The ancient Greek Pythagoreans of the 5th century BC believed that the Sun is a giant crystal ball, larger than the Earth, which receives the light of the surrounding space and refracts it, directing it to the earth, that is, it acts like a giant lens.
A giant lens? In the 5th century BC? Perhaps the question arises because no one until now has been prepared to admit that lenses existed in antiquity, and that the idea of a sun-crystal is overlooked and has never been described in any books on the history of science and philosophy. However, this happened in my book The Crystal of Our Sun. What When… Ancient Lenses? Surely some mistake?
Visby quartz lenses. The diameters of the lenses are recorded on paper - from 50 to 16 mm. The time of making silver parts of pendants is estimated at about 10-11 centuries. However, the lenses may have been made earlier, and not necessarily in Scandinavia. The lenses are kept at the Visby Gotlands Fornsal Historical Museum.
Lenses from Froel. The author of the finds, archaeologist Dan Karlsson, assumed that the sample for the lenses was Byzantine.
In the tomb of a pre-dynastic king, a knife was found with an ivory handle and a bearing with microscopic carvings, which could only be done with significant magnification (and of course can only be seen today using a strong magnifying glass). Thus, we know that augmentation technology was used in Egypt in 3300 BC. I reproduce both photographs and drawings of this crucial piece of evidence.
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But the magnification technology is interesting not only in terms of creating and viewing miniature carvings. The most important uses are telescopes. Indeed, on the cover of my book, the reader will come across an image of an ancient man looking through a telescope. I borrowed this image from a fragment of a Greek pot that was unearthed about twenty years ago in the Acropolis, Athens. It dates from around the 6th century BC.
If all this evidence exists, why has no one ever talked about it before? The answer seems to be the unique capacity for stupidity that so distinguishes the human race, as well as tenacity and a desire to overlook the obvious.
I call this the blindness consensus. Everyone agrees not to recognize things that will cause a certain inconvenience, or, in their opinion, that should not exist. Thus, the fact that more than 450 ancient lenses have been in museums around the world all these years and were invisible can only be explained by referring to the theory that people subconsciously entered into a conspiracy not to see what they do not want to see.
This is not the case if I came to you with a little vague evidence and wanted to build some stupid theories on it. There are many people out there with flashy theories based on slightly controversial evidence. My book is not one of that number. I stand in the very center of the town square, surrounded by mountains of evidence that can be ignored if people choose to look the other way, or turn away from me.
I took part in the 8th International Congress of Egyptologists in Cairo, in the spring of 2000. I have come to submit papers on ancient Egyptian optical technology. But I was not allowed to do this. I was told that I did not have a "relevant category." Alas, it was true that I did not have such a category, since I was the only historian of science present at the convention of 1500 people. I found this fact rather depressing.
It may be worth considering why my discoveries are so important to Egyptology, and anyone interested in knowing about the pyramids.
First of all, this is the famous question about the orientation of the Great Pyramid. It is geographically oriented so beautifully that no one has ever been able to understand how it was done. Where does this precision come from, exceeding the capabilities of any technology known today in ancient Egypt?
There is also the equally well-known question of how the builders of the Great Pyramid achieved such high accuracy. In 1925, J. Cole discovered in his survey that the bedrock under the Great Pyramid is so perfectly leveled that no corner of the base of the pyramid is within 15 mm above or below another. This alignment accuracy far exceeds the accuracy of today's architectural standards.
Scientists have previously commented on the accuracy of the surface of the Great Pyramid. They called it the equivalent grinding precision of optical reflecting mirrors in today's giant telescopes. The original (now largely eroded) tiled stone sides of the structure could be compared to the Mount Palomar telescope mirror. How were they able to do this?
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Argentine physicist Jose Alvarez López argued that it was physically impossible to build the Great Pyramid without ultra-precise optical imaging technology, such as is used in theodolites. I met Lopez in the 1970s, and he told me about it himself, awakening my interest in this issue for the first time. But Lopez told me sadly that he could not find any evidence for the existence of any ancient optical technology, so it all remained an unsolved mystery.
(To be continued)
Robert Temple (ROBERT TEMPLE) Author's site - www.robert-temple.com