So why did the ancient aliens build everything out of stone?

[Travis]

Many years before the invention of Youtube

"B'larch. Come here. I was thinking, so long as we are on this planet maybe we could build some monuments to our technological dominance. I was thinking we'd do this by using only locally available materials and using only construction techniques currently in use by the natives. I know, I know you are probably wondering why not use Impposiblinium and fabricate it using our new multiquantum channel restabilizers but I think my way is more.....mysterious.

You see when we come back thousands of orbits from now to kill and dissect animals they use as food for unknown reasons we will find them still debating if we even built the monuments."



Hey that's the best I could come up with. The ancient aliens were eccentric.

[Sonny2]

Well Jeez, that's easy. Plastics.Not.Yet.Invented.

[Travis]

So the ancient aliens had no plastics?

Wow. No wonder they eventually decided to cut up cows for no reason.

[Sonny2]

That wasn't from a lack of plastics, that was cause they were eccentric.

[lexicon008]

"So why did the ancient aliens build everything out of stone?"

well thats easy..egyptians pyramids..several thousand years still standing
mexican pyramids..hundreds to thousands of years..still standing
roman colloseum and greek structures..thousands of years and still standing

Hit a couple modern skyscrapers with a couple planes and light some fires...destroyed in less then 2 hours...lol

but seriously..it's probably reasonable that you don't want to take an inferior species from flint knives and rock carvings to lasers and advanced carbon fibers over night..and who knows..maybe they planned to do that and other things happened.
I find it quite interesting the level of knowledge our ancestors had and all they really needed was the right push (that seems to have never come) to have advanced us far beyond where we are now.

[Jerrymander]

And lets give them out of date light blubs.

[Lucian]

Actually, stone was a huge advancement for the ancient aliens. The first bunch of aliens used straw, but then the Great Space Wolf huffed, and he puffed, and he blew their pyramid down. The stick pyramid suffered the similar fate.

[tyr_13]

Originally Posted by lexicon008

"So why did the ancient aliens build everything out of stone?"

well thats easy..egyptians pyramids..several thousand years still standing
mexican pyramids..hundreds to thousands of years..still standing
roman colloseum and greek structures..thousands of years and still standing Many of which utilize concrete a more advance technique than simply stone alone

Hit a couple modern skyscrapers with a couple planes and light some fires...destroyed in less then 2 hours...lol

but seriously..it's probably reasonable that you don't want to take an inferior species from flint knives and rock carvings to lasers and advanced carbon fibers over night..and who knows..maybe they planned to do that and other things happened.
I find it quite interesting the level of knowledge our ancestors had and all they really needed was the right push (that seems to have never come) to have advanced us far beyond where we are now.

Fixed some of that for you.

[Redtail]

They didn't. They just built it so long ago that the tiberium alloy was petrified.

[mrgrouch]

Originally Posted by Sonny2

Well Jeez, that's easy. Plastics.Not.Yet.Invented.

of course aliens knew the primitive material we call plastic, they stopped using fosil fuel byproducts ions ago, sadly by then the contamination of their own planet was irreversible. that's why they were looking for other planets.

[Sonny2]

No, no, that's not what I meant. Of course aliens had plastics. It was the lowly stupid Erthlings who didn't. Thus they got stone.

[SUSpilot]

Originally Posted by Travis

Many years before the invention of Youtube

"B'larch. Come here. I was thinking, so long as we are on this planet maybe we could build some monuments to our technological dominance. I was thinking we'd do this by using only locally available materials and using only construction techniques currently in use by the natives. I know, I know you are probably wondering why not use Impposiblinium and fabricate it using our new multiquantum channel restabilizers but I think my way is more.....mysterious.

You see when we come back thousands of orbits from now to kill and dissect animals they use as food for unknown reasons we will find them still debating if we even built the monuments."



Hey that's the best I could come up with. The ancient aliens were eccentric.

Wow - its interesting that while reading that, I imagined it in Shatner's voice and inflection...

[SUSpilot]

Originally Posted by Sonny2

No, no, that's not what I meant. Of course aliens had plastics. It was the lowly stupid Erthlings who didn't. Thus they got stone.

Actually, in every generation of humanity, they choose one member of the race through which to channel. My generation, it was Bob Dylan. He was trying to pass on a message about how to build for the ages.

What? You never heard of Everyone Must Get Stoned?

[sol]

well, with all the energy it takes to fling a few crews in casserole dishes half way across the galaxy i doubt they bring along a construction trailer and just use the local materials.

[Correa Neto]

"So, why did..."
42.

[Travis]

Originally Posted by SUSpilot

Wow - its interesting that while reading that, I imagined it in Shatner's voice and inflection...

Goodness now I can't get that out of my head.

"...mysterious."

Originally Posted by sol

well, with all the energy it takes to fling a few crews in casserole dishes half way across the galaxy i doubt they bring along a construction trailer and just use the local materials.

Well everything we've built since has been with materials of this planet too. I just find it odd that the aliens only used materials that were on par with what the locals were already using instead of...I don't know....introducing them to refined alloys or just freaking concrete.

[OnlyTellsTruths]

If they used something technologically advanced it would be a sure tip-off that it was them and not the locals.

Using stone gave them plausible deniability.

Duh.

[pakeha]

Stone rocks, travis.

[Travis]

Originally Posted by OnlyTellsTruths

If they used something technologically advanced it would be a sure tip-off that it was them and not the locals.

Using stone gave them plausible deniability.

Duh.

And why did they want plausible deniability?

[Soapy Sam]

Look, we all know flying saucers crash. A lot. In fact, they have the sort of safety record the CAA would ban them for. They make Aeroflot look like a good bet.

So, they crashed. But the inertial dampers in their seatbelts saved them and they tried to edumacate the palaeolithic apemen they encountered. (That's what the big monoliths are all about- a cargo cult attempt to rebuild the alien teaching machine monolith / nut & berry vending machines the aliens used.)

The pyramids weren't built by aliens. They were all dead by then. They were built by humans, using technology they did not understand. Anyone who has visited Africa (and a lot of Europe) can see this process still in action today.

[Bikewer]

"Now class, here's your art project for this cycle. Get in your little spaceships and find a primitive planet. Then, we'd like you to make some nice objects using ONLY NATIVE MATERIAlS. Be creative. Be sure to take nice holographic images of your projects when you report back to the mother ship."

[Edx]

In a million years humanity will realise that stone is the best material in the universe. Why do you think the MASONS run the world ey? They know something we don't.

[anglolawyer]

They built stuff from stone for exactly the same reason ghosts never show up on the White House lawn during press conferences, UFOs never touchdown in the middle of the super bowl and seances only work if no one in the room has any negative feelings about them, because it's much more fun for aliens and ghosts to occupy the region of the Unknown. It's also the same reason God doesn't show up and say 'alright, never mind all this BS about faith - here I am. Now do you believe in me? Wait. Stand clear and watch that mountain over there. Zap! See?'

[Dcdrac]

They did not do the building humans did and the aliens were not there

[poblob14]

Originally Posted by Travis

And why did they want plausible deniability?

So they could deny. Plausibly. Sheesh, I gotta explain everything to you guys?

[I Ratant]

Originally Posted by Jerrymander

And lets give them out of date light blubs.

.
Have you seen what sunlight does to plastics?... 1000 years? Fugedaboutit.. lucky to get 1000 days...

[I Ratant]

Originally Posted by sol

well, with all the energy it takes to fling a few crews in casserole dishes half way across the galaxy i doubt they bring along a construction trailer and just use the local materials.

.
I've determined after reading the exhaustive research in Zechariah Sitichen's publications that those casserole dishes... and by extension the aliens, had no experience with extreme humidity, and their transportation melted away when they got here, to be stuck forever. And of course, leave no native (to them) artifacts, all dissolved...

[I Ratant]

Originally Posted by poblob14

So they could deny. Plausibly. Sheesh, I gotta explain everything to you guys?

.
It works both ways! Really handy, that, plausibly denying the aliens! Someone might profit from such an endeavor.

[superfreddy]

Prime directive

[George152]

They had two options.
Get timbered or get stoned

[Joe Random]

Because Big Bad Xenu had blown down the stuff they previously tried making out of straw or wood?

[Travis]

Originally Posted by Dcdrac

They did not do the building humans did and the aliens were not there

But...but the Ancient Aliens guy can't figure out how people can create stone blocks with perfect square corners. And he can't be wrong I mean look at that hair!

[pakeha]

^
Hair.
It's SO persuasive, isn't it.
But consider how awesome stone is, travis.
Shall I start posting photos of wonderful stones?

[OnlyTellsTruths]

Originally Posted by Travis

And why did they want plausible deniability?

You never helped a friend and wanted them (and others) to think that they did it themselves??

[Alphaba]

Originally Posted by Travis

So why did the ancient aliens build everything out of stone?

They didn't. More precisely, they did use regular Impposiblinium corebricks, camouflaged in an outer shell made of stone to look like native material. Camouflage was vital in order to avoid the following situation:

(Action takes place aboard a patrolling imperial PlanetGuard starship)

- Sir, sir, we've detected structures made of Impposiblinium on most continents!

- What?!! Are you sure?

- Affirmative, sir! Data from the photoquantumik albedanalyzer are unambiguous: it's Impposiblinium reflectospectrum.

- Gad, means that Blingons are all over the place! Time to show those vermins what our new megadeath nukeray is capable of. OK guys, let's vaporize them from orbit!

The ancient aliens (i.e. Blingons) were just prudent.

[Multivac]

Originally Posted by Lucian

Actually, stone was a huge advancement for the ancient aliens. The first bunch of aliens used straw, but then the Great Space Wolf huffed, and he puffed, and he blew their pyramid down. The stick pyramid suffered the similar fate.

[dafydd]

Aliens are accomplished time travelers, so they knew they would have to give woos something to talk about on internet forums.

[Moon-Spinner]

Well, those time traveling aliens could have given ancient humans the formula for transparent aluminum, but the ancient humans didn't yet have an 80s level Mac computer to type it out on!

[HansMustermann]

Actually, my question -- which I already asked several times before -- would be a whole other one: if the great old ones... err... alien astronauts were going to build something for their followers anyway, why not something more useful than a pyramid? I mean,. no matter what material you build it of, be it limestone blocks or th more logical concrete or Star Wars style plasteel, it's still just a frikken tomb. It has zero other uses.

For the mesoamerican pyramids, it's actually even more mind boggling, as they ONLY served as high places where to carve humans' heats out live unplugged, or to conduct some incredibly cruel torture as divination. Would a species which advanced as far as that kind of space travel, not only be as barbaric as to be entertained by savages putting each other or themselves through pointless horrible pain, but actually go the extra mile to build them a metric buttload of awe-inspiring places for that?

If you could actually travel to a stone-age planet with some primitive vaguely-humanoid inhabitants, would the ONLY thing that comes to mind that you can do for them, be to endorse and build structures where some unfortunate soul can get to drag a barbed ray spine through his penis until he hallucinates from pain and blood loss? Or set yourself up as a rain god and demand that little children be cruelly sacrificed to you on the pyramid you built for that? Oh, and if they don't cry on their way there -- tears are a good omen for a rain god, you know? -- they should get their fingernails pulled out first to make them cry. THAT would be what comes to mind as a contribution to those humanoids civilization?

And not just one deranged alien guy. Hundreds of ships, with maybe hundreds or thousands of crew each, plus the commanders and lawmakers at home getting those "met alien civilization, taught them to drag a barbed ray spine through penis" reports, all would see nothing wrong with that. How did such a species even get to survive, if everyone is such a complete psychopath? How did they get a civilization going at all?

But anyway... Why not teach them something of practical value? Why not teach them to boil drinking water? Why not teach them to build some ceramic filters, so they have a lifetime supply of drinking water without bacteria? Why not teach them something as simple as making a lightning rod as the holy symbol of your followers?

[dafydd]

Originally Posted by Moon-Spinner

Well, those time traveling aliens could have given ancient humans the formula for transparent aluminum, but the ancient humans didn't yet have an 80s level Mac computer to type it out on!

Oh no?