Who Were The Greatest Ancient Builders? Ancient structures are all over the planet. An ancient structure can be hundreds of years old or tens of thousands of years old. I guess it also depends where you live, because in some places which are hundreds of years old are not considered ancient by the residents. Take a country like Italy for example, in some towns a few hundred year old building would be no big deal to a country which has Roman buildings and structures all over the place. If we want to go back even further, Turkey is another place which has structures which are even older. It always amazed me how with a little care, a building which were thousands of years old could still exist when in our country, the United States, most everything is fairly new. Every once in a while, the question comes up of who were the greatest ancient builders. It is such a hard question to answer because of the ancient civilizations we know existed, many were great builders. There are two types of ancient construction, ones where we have ruins or intact structures and others when they no longer exist, but have been written about. An example of one which was written about by Greek historians was an incredible Egyptian building. It was called the Labyrinth and contained mazes. It was said to have been built by pharaoh Amenemhet III in the 19th century BC. It had thousands of rooms. Archaeologists have looked for this incredible structure which two ancient Greek historians went to see and wrote about and the archaeologists were convinced they found the site, but nothing remains of the structure. It was believed until recently the Sumerians were the first race to build grand structures. This changed when archaeologists thought they might have found clues indicating a much older race of builders existed and now believe that is where the Sumerians may have gotten their knowledge of building from. Archaeologists have found a stone calendar which they had dated from at least 100,000 years ago. Could this older unknown race have constructed it, or were there even older races on this planet that learned how to create structures? Another question might also be, could some of the structures we have dated and given credit to certain civilizations for building, be wrong? Could they be a lot older and built by older civilizations? Scientists are thinking the stone calendar is connected to some other ruins in Southern Africa and they could be a lot older than first thought. Could this apply to other structures? Why not, no one is perfect not even archaeologists and other scientists, and dating a structure, especially a stone one is a tricky business. An example of archaeologists making an error has to do with a pilot who reported strange circular objects. He was told they dated to the 14th century through the 18th century. One pilot had crashed in the area and discovered one structure was the 100,000 year old stone calendar and now it is believed at least some of the other circles may be just as ancient. If we go back to the question of who were the greatest ancient builders does it depend on how difficult it was to build a certain type of structure or how beautiful it was? Some might say the Ancient Egyptians were the greatest builders and they could be correct according to some scientists, but I have my favorites. I think the Romans were among the greats because they conquered every obstacle in their way and even made water run uphill. Surprisingly, I say the greatest could be the Inca. Many might argue with me over this choice but I have to point to Machu Picchu which was built by them in the 15th century. What makes it so amazing is the fact the stone structures were built atop a mountain which was almost 8,000 feet high. Huge stones were fitted together without mortar in a style known as Ashlar. The Inca were very smart because they knew stones without mortar were more resistant to earthquakes. They had no hard metals and yet were able to build this incredible city on the top of the mountain. Some of the stones weighed over 50 tons. How could the Inca have hauled 50 ton stones to the top of a mountain? This really seems like an impossible task. This is why I think they may have been the greatest builders of all or at least gave the Romans a run for their money. While the Romans were great engineers and builders, they did have a foundation to build on, no pun intended. They had great builders in the past which they could copy from. The ancient Egyptians were an older race of wonderful builders and so were the ancient Greeks. As a matter of fact, many times a Roman structure would look a lot like a Greek one. All one has to do is look at the temples. Ancient races must have known something we don’t know about today and that is how to move huge rocks. The ancient Egyptians would move 200 ton obelisks long distances. They used heavy stone in construction including the pyramids. There is a theory held by some which states the Egyptians didn’t build the Great Pyramid or Sphinx, but inherited it from an older race. The Egyptian government hates to hear this and angrily denies it. Some point to the fact the Great Pyramid has water marks on it and the last time the Giza Plateau was flooded was about 10,000 years ago or more. They also point to the fact the head on the Sphinx has been replaced and the current one is too small for the body. Could an older race have existed before Egypt and was it responsible for some of the construction? I personally wouldn’t be surprised if we found even more ancient races existed in North and South America. Just because we don’t think we have found evidence of their existence doesn’t mean they were never here. We just keep finding things which seem to get older all the time. The deeper one digs into the earth, the further back in time they go. We don’t know what is waiting for us to find at deeper ranges. What we could find could change the entire way we think about our history. The dates for modern man to have populated the earth keep getting moved back and who knows how much further back this will go. The earth is pretty old leaving plenty of time in the past for other races to exist.
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