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Quote by Graham Hancock

“The fully qualified Indian marine archaeologists who had dived on the structure in 1993 had not hesitated in their official report to pronounce it to be man-made with 'courses of masonry' plainly visible -- surely a momentous finding 5 kilometers from the shore at a depth of 23 metres? But far from exciting attention, or ruffling any academic feathers, or attracting funds for an extension of the diving survey to the other apparently man-made mounds that had been spotted bear by on the sea-bed -- and very far indeed from inspiring any Tamil expert to re-evaluate the derided possibility of a factual basis to the Kumari Kandam myth -- the NIO's discovery at Poompuhur had simply been ignored by scholarship, not even reacted to or dismissed, but just widely and generally ignored.”

Quote by Graham Hancock

Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
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Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

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Graham Hancock
Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock is a British writer known for his research into ancient civilizations and mysterious phenomena. His works delve into the mysteries of human history and culture, including ancient Egypt, the Maya, and Atlantis. more

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“As we look around the world, especially in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, the west coast of Italy, Peru, and Bolivia, there are stone structures and the remains of others which don't easily fit into the standard picture of history. The pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Puma Punku in Bolivia, and the great megalithic wall of Sachsayhuaman in Peru are but three examples of astonishingly well-made stone works which modern engineers, stone masons, and other experts puzzle over. Conventional academics in general date these structures well within the standard timeline of so-called civilization. The generally prescribed creation date of the three pyramids of Giza is about 2500 BC, Puma Punku is alleged to have been constructed around 600 AD, and Sachsayhuaman approximately 1200 to 1400 AD. However, what intrigues engineers, architects, stone masons, and other professionals is the extreme precision of the work, often in very hard stone, which many archaeologists insist was usually achieved using bronze and or copper chisels, wooden measuring devices, and stone hammers.”

HistoryEngineeringMasonryDeep Human HistoryPrehistoryMegalithic StructuresMegalithic
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“One also finds, even to this day, some amazing works such as the aforementioned Sachsayhuaman and the Coricancha in Cusco, where no mortar of any kind was used. It was stone-on-stone, with astonishing accuracy of fit. In the Inca toolkit, as found in the archaeological record, only copper and bronze chisels have been found, along with wooden measuring instruments and stone pounders or hammers. Conventional archaeologists contend that such tools were responsible for the refined workmanship seen in Cusco and other 'Inca' areas. However, the stone used - granite, andesite, and basalt - are harder than the majority of the tools used, and thus could not have been responsible for the work. The same is true of Tiwanaku and the connected site of Puma Punku. Massive megalithic blocks with sculpted surfaces are found at these locations, made of local sandstone, which would be difficult to shape with bronze chisels and stone hammers. However, the real enigmas are the even harder andesite and basalt stones, cut and shaped with such precision that modern engineers, stone masons, and other professionals question how such work could have been achieved without at least 20th century technology.”

EngineeringArchaeologyMasonryDeep Human HistoryPrehistory
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“Oral tradition accounts that the author was able to glean from living local experts are that the Spanish, upon first seeing the great wall of Sacsayhuaman in 1533, and shocked at its scale, asked the local Inca if their ancestors had built it. The answer was a simple, 'No,' that the wall was there when the Inca arrived about 500 years prior. Sacsayhuaman is a huge and complex site, and it is clear that varying techniques were used in its construction [...]. There is no practical reason why such huge blocks were required at Sacsayhuaman, and they are in fact the largest ever employed in the Americas. The common belief that it was a fortress of some kind constructed by the Inca is an idea that the Spanish came up with. For the Inca, it was in fact one of the most sacred of holy places.”

TraditionConstructionCatastropheMasonryCataclysmMegalithic MonumentsMegalithic Structures
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“Inside the museum [of Egyptian antiquities] itself, on the main floor and in a corner alcove is a box that was never completed [...]. Someone was attempting to cut off a large slab from the bottom in order to likely make the lid. The saws that were being used went off course, causing half of the slab to snap off, and the project was then apparently abandoned [...]. Two circular saws were at work, one from the top and another from the bottom. They were not perfectly aligned but were cutting through the granite stone very efficiently. The only saws we have in modern times that can do such work have diamond abrasives imbedded in either high carbon or cobalt steel blades, powered by very strong electric or petroleum powered engines. As the dynastic Egyptians for most of their history had at best bronze tools, and there is no evidence of them having circular saws, they could not have done this work.”

EgyptMasonryDeep Human HistoryPrehistoryMuseum
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“The sheer size of some of the limestome foundation blocks [at Baalbek] are the largest ever quarried on the planet, conservatively estimated at 800 to 1200 tons, and the common belief that the Romans chose to do this work on such a massive scale to 'impress the locals' is absolutely ludicrous. Nowhere else in the Roman world is there any evidence of the quarrying of blocks of this size, so we can clearly presume that they were there when the Romans first appeared, and were used as foundational material. A group of three horizontally lying giant stones which form part of the podium of the Roman Jupiter Temple of Baalbek, Lebanon, go by the name 'trilithon.' Each one of these stones is 70 feet long, 14 feet high, 10 feet thick, and weighs around 800 tons. These three stone blocks are the largest building blocks ever used by any human beings anywhere in the world. The supporting stone layer beneath features a number of stones that are still in the order of 350 tons and 35 feet wide. No one knows how these blocks were moved, cut, placed, and fit perfectly together.”

MasonryDeep Human HistoryPrehistoryMegalithic MonumentsMegalithic Structures
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“The commonalities that we find at all of the above locations include: 1) works in stone beyond the scale and technical prowess of the historically presumed builders, such as the Inca; 2) signs of construction interruptions and/or cataclysmic damage; and 3) oral traditions speaking of much earlier civilizations with advanced technological capabilities.”

CatastropheMasonryDeep Human HistoryCataclysmPrehistory
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“With such a convincing collection of artifacts that prove the existence of precision machinery in ancient Egypt, the idea that the Great Pyramid was built by an advanced civilization that inhabited the Earth thousands of years ago becomes more admissible. I am not proposing that this civilization was more advanced technologically than ours on all levels, but it does appear that as far as masonry work and construction are concerned they were exceeding current capabilities and specifications.”

EngineeringPyramidsPrecisionMasonryDeep Human HistoryMachiningLost Ancient Civilizations
Book:The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt
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“What we have been taught is that the ancient Egyptians were in posession of only simple hand tools, and that the only metals available to the Egyptians of the fourth dynasty, when the Giza Pyramids were built, were copper, gold, and silver. What is inferred, therefore, is that absent the tools made from these materials, the simple abrasive experiments actually demonstrate the stone-working methods of ancient Egypt. We are told that the ancient Egyptians had not yet developed the knowledge to extract the raw materials necessary to produce iron and steel. It has been suggested that they may have used meteoric iron, because they found it lying on the ground, but they did not mine the ore and smelt it in a foundry. Support for this view is the lack of evidence that they used tools made of any material other than copper, stone, and wood. Yet absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Although sophisticated tools made of iron or steel may not yet have been discovered in the archaeological record, what has been found is not adequate enough to explain how the artifacts were created.”

KnowledgeToolsMetalsEngineeringArchaeologyArtifactsMasonry
Book:Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs
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