Are Inca Walls Too Big for Humans to Build?

8/18/2012

Today I thought I'd share another photograph that contradicts alternative authors' claims about the impossibility of ancient construction. In Technology of the Gods (2000), David Childress argues that Inca masonry is simply too large, too complex, and too perfect to be the work of humans. Specifically, he argues that that fitting together the oddly-shaped stone blocks would require "superhuman effort." He also claims that Inca blocks are too large to move, despite also recording that the Spanish, before modern technology, managed to move those same blocks to build Cuzco.

This photo from the Library of Congress shows Inca masonry in Cuzco c. 1906. Note the size of the small-stature Peruvian people and the burro standing nearby. Surely such small blocks could be moved, carved, and fit together without alien intervention. And if we admit that humans built these, is it such a stretch to attribute the same (human) techniques to Sacsayhuaman and other (somewhat) larger blocks?

Alternative authors don't show you photos like these because they want the walls to look big, isolated, and mysterious. Seeing them in their original human scale puts things in the correct perspective.

7 Comments

MarlonBlazed

8/18/2012 01:41:33 pm

OK when they start talking about architecture not being able to be built by them or even us with our technology I completely loose it. This is the one thing that really pisses me off. Do they not understand that it took an average of 20 years with thousands upon thousands of workers? Then they go and say you can't fit rocks together perfectly like they did but it's well documented on how they did this, you place a rock down on top of another rock, tilt it up and sand down both sides, I think this was done with a string of some sort.

Any empire can build anything they could imagine given the amount of time and people working, I'm not even going to go into the crap about aliens.

kim

9/26/2012 04:12:02 am

i agree 100%.....aliens get into everything.

Julianne

8/19/2012 02:37:20 am

Ok, I have to wonder how much the ancient astronaut theorists even believe their own theories and how much is just a game to get air time. I think of them as those creepy televangelists who probably don't even believe in God, but know what to say to get an audience and a donation.

I'm betting that even they know their theories aren't scientific are accurate, but don't care because they know there are people out there like ME who dig the shows anyway.

I admit that I wish the theories were true. But like Carl Sagan said, even that is a religious wish. I want to believe there is something "out there," better than we are. Because if humans are as good as it gets - I'm scared.

Just saying....

terry the censor

8/29/2012 04:32:43 am

@Julianne

> if humans are as good as it gets - I'm scared.

Don't be. Some of us humans are trying to do better. I am encouraged.

Dreidl

9/6/2012 05:28:11 pm

Or perhaps modern white (male) authors can't imagine that ancient brown people could do engineering.

DD link

9/9/2012 02:15:17 pm

I read much of Childress' books over the past few years, seeing if he (or any in this "alternate" arch world) had uncovered anything interesting in his studies. Once in awhile he hits on something, but more often, like the Inca blocks, it's more hype than substance. I quickly realized he wasn't trying to do scholarly investigation, but most don't realize he isn't doing even basic research. There are a lot of fascinating events, places and people in the ancient world, but not enough talented writers conveying them. Childress makes it all sound breathtaking and exciting. Perhaps his books being shelved in the New Age section should be a clue.

winston tyau link

10/24/2016 04:35:53 am

The aim of so called scientist to post posthumously, the pseudo scientific notion that a non human intervention for building something is that we the modern day technology is primitive to the old. it is that the modern technology does want to build something that humans have not, but that we have moved as a people of scientific reasoning to an age of magic and speculation based on false assumptions that its now about a weird quantum mechanics that does not explain a creator god, this is the real sophistry that we are endangering already true science we have magic science, true genuine religion of faith and reason, with false weak faith and totally silly idealist telling us in a "church institution" to covent being rich and that social justice is gods mantel, thus eminent dark ages befall us, we are reversing the trend of civilization as we had been blessed in the past into a an age of bizarre chronic chaos and confusion because of listening to these fake nothings we allow to be called scientist even religionist. We need to repent.

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Are Inca Walls Too Big for Humans to Build?

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