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They built pyramids and megalithic structures because it was taught that they can withstand a cataclysmic Earth event. If a meteor hit the Earth the Great Pyramid will still be standing, the empire state building will not be.
Taught by who? What proof is there of this? Also if a meteor hit the earth would these not be covered with debris and look like hills?
"Egypt’s powerful centralized government ruled along the Nile, where pharaohs built the pyramids of Giza and reigned like gods over people who worshipped them. In contrast, Canaan was a land of warring city-states and hill tribes, spread out over what are now Israel, Lebanon, southwestern Syria, and the West Bank. At Canaan’s peak, there were about 20 such city-states in the southern area alone. Their culture was rustic, their power decentralized and weak." (pg2)
"Wealthy Canaanites liked to stock their tombs with imitations of Egyptian ushabti, figurines of people who would tend to the dead in the afterlife. “There was an Egyptianization, so to speak, of Canaan’s material culture,” says Ben-Tor. “The Canaanites were burying their dead with objects imported from Egypt or with local imitations of them.”" (pg 3)
"Sometimes the Canaanites added their own twists to Egyptian customs." (pg 4)
The Book of Joshua in the Bible presents an image of a powerful Israelite army sweeping through Canaan and conquering the city-states under God's command. By contrast, they found a message at (I think) Tel Amarna in which one of the "kings" of a city-state (think Bedouin leader rather than our present image of a king) writing to the Pharaoh pleading for help against the pesky 'apiru (which is thought by some to refer to the Hebrews). They were more an inconvenience it appears than a conquering army. There's also a monument created by a pharaoh that celebrates their victory over Israel - it also contains exaggerations, making the Israelites a more fearsome enemy than they were likely to have been in reality. So there was "creative editing" of the stories on all sides.
I have no doubt there were at least some Israelites in Egypt, possibly working as slaves on some construction project but not necessarily. It's telling to note that Moses' name appears to be the Egyptian -mses which means "son of"; in my class on the Pentateuch the prof said that it's thought that Moses originally had an Egyptian god as part of his name (as in Tutmoses (Thoth-mses), Ramses (Ra-mses), etc) but that Israeli scribes would not include the pagan god's name when copying the texts. This suggests there is some historical basis for the story of Moses - maybe he was a labor leader, instigating a rebellion because the Israelis didn't believe they were being paid enough. Again, there may have been considerable exaggeration in the story of Israel's captivity, as there is in other Old Testament stories like Joshua's "conquest" of Canaan.
You also in the Old Testament see the Israelites struggling with the influence of other religious belief systems, and there is a portrayal on pottery of Yahweh with his consort Asherah (Astarte) - possibly the source of the personification of Lady Wisdom in the wisdom literature. So there appears to have been appropriation (or adoption) of extra-cultural influences among the Israelites, too
To rephrase Dr. Victor Fronkensteen, "As you know, a slime mold --- with very few exceptions --- is not a human being --- or a super advanced alien race."
Not all behaviors fit the problem/solution frame you're trying to shove it in. The accountant has no real problem to solve by building a birdhouse, nor is his son trying to solve any problem by starting an ant farm. Their trip to the local hardware store isn't the most economical solution to the burning problem of the birds and the ants. Nope. They simply want to have a bit of fun.
As I pointed out earlier, fun/play has a functional role in a social organism: practicing behaviors, building connections between individuals, releasing tension that might otherwise impact other members of the tribe/clan (this is why you'll see a bird or mammal suddenly engage in grooming behavior when it's frustrated).
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What might constitute fun to a super advanced species that can traverse the stars? That might have left matter behind altogether? We simply have no way of knowing. We can guess. We can even make educated guesses. But the fact remains we only have a very tiny piece of a puzzle vast beyond our imagining.
There are much more cost-effective ways to get fun than to go hundreds or thousands of light years to find it. That's why I don't think it's a motive even for a super advanced species. And even if a species can traverse the stars, that's going to be costly even for a super advanced civilization. Closest we have to it are expeditions in past centuries on this planet: they were motivated by the search for riches like gold and spices, opening up new trade routes, and establishing colonies - not for "fun". I would suggest a super advanced species that lasted long enough to reach the stars would operate under the same sort of motivations - not because of biology, but because of economics.
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And history clearly shows us that once a species reaches a certain point in its development, it finds ways to break those laws. Or rewrite them.
I don't think history shows that because the technology hasn't existed to rewrite the rules governing our behavior, but it is the case that we're at the brink of being able to rewrite the rules by manipulating our genetic equipment. I can't think of a single case where historically a society has rewritten the rules governing behavior.
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But what if a form of life evolved without genes? Or what if it got a point where it left matter behind entirely? Then, it's not only a whole new ball game, it's a whole new sport. The same rules no longer apply.
Any life will have a way of transmitting and conserving information from one generation to another: whether that's genes, or energy fields, or some other biochemical mechanism doesn't matter. The question is: to what extent is our behavior determined by the specific genetic mechanisms that characterize life as we know it?
Convergent evolution, which I mentioned in an earlier post, is a clue to understanding this. Any life will need a base source of energy: light, or some other source or radiation, or chemical bonds (we see all three on Planet Earth). The organisms that exploit these sources of energy are called autotrophs. What you inevitably end up with in an ecosystem - whether it's in the soil, the arctic, a rain forest, or the water surrounding a deep ocean volcanic vent - are certain basic roles: organisms will develop to exploit the raw energy, other organisms will develop to exploit the autotrophs, other will develop to clean after them, and so on.
The native organisms in Australia are all marsupials. Yet we see that herbivores (autotrophs), scavengers, predators, and top predators all evolved independently of the evolution of similar roles on other continents. I believe you're going to see the same sort of thing everywhere, because the rules surrounding these things are grounded in physics, not in an organism having a set of chromosomes and RNA to transcribe the genes.
Perhaps the truth about these structures and possibly more mysteries could be solved if the library at Alexandria had not been destroyed?
It would not have made any difference, they would have never allowed the general public to hear anything about what was discovered, especially if the knowledge had too great of a negative impact on the ways of the world.
Perhaps the truth about these structures and possibly more mysteries could be solved if the library at Alexandria had not been destroyed?
The Greeks looked upon Egypt much as we do: as ancient and largely unknown. Herodotus visited Egypt several centuries before the founding of the Library. He was awe-struck. There is an excellent account of scholarly activity at the Library in Scribes and Scholars. The 3rd edition is fine for the general reader who should at least equip himself with a Collins Gem Latin Dictionary before reading that outstanding work.
i want to know what they are for. ive heard they could have been full of water and been a power source. also they could have entrances in them to the middle earth. hallow earth makes a lot of sense. thats another thing i want to know, i know the earth isnt flat at least.
They're not hollow, so they didn't contain water (or grain as former presidential candidate Ben Carson believed). They are about 95% solid rock, except for a few burial chambers and the passageways leading into them. They are just big tombs built to honor the pharaohs (kings who were revered as gods).
Regarding the passing on of stories about the pyramids' construction: Herodotus in the 5th century BC wrote explicitly about the stories he had gathered regarding this. You can read what Herodotus said in this article -- he clearly knew 2500 years ago from his sources why they were built, how old they were, and how they were built - with ramps and levers.
Just curious, do those stories include the possibility that they were built by the Hebrew slaves?
No mention of slaves building them in the stories. "Reading the Old Testament" by Lawrence Boadt says: "The drama of a people or clan escaping into the Sinai desert was probably a common occurrence, and several Egyptian documents actually mention attempts to stop such groups."
Further, the name "Moses" is interesting - in Egyptian, -moses or -mses is a name suffix indicating "son of". Kind of like -son or -sen today. So you have Pharaohs names like Tutmoses (son of Thoth), Ramses (son of Ra). It's been suggested Moses once had an Egyptian god as part of his name, but this was removed at some point by Hebrew scribes when copying the stories out of piety (not wanting to include a heathen god in their text).
So there's evidence supporting the notion that at least some of the Hebrews were in Egypt at the time of Ramses II, and that runaway slaves were hunted down in the desert from time to time. But the bulk of the work on the pyramids was done by free laborers - though the work was brutally hard:
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There were slaves in Egypt, says Lehner, but the discovery that pyramid workers were fed like royalty buttresses other evidence that they were not slaves at all, at least in the modern sense of the word. Harvard's George Reisner found workers' graffiti early in the twentieth century that revealed that the pyramid builders were organized into labor units with names like "Friends of Khufu" or "Drunkards of Menkaure." ... Lehner currently thinks Egyptian society was organized somewhat like a feudal system, in which almost everyone owed service to a lord. The Egyptians called this "bak." Everybody owed bak of some kind to people above them in the social hierarchy. "But it doesn't really work as a word for slavery," he says. "Even the highest officials owed bak."
So maybe there were Hebrew laborers who owed service to Ramses, and they decided they'd had enough and violated the terms of their bak by fleeing -- only to be pursued by Ramses' army. That would be consistent with the biblical account, though somewhat exaggerated in the retelling.
Me, I think I'd rather be one of the "Drunkards of Menkaure" - sounds like those guys knew how to party!
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