Episode #184: Legends of the Shamir

Taking a break this week in the swapcast series we've been doing with Ben from UnchartedX, We take the time to respond to emails, which sparks some great discussion on the Serapeum and the pyramids and ancient, lost technology.

We then turn to the legends of a particular lost object which we have spoken of before, the legendary Shamir, which was said to have been able to cut and shape stone with ease. In some cases the Shamir itself was said to be a stone, but also maybe a living creature, a worm of some kind, or perhaps an herb or some other plant.

Whatever the Shamir was, it seems clear that some ancient people could work stone in ways that we do not understand in modern times.

Episode #183: UnchartedX Swapcast - Khafre Pyramid

In our second swapcast in the series with Ben from UnchartedX, we are joined by Chuck, host of the excellent YouTube channel cf-apps7865. The four of us spend a couple of hours watching Ben's footage inside and around the "second great pyramid" at Giza, also known as the Pyramid of Khafre. 

There are lots of fascinating details about this structure, which doesn't receive nearly as much attention as its nearby companion, the Great Pyramid. Ben shows us the tunnels beneath it, the chambers in the bedrock below it, the enormous amount of work the builders went through to cut a flat area from the bedrock in which to build it, and the line of granite rubble that surrounds the bottom of it, all that is left of the granite casing stones that used to cover the first few courses of core masonry.

We also look at some other interesting features of the Giza plateau related to this pyramid, such as the Sphinx Causeway, the Valley Temple, and the megalithic "tile" stones that were used to make a flat surface around the pyramids.

Episode #182: UnchartedX Swapcast - Serapeum

We join Ben from UnchartedX in the first of a series of swapcast episodes where we go through some of his amazing footage of ancient sites he's visited. In this episode we focus on the Serapeum of Saqqara in Egypt and the mystery of the massive, precision stone "boxes" in that site. How did they make them, what were they for, how did they move them into place through those small tunnels? How old are they really?

We look at a lot of the little details in Ben's footage that shows us how deep the mystery of these artifacts really is.

Since this is a visual episode, there will be video of the entire conversation that includes the clips Ben showed us. So look for that on our YouTube channel, or on Ben's. But we did our best to provide descriptions for audio listeners.

Enjoy!

Episode #181: Stellar Nucleosynthesis and Radiometric Dating

In this episode Russ gives a presentation, with slides, about the standard model processes that take place in stars to generate elements, how that process eventually results in novas and supernovas, and how supernovas and other similar very high energy events generate cosmic rays. When these cosmic rays hit earth, they result in "cosmogenic nuclides" like the radioactive Carbon 14 that is so often used to date material in archaeological settings.

We also run through a short list of the most often used dating techniques, how they work, what the problems are, what the ranges are, and what the margins of error are. We also look at the various assumptions and methods and theory behind these techniques.

As this was a slide show presentation, it may help to watch the video, so look for that on our youtube channel.