[lowmagnet]

There are countless examples of people finding evidence of ancient peoples who were capable of great engineering feats like pyramids and other structures with simple tools and techniques. To state that aliens must have played in their construction is, to put it mildly, arrogant. (I'm a lot of cases, culturally chauvinistic and/or racist)

[keepamovin]

Agreed. Why couldn't we simply have had a pre-existing Earth civilization that arose, developed technology/industry, and faded away, leaving only resilient megalithic traces?

[Yizahi]

There is ZERO evidence for such a civilization. Especially because there are no resilient megalithic traces in the first place. Megaliths we see are only 5-6 thousand years old and have a lot of matching real evidence about people who built them and how they did it.

[Tadpole9181]

And they:

- Didn't affect the atmosphere in any way. - Had all their buildings were recorded as being built by a people we know much about in specific timelines we know much about, which aligns with archeological artifacts. - Made sure none of their lithics stayed. - Used no fuel source. - Did no mining of any kind. - Never used anything but stone and paper machete for building (because even wood structures leave identifiable patterns for potentially thousands of years). - Only used that stone for a couple buildings, which they planned for the cultures that didn't exist to use intimately. - Had their bones dissolved without a trace.

All we have to do is remove any type of evidence-based science and anything is possible!

[PorterBHall]

It’s unsettling to think that humanity has lost knowledge it once had, but it happens all the time. Anyone here know how to harness a horse to a buggy?

[IAmBroom]

Speaking as someone who lives near Amish country, with friends who enjoy carriage racing... Yes, lots of people do.

It's not certain that much knowledge has been lost, although much of it is in "endangered" status of preservation. There's a kind of silk netting made from the hairlike tufts of a certain species of clams, only practiced by two people IIRC.

Some lost knowledge is being rediscovered. A well-known example is making Damascus steel; it's now so ordinary you can order it online.

[Tadpole9181]

What? We build skyscrapers and supersonic jets and computer chips with nanometer precision now. We haven't "lost" anything. This is just blind worship to some ancient, primitive knowledge that never existed. The past 10,000 years has just been normal people living normal lives.

And, yes, I feel confident that with a few weeks, a rope, and a really good reason - almost any American could strap a horse to a buggy. It's not rocket science and countless humans have done it before.