27 July 2021

Metal clamps in ancient megaliths

"The use of metal clamps in T-Grooves has been discovered in Tiahuanaco, Ollantaytambo, Koricancha, and the site of Yuroc Rumi, Vilcabamba. These clamps were also used on the Parthenon, on buildings in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Cambodia...
Unfortunately, very few of the clamps have survived. The Spanish removed many clamps, thinking they might be gold. Some may indeed have been decorated with silver and gold, because it’s well-documented that armies set about demolishing these structures, just for the clamps...

At first, archaeologists believed that clamps were brought to these grooves to be placed, but recent scans have revealed that metal was poured into these indentations, which means the builders had portable smelters...:
A comment at the via for the top embed suggests that the reason for the fire at the left of the illustration was to pre-heat the stone so that the poured molten metal wouldn't crack the stone.  Interesting.  Another noted that this technology would have allowed the builders to have pizza while working...

6 comments:

  1. I've been learning how to weld this summer (because teaching doesn't pay). One thing I learned was that welding on the floor of your garage can crack your foundation.

    So I'm wondering how they poured in molten metal without it cracking the blocks?

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    1. Perhaps the differences of the composition of stone vs. concrete’s properties may be the answer.

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  2. I would to point out that it's always a good idea to read the whole article before posting a comment.

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  3. Reading between the lines here, are they suggesting pizza was invented by the aliens ?

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  4. I don't know what culture that illustration is supposed to represent, but there were no wheels in the Americas...except on toys. The pseudoscience site at the link makes it sound like a big mystery as to how the same idea came to different cultures. But whatever "mysterious" sharing of knowledge made it to the Americas, it's odd that the wheel didn't get shared as well. I looked for credible archaeology information about using metal to tie stone blocks together, and all I got was a ton of woo sites that share the same images. Apparently the ancient Greeks used steel coated in lead for clamps for seismic stabilization.
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331405685_Living_with_Earthquakes_along_the_Silk_Road

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    1. So it is super interesting about the pre-colonial Americans not having wheeled conveyances, thanks for bringing that up. As you point out they did apparently have toys with wheels so they had the concept. I found a source speculating that they did not make use of wheels because there were no real beasts of burden to pull them, making them more or less useless. If that was the case, I would suppose there might be some specialized human powered wagons around, like for transporting something that cannot be disassembled, or must be set up short distances away repeatedly. Like a forge used for construction. Just a thought.

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