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Oldest Technologies Scientists Still Can’t Explain · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: We tend to think of our ancestors as less smart versions of ourselves.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: After all, they didn't invent smartphones or the internet, or toilet, golf, truly visionary stuff.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But actually, our ancestors were much smarter than many of us give them credit for, and some things they have created have baffled scientists for centuries.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: From structures only giants could have built to a computer that predates the age of Jesus its time to explore some of the oldest technologies that even scientists can explain.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what the very first computer looked like?
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'd probably think back to the time of Buxy monitors and wired mice that had rubber balls and them, but computers existed before then, and I mean, hundreds of years before then.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about analog computers, pre-digital devices that use the variation of an element and match it up on a model to help solve a problem.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Think of a slide role, for example, which allows the user to do quick multiplication and division.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a computer.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the very first of these computers was way more impressive than a mere math of heights, and it was created more than 2,000 years ago.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The anti-Kithiro mechanism is an ancient Greek computer which could predict everything from the exact movements of the planets to the dates of each Olympic Games.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the oldest example of an analog computer ever discovered, made around the second century BCE.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Remnets of this big bronze device were found inside a shipwreck off the coast of Anticothera.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, now we know where it got the name from.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: From 1901 onwards, it's been subjected to all sorts of tests and scientists have desperately tried to figure out how it all worked.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: From what scientists do know it's made up of over 80 fragments, possibly more, which fit together to create 37 gears and two dial systems that they believe were made to track them moon in the sun.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: To give you some sense of what this thing actually looks like, make sure a lump of corroded bronze roughly the size of a shoe box or itled with holes and gaps where the
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But here inside those gaps and you'll see layer up on layer of inner locking gear teeth each one hand cut to extraordinary precision.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: The two dials on the face are wring with tiny Greek inscriptions and graduation marks, like the world's oldest scientific instrument, because that is exactly what it is.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The dials each have pins that follow their own spiral groove like a needle on a record player.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's as soon as we're used to foresee each lunar and solar eclipse decades in advance.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of thing we now rely on Google to tell us.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: All of these fragments once came together to create a mechanism that would have looked truly extraordinary.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yet the sheer amount of work that was needed to create it, the accuracy to which it measured, and calculating the constants to predict these events without digital aid, his heart for scientists to fathom even to this day.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: While digital computers are much more advanced now, at least the Greeks didn't have to worry about forgetting their passwords all the time.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's no secret that the Romans were great inventors.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were the originators of paved roads, concrete buildings, aqueducts, plumbing, and even the Julian calendar.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Without them, Western society wouldn't be anywhere near as advanced as it is today.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But one invention from this era has left scientists stomped.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: The like-curgous cup.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a Ford Century Cup made from glass and it's completely captivating.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: and worth describing before we get to the science.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a Jade Green Cup about the height of a large wine glass decorated with a carved scene of the mythological king like Gurgers, being entangled and consumed by great vines as punishment for offending the god Dionysus.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The carving is remarkably detailed with figures in high relief wrapping around the outside, but the color is what makes it unforgettable.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason it's captivating is not because it looks pretty but because the Romans designed it to turn completely different colors depending on the light.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the cup is lit from behind the front of it will turn a deep shade of red, but light it up from the front and its color will magically become green.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty cool, right?
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It took the Romans much more than magic to produce this effect, however.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They invented a type of glass-combed dichroic glass, which means two colors in Greek.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: They did this by grinding down gold and silver until they dissolved into a liquid-producing a colloid, but inside these metals are nanoparticles.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: nanobarticles are matter so small you can't see that with the human eye.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Inside the nanobarticles are electrons which vibrate when light hits the cup, changing the color of the refracted light depending on the observer's position.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's these super tiny particles within the glass that creates the stunning Tutone effect.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the thing is, scientists don't know how they manage to master such an advanced technique.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Especially since the Romans didn't have access to anything like microscopes and nanotechnology
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: For all, we know the Romans might have discovered it first, and then perfected its use without even knowing it.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though that seems unlikely.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some believe the discovery of this nanotechnology was just a happy coincidence, but whether it was intentional or not, you can still color me impressed.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: From microscopic nanobarticles in a Roman cup, let's scale things up.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Way up.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our next ancient mystery involves structures so enormous scientists still can't work out how mere humans built them.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever wondered what a city of giants would look like?
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything would be so big it would be impossible for a tiny little human to live there.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if you could visit a town occupied by a giant so it would probably look something like Oyanti Tambo.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: This ink and sight and burrou was likely built back in the mid-15th century and boy is it puzzled scientists.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Among the many gigantic structures that make up Oyonthai Donbot, the valley's ginormous steps are the most shocking.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: With each step reaching up to 13 feet, that's taller than a basketball hoop, taller than most room ceilings and 150 of them rising in sequence, the whole staircase looks more like a sheer cliff-based than anything a human was meant to climb.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no way they were made to be climbed by puny human legs.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most likely answer is that they had a system of robes and police to lift huge rocks over their heads, but there's no way of knowing for sure.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some researchers believe that the steps aren't real steps at all, though.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: They may have been part of a palace complex for the Emperor Pachakuti, the Inc. and ruler credited with rebuilding the entire village.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Others think they may have been card in terraces used to grow fruits and veg like modern greenhouses.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if they ever grew any bean stalks.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Giant City or not, it's one of the most mind-boggling and possible looking constructions in history.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, it's taken on a new lease of life as a tourist playground, and its multiple stone buildings, vast rectangular blocks of pale granite stacked and terraced rows, each tier receding slightly as they climb, though complex turning the hillside into a kind of stepped pyramid of human ambition, tower over every single visitor.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Brett taking his those ancient structures are not every mystery from the past is built on a grand scale, sometimes the most shocking discoveries come in the smallest packages.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to keep exploring ancient mysteries hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, because there's plenty more where this came from.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: At first glance, the Baghdad battery looks like nothing more than old junk.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Picture it, a plain, undecorated clay jar about five inches tall, no bigger than a small yogurt pot.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: With a rolled copper cylinder sitting inside and an iron rod running down through the center.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It looks like something you dig up in a garden and toss aside.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's so smart about a ceramic pot containing a tube of copper and a rod of iron?
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: The artifacts discovered in Baghdad Iraq had been dated between 206 AD when the Roman Empire ruled the land.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tests on the iron and copper cylinders reveal that a liquid was once inside the jars such as wine or vinegar.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Using an acidic liquid like this allows electrons to pass from the copper tube to the iron rod when these two metals are connected.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is because metals are made of charged particles called ions.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: When dissolved in liquid, these ions are able to move about freely, which then produces electricity.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: The real question, however, is how on earth they managed to figure this out.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, as with any scientific theory, some scholars wanted to debunk that battery idea.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in 1978, the experiment was put to the test with a replica Baghdad battery and some grape juice.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once constructed scientists actually managed to produce small amounts of electricity, it was confirmed that battery could generate one to two volts of electricity.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This kind of power could have been used for electroplating, where metals are coated with materials like gold and silver via an electric charge.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: This could have been used to upgrade boring old gray metals into luxury items.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some believe it was also used for electro therapy where your aches and pains were treated using electricity to cure transmosles.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But to this day, scientists continue to debate its true purpose, and it's unlikely we'll ever know for sure.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unless they find an agent to hear about, it's extremely annoying when something gruts beyond repair.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyone who's ever tried to write a bike with a rust that chain is exactly what I'm talking about.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If only there were some kind of technology that could project metal from rust.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh wait, there was, in the 5th century in Delhi, India and Ireland pillar was constructed to under the Hindu-God-Vish-New.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Reaching 23-V8 inches in height and weighing six and a half tons in total, the pillar is a deeper, reddish-black column of iron, slightly tapering as it rises, its surface covered in sand, script, and script shans.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It stands in the open courtyard of the Kutji Minar Complex and Delhi, and what strikes visitors first isn't its size, it's its color.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no orange, not a patch of rust anywhere on its surface.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: For a lump of exposed iron that has survived 16th centuries of monsoons in the open air, that should be completely impossible.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bowl is stood for over 1,600 years and yet it has never rusted.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is incredibly strange because when iron is exposed to air and water, a chemical reaction occurs called oxidization, which creates iron oxide, aka rust.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, despite being erected in the open and exposed to the extreme heat and humidity of the area, this billor has been completely resistant to such corrosion.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Scientists believe there must have been a great deal of care taken when extracting and processing the metal which resulted in a layer of miso white coating the pillar.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a compound mix of iron, oxygen, and hydrogen.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the gas.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The resulting alloy of which does not rust.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: How exactly they did this though, no one sure, because its existence was only predicted in 1970, at which point no one had actually seen it or realized the ancient
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Scientists are still racking their brains trying to figure out how this technology was developed with company spending top-dell at a fine ways of creating missile-white themselves.
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, 1600 years ago, people of the time forged a metal that would not rest with comparatively rudimentary knowledge and tools.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: That just goes to show how incredibly complex and ingenious the art of metallurgy as, and also how cheap my bike is.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of feats that seem impossible with the tools of the time, let's head back to Ancient Pyrroo, where the Inkins were pulling off something even more mind-bending.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just looking at a hill is enough to get me out of breath, but somehow the ancient Inkins were powering up that hill with giant boulders in tow, all to build a humongous structure.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mountain itself is about half the height of Mount Everest, with the base of the ancient citadel found it over 12,000 feet.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The longest of the three remaining walls is over 1300 feet long, and 120 feet tall, with the largest blocks varying from a hefty 141 to 222 tons.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: From a distance the walls look like natural rock formations, just another part of the Indian hillside.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But walk up close and the scale hits you.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each stone face is slightly different, convex here, angled there, fitted against his neighbors without a gap, as though the stones were born in position.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The joins look almost drawn on.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels impossible picturing human hands constructing this monolithic fortress that alone moving each mega block into place, but it's definitely there.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: How it was built, though, no one knows.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Built back some time in the 15th century, the Incans used dry stone to construct the citadel placing each of the rocks together so perfectly, there was no need to bind them with mortar.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're fused together so tightly that even after 600 years, they're still stable.
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Rock Solid Formation has even helped the ruins survive the deadliest of earthquakes.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: They gaps between the rocks are so tight not even as single piece of paper or the point of a pen can fit through where the stones mate.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Its construction would have required precision and planning beyond anything the modern world has ever seen.
• 14:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't have been a light work either, with even the smallest blocks roughly weighing more than a blue whale.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how they managed to stack them so perfectly without cranes or heavy lifting equipment is a complete mystery.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, I'm thinking about exercise again.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Moving on from colossal stone structures, our next ancient mystery comes in a far more portable form, but it was no less revolutionary.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over a thousand years ago, in serious capital of Damascus, the local blacksmiths here were known as legendary weapon makers.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not because they made the biggest weapons or even the most advanced, in fact, their
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: At this time, Iron was used for most simple short-bladed weapons as the metal was strong and tough, but the blades were prone to breaking as Iron doesn't have a high elastic limit.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: They would add carbon to try and make blades more flexible, but too much carbon made the metal brittle and prone to shattering.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the blacksmiths of Damascus sourced iron ore with the perfect carbon content known as VOOT STILL, which gave the swords that all in board and high elastic index.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: These VOOT's ingots were expertly forged into long Damascus blades which became right now for being tough but flexible.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Resistance is shattering, and we're easily identifiable from the distinctive patterns of banding found along them.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Swirling, flowing markings that look like wood grain or rippling water caught in silver and dark grey, running the full length of the blade and shifting in the light as the sword moves.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: No two blades had exactly the same pattern which made them as individually identifiable as a finger print.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their reputation inspired legends, with swords of Damascus steel, failed to be able to slice cleanly through rifle barrels, tree trunks, and even rocks.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Initially scientists dismissed this legend, as the steel had been strong but not that strong, surely.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, on closer inspection of Damascus steel relics in 2006, scientists discovered carbon nanotubes in one of the blades.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This meant the blade was super plastic, able to deform well beyond its usual breaking point, while being super hard at the exact same time.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Scientists have been left baffled ever since by exactly how such an incredible metal was created at the time.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while you can't buy similar pattern layer Damascus steel today, real Damascus steel hasn't been crafted in over 300 years.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, at least that cut to the point.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Damascus blades aren't the only weapons that have left scientists scratching their heads.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over in China, the discovery of the sort of Gujan has had an equally baffling effect.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The 22-inch long blade at 3.3-inch hilt of this 10-bron sword was discovered in an ancient tomb back in 1965.
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And from its appearance, you'd never guess it was more than 2400 years old.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It looks like it was made last week.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The blade carries a cold blue grey luster.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The edges are still razor sharp.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The hill doesn't lead with turquoise and pale crystal, and the bronze guard is decorated with geometric patterns in perfect relief.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It looks like a museum reproduction, but it's most certainly not.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Baffling to scientists, I'm sure.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: A fire that gets out of control can be incredibly dangerous, which is exactly why the Byzantine Empire hardest firepower for war.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to historical records and illustrations, Greedfire was an incendiary weapon utilized by the Byzantine Empire around 670 CE.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: One that was able to burn ships even as they were surrounded by water.
• 18:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: How?
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: By setting the very water ablaze, too.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, very little is known about the death delivery device itself as records around it are incomplete.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It could have been as big as a building or smaller than a car.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: but the power of this invention came from the fuel used to feed such a destructive fire.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Historians have never found the exact ingredients meaning we'd never be able to recreate it again.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's probably a good thing for us, but for the Byzantines, it was an essential part of their weapons arsenal.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's likely that Petrol or NAFTA, which is another highly flammable liquid, was mixed together with sulfur or pitch.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pitch itself is made from petroleum and coal tar, a very powerful substance that repels water, making it capable of forming a coat on the water's surface that was able to burn and offer their enemies no respite.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Picture a Byzantine warship in the Dark Sea, at the bow, a large bronze nozzle mounted to a bellows-like device aimed at the enemy fleet.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The operator opens the valve and a pressurized jet of blazing liquid, brilliant orange throwing off black smoke, arcs out across the water.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fire lands on the surface and keeps burning, rolling with the waves, spreading outward completely in different to the water beneath it.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The enemy crew can't doubt it and can't escape it.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is Greek fire for you.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: While scientists generally agree that the Byzantines use pressurized nozzles to aim this deadly liquid at their foes, they have no idea how they'd
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ancient Roman era is known for its beautiful sculptures with bus statues and relieves carved out an immaculate detail in order to preserve a scene or person from history.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, one carving in particular really intrigues the historical and scientific communities.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: One particular column drum.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not for how round it is or what building it was meant for, but for the incisions lined up perfectly along it.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine four parallel grooves running across the face of the stone like scratches from some enormous claw.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each one perfectly equal distant from the next each cut to the exact same depth each as clean and deliberate as if scored by a machine.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those deep cuts could only have been made by four separate saw blades separated by a few
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their consistency and the power needed to achieve this can only have come from a machine.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But ancient Rome existed between the 8th century BCE to 476 CE, more than a thousand years before modern sewing machinery was invented.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how was this even possible?
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: While it relieved carved into the sarcophagus of a long dead Miller might hold the answer,
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: In it, a mechanical contraption appears seemingly put together, and they are remarkable, and while it seems like some sort of complex, rude gold-birth machine.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: the science behind it appears to make sense.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Think of an old farmhouse mill will.
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: The kind that sits in a river in terms lazily in the current.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now imagine that instead of grinding grain, its rotation is being converted through a series of interlocking cogs into a back and forth sawing motion, driving two stone blades in perfect sync above a block of rock.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is, in essence, what the Romans appeared to have built.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Water drives the wheel, which has a cog extended on a pole attached to it.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: To an outsider, this mysterious tech might look like a bunch of stones, which, to be honest, is true, but they're the most famous bunch of stones around, aside from the Rolling Stones.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that's another story.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though I'm talking about Stonehenge, situated in an empty field in Wiltshire, England, this famous ring of rocks has been standing some 13 feet high since the Neolithic period.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: A leave to have taken hundreds of years to a wreck between 3,500 BCE.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: For anyone who hasn't seen it, Stonehenge is a circle of enormous standing stone, summarizing over 13 feet, top with horizontal stone lentils that lock into place via carved joints, like a giant version of inner locking toy bricks.
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The stones have a blue great quality in the flat English light, the structure sits alone in the middle of an entirely flat landscape open chalk, downland, and every direction.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: No hills, no trees, just these ancient stones arranged in a pattern that still isn't fully understood.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't a simple case of digging these stones out of the ground and standing them up, though.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: These rocks were moved from one place to the other, then stacked high like building blocks.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: How was this technology available so long ago?
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Based on their geological make-up, it's believed they must have been transported from several hundred miles away, likely from one quarry in the Malboro Downs and another in the Pricelli Hills.
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once they arrived, they must have hauled them over their heads, each weighing over two tons, and planned a very specific formation.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: All this, but at the time, the most advanced Neolithic tools were still limited to just spears and wheels.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how on earth did they manage such a feat?
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Experts assume that the several hundred if not thousands of people involved dug large holes, the stones were hauled into position, and then dragged up right into the hole with the use of an A-frame.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: September platforms are then believed to have been used to raise the horizontal stones onto the others, exactly how though still isn't known.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds simple, but for people working with rudimentary tools 5,000 years ago, it just seems impossible.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I can barely build an IKEA shelf, and that's without.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you draw a perfect circle for your hand?
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't even imagine a straight line for your hand.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So imagine the technology and strategy that it took to draw a near perfectly circular pattern, the size of a football field.
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about the NASCAR lines, a collection of geoglyphs, so called because their symbols cart into the ground, etched permanently into the Peruvian Desert.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The combined length of all the lines reaches over in astonishing 800 miles, which, for some perspective, is over 14,000 football pitches long.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: While scientists know they were created by making shallow incisions in the sand, leaving the dirt beneath the exposed, the real question is, how did their creators do this with such accuracy?
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while it's fairly easy for us to make out all of the different shapes that animals by getting up high with helicopters and drones, among the most famous a hummingbird with wingspanning over 200 feet, a monkey with an enormous spiraling tail, a spider rendered with geometric precision, a condor with a wingspan of nearly 450 feet.
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each one, John and a single unbroken line, as if lifted from one continuous stroke.
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unless they could fly, there was no way they could have fully seen what they were drawing.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Experts believe they would have traced their giant glyphs using nothing but guesswork optimism and perhaps some guidance from the stars.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But they're too good to be guesswork.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there must have been some ancient technology or long-law strategy that helped them along the way.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's also no way of knowing why they were made, either.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: They could have been symbols used as their gods and goddesses for help, or they could have formed an astronomical calendar to keep track of the days and nights.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's simply, scientists don't know what they are.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: One thing we do know, though, is that the Incans made sure we'd never lose sight of them.
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which technology do you wish you knew the secrets behind, and which one do you hope stays hidden for the rest of time?
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let us know on social media or leave us a review, and thanks for listening.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is gonna be the best.