By John F. Sase
“How could it be possible for a Neolithic Society to have engineered the monuments we find today?”
– T. B. Pawlicki, American author and construction supervisor, “Megalithic Engineering: How to Build Stonehenge and the Pyramids with Bronze Age Technology,” in “How to Build a Flying Saucer and Other Proposals in Speculative Engineering” (Prentice Hall, 1981)
This month, we continue our journey along the path of the Law and Economics of Real Estate. In order to understand the meaning of this knowledge more fully, we need to revisit artifacts from our earliest history as human beings. Much of the current information about ancient cultures has not survived in words. However, it continues for our reading through the ancient stone structures that have survived the ages. We can continue to identify the fundamentals of our universal language of mathematics in the shape, placement, and alignment of these stones, which are protected by state, national, and global law.
In our opening quote, Pawlicki raises the question that archeologists and other scientists have debated and have attempted to explain for centuries and on which engineers have offered their opinions. Responding in his essay in How to Build a Flying Saucer, Pawlicki offers some clear and plausible explanations.
Having worked for several years in heavy-earth construction, including the supervision of a site-project in an industrial town, Pawlicki discusses various standard techniques that were used by the ancients. He explains that these methods, which prove both simple and economical, have been passed down in the trade through experience and oral tradition from one generation to the next since time immemorial.
With respect to the construction of Stonehenge, Pawlicki addresses the challenge of lifting exceedingly massive lintels (the horizontal stones atop the columns). He explains that the Neolithic construction crews probably raised these stones to the top of the posts by a modification of the technique that they used to erect the vertical columns. Pawlicki states, “First the crew had to buttress the uprights with timbers and earthen fill…. When the lintel is brought to the base of the buttress on its boat (a wooden sled for moving large stones along timber rails), an H-frame is raised on stone pads on the other side of the arch. Lines are fastened to the stoneboat and thrown over the legs of the H-frame. The weight of a ballast box suspended by the lines keeps the H-frame upright. A chain gang mounts a scaffold and fills the ballast box with stones. If the distance over which the box will fall is measured carefully to equal the distance the lintel must rise, the H-frame will slowly rotate on its bottom legs, drawing the lintel up the ramp on the buttress until it comes to a gentle stop right above the pins receiving it.”
Pawlicki continues by discussing the practical ways in which a Bronze Age crew could move large stones over great distances economically, including taking advantage of changes in elevations by lifting the stone only once to a high point. Then, the crew would use gravity to move the stone the remainder of the distance by sliding it downhill.
Setting Stones on the Pyramids
Regarding the Pyramids at Giza, Pawlicki suggests that workmen would not have used the same kind of engineering as at Stonehenge in a competitive industry, even though earthen ramps (such as the buttresses at Stonehenge) would have been plausible. In moving thousands of large stones, the earthen ramps would have deteriorated quickly under continuous and heavy use because earth flows under pressure.
Pawlicki asserts that the way that a Bronze Age crew would have raised the stones to their level of placement likely would have involved building two wooden skidways that went up opposite sides of the pyramid. Then, this crew would have attached a rope to the stoneboat, would have run this line over two primitive pulleys that were mounted on the flat top of the incomplete pyramid, and would have thrown the rope to the other side. By tying a rock-filled ballast-box to equal the weight of the stone being raised, the crew would have slid this box down the skids on the opposite side of the pyramid, thus drawing the structural stone slowly to the top.
Addressing the matter of precision, Pawlicki states that apprentices would have dressed the surfaces of the stones already in place. The skilled crew then would have mounted the new stone atop long bags filled with sand while spreading an incline made of wet clay underneath the stone. By slowly emptying the sand bags, the stone would settle down onto the wet clay. The most difficult part of the operation would have been for the assistants to pull out the empty bags from underneath the stone quickly without losing one of their hands.
Meanwhile, the skilled crew would guide the stone gently while squeezing the wet clay out from underneath slowly and completely. Given the slight incline of the clay platform, skilled stone-setters could guide the new stone to its rest, an operation often achieving the precision of within a millimeter. In conclusion, Pawlicki notes that it is Economics rather than Physics that lead modern stone-setters to adhere to standard tolerances of a quarter of an inch rather than a millimeter. In the Twenty-First-Century CE, the time-value of skilled stone-setters is much more expensive, relative to the cost of the same labor in ancient Egypt. In comparison to our modern methods, Bronze Age systems represented low technology/high labor-intensity work. At that time, labor was cheap. However, in respect to efficiency, we can hardly improve upon it today.
The Repurposing of Earlier Sites
In the recent millennium, we often have built “modern” structures atop ancient pagan sites. In France and elsewhere, the Church of Rome erected anew or purposely converted many religious monuments over pre-Christian temples. At the Cathedral of Notre Dame, this conversion of space helped to facilitate the transfer of worship from a water goddess to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who then assumed the additional name of “Star of the Sea.”
Such endeavors also aided in the transfer of the adoration of various sun gods to St. John the Baptist in the early Christian world. Alternately, Charlemagne and other rulers took more extreme measures in their destruction of the Saxon shrine of Heresburg, the center of mother-goddess worship, and Irminsul (“Great Pillar”), the sacred world tree of the Saxons cared for by the mystical Koenigs of their tribe in Northern Germany.
Christian Rome continued to build churches over ancient structures in order to assimilate pagan rituals rather than to oppose their practitioners directly. These reconstructions served more than one purpose. For example, a Celtic sun-temple may have stood beneath the chapel at Lanleff, France. Some architectural historians assert that the Cisterian monks of St. Bernard replicated the former pagan purpose as a site of worship in the design of their own chapel.
Associated with Saint-Sulpice in Paris, we find that the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, a Catholic secret society formed in the Seventeenth Century, included St. Vincent de Paul, who has remained noted for his work in caring for the impoverished of Paris. On a more political side, the company served as the foundation for those who built the city of Montreal in New France (Canada).
However, Montreal developed atop of a more ancient city. The Earlier-Nation had named their village Hochelaga. Based upon the description given by the French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1535 CE, the settlement of Hochelaga stood as a planned village that contained numerous streets laid out in a grid pattern with a central plaza. Ancient Hochelaga remains a district of the new city, named Montreal by Cartier, possibly from the French spelling of the Algonquian word for the dormant volcano that exists in the city (Mount Royal). The City of Montreal shares its name with a
Templar castle in the Languedoc region of France. Hence, the name is a befitting tribute by the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrament, which desired to make Montreal the new Arcadia, where diversity, science and open-mindedness would be tolerated.
Flat Earth?
Let us consider the great many archeological sites around the world. One belief exists that pyramids and other temples that we have identified in recent centuries have aligned locally on our “Flat Earth.” This conjecture of “flatness” held back our development of knowledge and understanding of human life on this planet.
Through recent centuries, we have chosen to explore and to measure an abundance of sites built by cultures presumed more ignorant than ourselves. Our false pride in this belief has “cometh before the fall” as we continue to face the challenge of dating hundreds of sites built before modern times. In addition, more recent research has led to the discovery that these ancient temples and related structures have been aligned with one another around the globe since the early times of the human era.
Until recent decades, the challenge of dating these ancient ruins continues to rest on the dating of non-organic material such as rocks. For example, a variety of pyramidal structures have been identified around the globe. However, apart from climate-wear, we continue to encounter problems in dating them accurately.
In recent years, American Graduate Engineer (engineering degree from a technical university) Mario Buildreps (www.mariobuildreps.com/author/) has undertaken the task of locating hundreds of ancient stone ruins set around our planet and has studied the alignment of these structures to our present North Pole and half-a-dozen other points along the 42nd degree (41.7o) of Longitude that extends through the North and South Atlantic Ocean from Pole to Pole.
Ongoing debates continue among many geologists as to whether or not the pair of Poles of our planet shifted position during the distant past. However, many in that profession continue to question the Pole-Shift Hypothesis. The event of these shifts continues to remain disregarded by many in the scientific community thus far. The geological community remains split as to whether or not such a phenomenon could be physically possible. Buildreps has invested large amounts of time and money into the identification, exploration, and measurement of more than three hundred ancient sites around the globe. In doing so, he has discovered that the site-lines of these ancient temples, pyramids, and related structures, located east and west of the 41.7o Meridian, cross one another at five or more points along that meridian.
The conundrum centers on the discovery and the measurement of many ancient ruins in specific areas around our planet. Of those discovered and unearthed to date, more than a dozen sites appear to be oriented to the North Pole. As of 2022, Buildreps has studied and mapped at least twenty-three sites throughout Central and South America; six in Western Europe; five in the mid-
Mediterranean area; eighteen in the Middle East; ten in Southeast Asia; and seven on mainland China.
Buildreps theorizes that early architects erected the remaining sites to face the North Pole as well as the same four latitude/longitude points further south in the Atlantic Ocean. He posits that these architects built these additional sites during a period dating back many millennia due to shifts in the poles. True or not true? Those remain our questions.
With this in mind, let us suggest an alternative theory. While reviewing the Buildrep alignments, I (Dr. Sase) noticed that the mathematical principle generally known as the Pythagorean Scale materializes in the sequence of points along the 41.7o Meridian identified by Buildreps. Even if we assume that the poles of the Earth have not shifted, the appearance of these cross-points still prove significant. The cross-points become target-points for the alignment of the many ancient structures. We might consider that these alignments have served the purpose of navigation upon land and sea with an understanding that the Earth was never considered flat by ancient builders and explorers, who possessed the knowledge of a spherical planet.
Simplified Math of Pythagoras
Pythagoras (c. 580 – 500 BCE), the mathematician and polymath of Ancient Greece, sought his early education at Alexandria, Egypt, and journeyed to more remote corners of the Earth during his younger decades. He appears to have drawn much of his knowledge from his mentors in earlier cultures around our planet. The influence of Pythagoras now informs much of our current Western thought.
Considering the mathematics of Pythagoras as valid does not necessarily refute the concept of the Polar Shifts. However, even without reference to multiple polar-shifts, his inherent mathematics explain the multiple alignment-points along the 41.7o Meridian.
Let us keep the math as simple as possible as we examine the relation between the concepts that Pythagoras popularized and the “harmonized” site-lines of hundreds or more ancient structures. In order to recreate the ancient math behind the measured alignment of ancient sites, let us begin with three Pythagorean sequences of numbers known as the Snake (1, 2, 3, & 4); the Plant (4, 5, 6, & 7); and the Eye (7, 8, 9, & 10). We notice that the fourth numeral of the first set becomes the first number of the second set. Likewise, the fourth numeral of the second set becomes the first number of the third set.
Our next step requires us to start with the number 1 at the fulcrum-midpoint of the T-shape in the following diagram labeled “POWERS of 2 & 3.” We notice that the corresponding value for the midpoint of the T-formation equals any number taken to the 0 (zero) power. From this starting point, we move horizontally right and left away from this center point. We take the number 2 to the powers identical to the horizontal series of the twelve other values created in the Pythagorean Snake, Plant, & Eye diagram.
We use these thirteen numeric values to create a row of the exponential powers of 2, such 2 to the 0 power equals 1, 2 to the 1st power equals 2, and so forth up to 2 to the 10th power equals 1,024 using the pattern of numbers in the preceding Snake, Plant, & Eye diagram.
Determining the remaining six vertical values only requires that we take the prime number 3 to the powers of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 as we move vertically downward along the trunk of the T.
The next step of our puzzle requires that we divide the numbers in column V by the ones in the left side of row H. In other terms, we divide the sequence-column numbers of 3 through 729 by their respective numbers of 2 through 512 found along the left-side horizontal arm of the T. We place these dividend results in the diagonal of sequential boxes that extend downward to the left from the number 1. We perform the other set of calculations in reverse by dividing the row numbers of 4 through 1,024 along the right-side arm by their respective vertical numbers of 3 through 729 (H divided by V) and placing their results in the diagonal boxes extending downward to the right.
Standardizing Our Numbers
Using the numbers from the two diagonal groups created above, we determine the products of the number 432 times each of the thirteen diagonal values that we calculated above. For an audible demonstration of the results of this multiplication, we can hear each of the values as vibrations-per-second if played on a musical instrument tuned to the precision of the resulting notes that we can play on a zither, a piano, a guitar, a trombone, or a similar modern musical instrument. (This bottom row of numbers that identify as vibrations-per-second is known as hertz (Hz), the unit of frequency in the International System of Units. Defined as one cycle of vibration-per-second, hertz is named after Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894), the German physicist who first provided conclusive proof of the existence of electromagnetic waves.)
Note: We may hear the unique oddity of the Pythagorean scale at the middle of the bottom line. Here, the two close numbers of 607 and 615 in the sequence labeled as the musical notes D# and Eb generally appear as an identical tone in modern standard tuning. Though not sounded with accuracy on traditional pianos, we do find it easy to replicate this oddity by moving the portamento wheel of an electronic-keyboard synthesizer, by bending a string on a guitar or violin, or by slurring the pitch on one of many wind instruments.
We mention this oddity in some detail because the mathematics constructed on the preceding chart provide a critical clue to the probable meaning of corresponding alignments perceived among hundreds of ancient stone structures. The site-lines of these structures converge to a series of points along the 41.7o line of Longitude in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
(Continued) ...
