[OT] [I mean totally OT] Re: What can you "new"

[Walter Bright]

Joel C. Salomon wrote:
> Jerry Pournelle defines a Dark Age as a time when not only is the
> knowledge of how to do things forgotten, but even that these things are
> possible.  Usually folks’d ascribe some large construction (like the
> pyramids, the walls of Crete, &c.) to magic or the gods or some such.

I remember one of those idiot "In Search Of..." type shows in the 70's 
saying that the fit of stones in South America was so tight you couldn't 
  put a knife blade between them. Therefore, the stone walls must have 
been made by aliens.

Never mind why would aliens with such advanced tech would build a 
crooked lumpy stone wall like that anyway.

But a few years later, some archeologist demonstrated how to make such a 
fit by banging a couple stones together. Took him 30 minutes per 
surface. No aliens or even tools were required.