loveritas wrote:

> Hi Corpuscles,
>
> Those Indian temples display an absolute staggering level of
> expertise in granite sculpture.
>
> Simply amazing!
>
> As for being a "fresh thinker" (a term invented by a complete
> dunderhead, who shall remain nameless, to describe himself),
> sorry, but after that post it is extremely doubtful that you
> would qualify.
>
> lover
>
> PS. However, the jury is still considering the "deluded"
> comment for appropriateness, but it's also appearing to be
> highly unlikely that you will be allowed to use such an
> adjective in any further personal description.
>

Before you folks get hurt chest bumping each other, let me remind you that no one has said granite wasn't worked anywhere else in the world. The allegation that anyone is claiming that no one on planet Earth knew how to work granite during that time has come up a few times recently, and it is baseless. You are misunderstanding what's being said here (I will assume it's not a deliberate twisting of words).

You talk as though there is no precedent for a civilization constraining its technology from other civilizations.

Today, nuclear energy is just one example. Does anyone doubt that certain countries are preventing others from sharing the technology? I do not doubt that the entire planet Earth has any nuclear technology just because Libia or Syria do not.

Regarding granite in Europe, is there any dispute that in the past millennium, Europe was not capable of any significant precision granite work until the 18th century AD, despite its longstanding access to iron technology?

Likewise, back in the Old Kingdom there is zero evidence the dynastic civilization had any access to iron technology or other tools to achieve the precision in granite stonework we see in the ruins today, while many consider Mesopotamia to have had iron technology a full 1000 years before Egypt.

And so, considering such precedents along with the accepted notion that Renaissance Italy did not have granite working technology and simply repurposed columns from Egypt, despite all of the other excellent examples of granite stonework elsewhere on Earth, the only point of contention that I (and perhaps Jon) have exprerssed is that I'd like to see direct evidence that the early AD Roman Empire hewn and shaped granite from the quarries for such large scale industrial purposes such as Hadrian's Pantheon vs. repurposing such granite objects that were pre-existing and were merely reshaped to add the ornamentals using sculptural chisels.

From all that I've seen from Mons Claudianus, there is compelling evidence that those granite artifacts were not quarried by the Romans but rather were originally part of the infrastructure of far older structures within those settlements and that any "quarrying" done by the Romans at those sites might better resemble the "quarrying" that was done on G1/G2 when post-dynastic Egypt needed an easy source of industrial stone they could repurpose, e.g., for their mosques.

Please stop over-reaching the scope of the contention.



Post Edited (19-Jun-15 16:27)