I think the lever here is a stand-in for mechanical advantage. I don’t believe anyone is seriously proposing they lifted the blocks with a very long stick.
Lol of course you can. They were invented at one point. And before that point… You didn’t have them. I recommend: Let’s Learn Everything episode 49: Goosebumps, (Not) Alien Pyramids, and Nessie & Cryptids.
It’s fair to imagine the challenges a building team would face 2k plus years ago.
Like in this example, building levers that are strong enough to lift the load. I bet they broke a bunch of stuff.
But eventually they figured it out, via trial and error. Levers, ramps, etc. They probably couldn’t describe why those things were inherently the best way, but more approached from the “we tried 9 other ways and they suck. This is the best way.”
Next, the phrase “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is relevant here, but in a backwards way.
Since we struggle to imagine what it would take for an ancient society to master the techniques to build these things, we therefore begin to grasp for unrealistic conclusions (magic…read…aliens).
Same goes for Europeans building cathedrals and stuff, the trick is the history, the methods and the results were more documented and understood.
There are some racism concerns that I think go beyond and around what I’ve discussed, which is more abstract. I’m not discounting the other topics, just not covering them here.
The ancient Egyptians utilized neither wheels nor work animals for the majority of the pyramid-building era, so the giant blocks, weighing 2.5 tons on average, had to be moved through human muscle power alone. But until recently, nobody really knew how. The answer, it seems, is simply water. Evidence suggests that the blocks were first levered onto wooden sleds and then hauled up ramps made of sand. However, dry sand piles up in front of a moving sled, increasing friction until the sled is nearly impossible to pull. Wet sand reduces friction dramatically beneath the sled runners, eliminating the sand piles and making it possible for a team of people to move massive objects.
You know that joke atheists tell Christians where they say “We both agree that most gods don’t exist, I just believe in one less than you. You and I aren’t so different.”? Well, that joke is more accurate than the atheists realise. The monotheism of the pre-roman Christians and Jews is very different to the monotheism of today.
Ancient Christians and Jews believed in the gods of every culture, but they only worshipped one. That’s how every culture treated foreign gods, back then. The Romans transformed the world forever when they used religion as a tool of cultural genocide through syncretism. As Roman polytheism was replaced by Roman Christianity, it became the custom to deny the gods of foreign religions. This was a new thing, back then.
Anyone who studies history knows that Europeans have been copying Rome ever since Rome fell. The colonisers of the new worlds copied Roman techniques of cultural genocide, by denying not just the power or worthiness of indigenous gods, but their very existence.
White modern atheism exists in the wasteland left in the wake of Christianity. The difference between a Christian coloniser and a white antitheist is one god. That’s insignificant. The antitheists are simply carrying on the traditions of Christianity, rather than attempting to actually move beyond a roman Christian worldview and learn from the way human thought worked before Christian genocide.
The monotheism that characterizes Judaism began in ancient Israel with the adoption of Yahweh as the single object of worship and the rejection of the gods of other tribes and nations without, initially, denying their existence.
Most mainstream Old Testament scholars believe that the religion of the early Israelites was neither monotheistic nor polytheistic but “monolatrous.” While the existence of other gods was not denied, Israel was to worship no god but Yahweh.
Maybe just read some encylopedias if you want to know more about the history of monotheism
No they don’t claim antitheism is colonial white people stuff.
First your own cited sources contradict you: you said that ancient Christians believed also in other gods but ancient Judaism was before that. Also in those sources you find that this happend in ancient Israel.
I don’t think the people there would be described as white.
You should try discussing instead of resorting to ad hominem attacks.
Frankly you never stated how the behavior of Islam (that is also a monotheistic religion that denies all other gods) fits with the idea that antitheism is colonial white people stuff.
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