of Ephesus, a Greek physician, suggested drinking the amount of quote “a chick-pea in two cyaths of water” of what he called “Cyrenaic balm” in order to induce menstruation. But Soranus also notes that silphium would quote “destroy any [fetus] already existing.” So it was what you would call an abortifacient form of birth control which was controversial even back then. Another Greek physician named Pedanius Dioscorides wrote about it in his book De Materia Medica and recommends taking it as a quote “decoction, taken as a drink with pepper and myrrh.” And even though some were anti because of its abortifacient qualities, it was apparently widely used as a form of contraception. There are records of 30 pounds of silphium being imported to Rome in 93 BC, but, by 54 AD, Pliny reports that there was only a single stalk of the plant left that was quote “sent as a curiosity to the Emperor Nero,” end quote. 


And so it’s sort of assumed that the silphium plant was used to extinction. It only grew naturally in that one small area and it apparently could not be cultivated elsewhere. According to Gorvett quote “Try as they might, neither the Greeks or the Romans could work out how to farm it in captivity. Instead silphium was collected from the wild, and though there were strict rules about how much could be harvested, there was a thriving black market,” end quote. So they tried and failed to grow it from seeds elsewhere which is apparently a thing with some plants. Like huckleberries, we have tried since they were first quote “discovered” by colonists in North America, we have tried to cultivate huckleberries and we still haven’t managed to. They only grow in the wild. There is no such thing as a huckleberry farm. And it seems silphium was like this too. You foraged for it growing naturally in the wild or nothing. So perhaps silphium, with all of its many uses, is extinct, or maybe it’s still out there somewhere and we haven’t been able to identify it. Most experts agree it was foraged to extinction. In fact, silphium is considered to be the first recorded human-induced extinction of any species in history. 


Alright let’s leave the Mediterranean for the first time, because holy cow, how many of these were ancient Greek or Roman or from surrounding areas. But that sort of makes sense because we know there was a major regression following the fall of the Roman empire. It makes sense that some technology would be lost after that. Let’s go to South America though because the Romans weren’t the only ones doing cool stuff, the Inca were too. According to April Holloway in an Ancient Origins article quote “Lying on the northern outskirts of the city of Cusco in Peru, lies the walled complex of Saksaywaman. The site is famed for its remarkable large dry stone walls with boulders carefully cut to fit together tightly without mortar.  The stones used in the construction of the terraces at Saksaywaman, which weigh up to 200 tonnes (that’s 400,000 pounds), are among the largest used in any building in prehispanic America, and display a precision of fitting that is unmatched in the Americas. The stones are so closely spaced that a single piece of paper will not fit between many of the stones. This precision, combined with the rounded corners of the blocks, the variety of their interlocking shapes, and the way the walls lean inward have puzzled scientists for decades,” she goes on to say “The method used to match precisely the shape of a stone with the adjacent stones has been the focus of much speculation and debate. Various theories put forward include: stone softening using a mysterious liquid derived from a plant, mineral disaggregation from the heat generated from large sun mirrors, and even extra-terrestrial intervention,” end quote. And you know how I feel about that theory. But John McCauley, a retired Architect and Construction Manager, who has been researching ancient construction techniques for over 40 years, agrees with me. He doesn’t think it was aliens. He thinks it was just the ingenuity of the Inca people that was overlooked by European colonizers. McCauley thinks they literally just manpower style pounded on the stones, chipping off pieces little by little, painstakingly carving them to fit perfectly together. And he was able to recreate this technique to prove it. But that is no small task. It’s hard for us to even wrap our minds around it today with our conveyor belts and robots. It’s an incredible amount of work. But, there’s a reason they did it that way. The Inca lived in a very earthquake prone area, along the eastern edge of the ring of fire, where the Nazca plate and the South American plate are colliding. By fitting these stones together perfectly without using mortar, they are much more resistant to earthquakes which is why buildings like this, picture Machu Picchu, are still standing hundreds of years later. The stones are not connected, they aren’t glued together with mortar. So during tremors, instead of cracking and breaking, they can move, they bounce around and then, when the earthquake stops, they settle right back down. It’s incredible and an incredible amount of effort went into achieving it. So much effort that we truly just cannot fathom it today. And so this one is lost, I feel, not because it isn’t physically possible today, but because it isn’t mentally possible today. And that is high praise for the Inca people. 


I want to end it today by reminding you of a technology that was lost not all that long ago. One that may have been intentionally lost, not unlike the alleged vitrium flexile, that unbreakable glass in ancient Rome, because it threatened other industries and powerful men with powerful money were able to bury it. And that is whatever the heck Nikola Tesla was doing at Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island. I talked about this extensively back in episode 9 so if you skipped that one, definitely go back. It appeared Tesla was trying to harness energy from the Earth itself, not by burning fossils fuels, but genuinely clean, renewable, wireless energy from the Earth. He was onto something and the powers that be stopped him because they all had financial motives to want oil, and coal, and natural gas to continue supplying our energy needs, despite their devastating effects on the environment. The knowledge of whatever Tesla was up to went to the grave with him and then, after his death, a government agency confiscated all of his belongings - 80 boxes, and then only returned 60 boxes to his nephew. Fishy fishy. 


So here we have technology that was intentionally lost, confiscated, erased in order to keep it from threatening other, inferior but valuable resources. Technology that was stolen from us by greedy men with only their own gains in mind. We have technology, like Inca building techniques, that were lost because we just can’t make sense of them now. We can’t make sense of the amount of work that went into it. And maybe it’s the same with the Egyptian pyramids although I still suspect there’s more to that. And we have technology that was lost because of major shifts in society, the collapse of the Roman Empire, launching us into the dark ages, a reset that took us centuries to crawl back out of. We forgot how to make concrete for a thousand years. That big of a reset. And so, when we consider all of this, we have to accept, we have to that, like Andrew Gestalt wrote quote “our development as a species may not have been strictly linear.” There have been ups and downs. There has been advancement and there has been retreat. And as much as we want to believe that we just get better and better and smarter and smarter, it doesn’t always happen that way. All we can do is hope that all we have built, all we have learned, and invented, and developed, that all of it is here to stay, that a sponge hunter 2,000 years from now won’t be pulling an iphone, a drone, a laptop off an ancient shipwreck wondering what the heck is this?  


Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. Also, join the Patreon for exclusive bonus content plus all regular weekly episodes early and add free. That $5 a month, 16 cents a day, that’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.  


Information used in this episode was sourced from listverse, Smithsonian Magazine, MIT, Scientific American, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Encyclopedia Britannica, Purdue University, thearchaeologist.org, BBC, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and worldhistory.org. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.