r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ThatMasterpiece2174 • Aug 07 '26
Video A retired construction worker in Flint, MI demonstrated how people in ancient times could’ve used simple machines to move blocks up to 20 tons, contrasting fringe theories that humans had otherworldly help constructing ancient monuments
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u/No-Marionberry-772 Aug 07 '26
how ironic would it be if stone henge was just some guy who was like "seriously guys, we can just move big rocks around, check it out"
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u/TheBeckofKevin Aug 07 '26
A bunch of people standing around "i thought he was crazy at first".
Another person scratching down some pictures of the event on a stone tablet.
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u/fractal_magnets Aug 07 '26
Another guy wondering where this flat concrete surface and garden hose came from
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u/Yekouri Aug 07 '26
I mean, hardening a flat surface with some buckets of water. And throwing buckets of water.
Not really revolutionary
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u/Earlier-Today Aug 07 '26
A proof of concept for a building company.
"Course we can build that castle for ya. Look over there at what Larry built all by himself!"
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u/Self_Reddicate Aug 07 '26
It turns out, managers and bosses in the ancient world really were no different than today.
Worker: "Check it out, Chief! I can move a really big block all by myself! Pretty cool, huh?"
Chief: "Okay, neat. 1 worker x 2 blocks = 2 block-hrs so 20 workers x 100 blocks = 2000 block-hrs....
Worker: "Hmmm... that's not the point I was trying to make. I don't think it will scale quite so easi..."
Chief: "Quiet, peasant. I want a pyramid and I want it by October. Get on it, stat!!!"
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u/John_B_Clarke Aug 07 '26
Some guy moving rocks around and then some other guy says "hey, it's cool that we can only see the sunrise through the slit between those two twice a year", and then some other guy says, "Hey, let's move 'em around so that happens where the sun was on that year we had the really good harvest".
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u/sidepart Aug 07 '26
I mean, when you know nothing of pulleys, wheels, and those kinds of concepts, or when they're simply not available to you, perhaps you've at least figured out how to move your heavy shit around by waddling it back and forth.
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u/bonwerk Aug 07 '26
Just like trying to assign supernatural elements to sculptures because, for example, they depict a man with a snake's head, so the "ancestors must have wanted to warn against demons/aliens/lizardmen" etc., and the reason was simpler: the sculptor thought that a man with a snake's head looks fucking cool.
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u/Rhiis Aug 07 '26
This is actually a hilarious comment. I woke up with "Stonehenge" by Ylvis stuck in my head. A lyric of which is "just a couple stone-age dudes who said 'Hey! Let's build a henge or two'"
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u/Dyslexai1 Aug 07 '26
Brains like that with resources at their disposal change the world.
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u/deezdanglin Aug 07 '26
One insanely massive obelisk at a time. Gods speed you mad Man!
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u/BBR0DR1GUEZ Aug 07 '26
No kidding. Imhotep the pyramid architect was one of the first non-royals ever to have their name recorded by history. This monumental form of autism can shape the very nature of our species.
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u/Emotional_News108 Aug 07 '26
That’s the thing…people today aren’t smarter than they were in prehistory. Just less knowledgeable. The ability to think critically and solve problems hasn’t fundamentally gotten better. If we can do it now, there’s a good chance they could envision doing it then and likely figure out how. And obviously they did.
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u/solojones1138 Aug 07 '26
They were made of time. There weren't even books yet. People who discount ancient folks tend to forget these facts.
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u/RussMan104 Aug 07 '26
When this type of tech was state of the art, every smart guy out there was always thinking in these terms. Those guys weren’t playing. Give me a lever long enough and I’ll move the world. 🚀
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u/SubstantialBug9133 Aug 07 '26
This dude is a total Chad
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u/ThatMasterpiece2174 Aug 07 '26
Moved his friends barn a few hundred feet just because he could
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm Aug 07 '26
Hey! Put it back!
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u/NegaDoug Aug 07 '26
drunkenly " Hey... Where's my barn? I swear it used to be over there."
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u/RussMan104 Aug 07 '26
Park it in the middle of the road, so when some traffic builds up you can open the front door and tell everyone to “get the f’k outta my driveway.” 🚀
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u/reddit-poweruser Aug 07 '26
Then he moved it back. Turns out the guy who built it knew exactly what he was doing.
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u/ostracize Aug 07 '26
He was so preoccupied with whether or not he could, he never stopped to think whether or not he should.
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u/anon9339 Aug 07 '26
Based Wally Wallington.
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u/sligowind Aug 07 '26
I vaguely remember buying a DVD from him.
In the pre-internet era, or early internet era but pre YouTube, he sold DVD’s demonstrating his methods.
Absolute Legend.
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u/Greenfieldfox Aug 07 '26
When did the Ancient Aliens teach us these techniques?
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u/ryanwheelliam Aug 07 '26
Ancient astronaut theorists say YES.
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u/In-Jail-Out-Soon Aug 07 '26
I hate that phrase when I watch that show. How many time per episode do you have to say “ancient alien theorists….” ?
Is there a quota for how many times it must be said. I love to watch the show but can’t stand the repeated saying over and over again
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u/oneMoreTime112233 Aug 07 '26
The narrator always phrases it as a question cause he don't want people to think he's a fuckin nutbar too.
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u/Arknovas Aug 07 '26
Ancient aliens was like "some theorists think simple machines enabled them to move massive bricks, but we can't disprove it wasn't Jesus sending alien spaceships to perform wonders so we'll spend more time on that"
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u/William_Dowling Aug 07 '26
Turns out, and I know this is controversial, that during the Stone Age people were shit hot at using stone. Who knew?
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u/Phranc68 Aug 07 '26
"There was no autism back in my day"
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u/CaptainTooStoned Aug 07 '26
this was my first thought as well lmfao. the way he was describing that cement block made me chuckle, buddy is super passionate about big rocks lmao.
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u/DecentAd2298 Aug 07 '26
"They're minerals!"
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u/Flaming_F Aug 07 '26
I like big blocks and I cannot lie !
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u/SpotweldPro1300 Aug 07 '26
The other boulders can't deny....
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u/DavidDraimansLipRing Aug 07 '26
When a pebble walks in with an itty bitty weight
Adding smoothness to substrate
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u/g_r_a_e Aug 07 '26
Damn, Mix-A-Lot and geology
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u/PonchoNachoRodriguez Aug 07 '26
The mf’s a prodigy
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u/Phranc68 Aug 07 '26
He knows those blocks. It's awesome if real.
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u/BungleBums Aug 07 '26
It's super real. The wildest part is his name is 'Wally Wallington' and it's 100% legit. Dude even had VHS tapes for sale at his museum. There's a good bit of it on YouTube. Fascinating stuff.
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u/I_Volk_I Aug 07 '26
‘VHS’ just made me want to hop into local blockbuster for a weekend rental. Now I feel old…
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u/DumbMassDebater Aug 07 '26
If you feel the need to browse most libraries lend out dvds movies and even video games.
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u/Ohitsworkingnow Aug 07 '26
Is this how you guys feel better about having no interest, passion, or intellect? Everyone who does must be autistic?
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u/Kultur_Cigany Aug 07 '26
Building stonehenge in your backyard is totally what normies spend their free time on.
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u/Glittering-Walrus228 Aug 07 '26
looks up from train set the size of an entire garage and shed
You guys have a stone henge in your backyards? Can i see?
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u/BorisBC Aug 07 '26
Reading this surrounded by an office full of Warhammer, Lego and Gundam
I too would like to see the henge of stone please.
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u/mynaneisjustguy Aug 07 '26
Stop carving frogs in various sizes from a grape to a beachball
Did you say that guy is building backyard henges? I want to see too!
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u/LessInThought Aug 07 '26
OoooooOOHhh, it would be cool to have some stone henge on your train track.
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u/AnaisNinja76 Aug 07 '26
His point is that you can say that about literally any hobby, some are just more unusual than others.
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u/Jesus_of_Redditeth Aug 07 '26
Have you ever noticed how professional athletes spend hours and hours every day, day in, day out, obsessively honing their craft in a single-minded pursuit of their goal...
...and absolutely no one ever says they're autistic?
This whole internet trope of "man" — and it's always a man — "who's really into his hobby = autistic" badly needs to permanently piss off. It's as stupid as it is degrading, both to the autistic and non-autistic alike. A lazy-minded trope for lazy-minded people.
Rethink this nonsense.
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u/ElundusCaw Aug 07 '26
We've gone from "any man who shows interest in anything and isn't just a cold emotionless rock, is emasculated" to "any man who shows interest in anything is autistic".
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u/bathtubsplashes Aug 07 '26
There's definitely some absolutely ripped guys in the gym I presume are autistic
And lets not get into sports fandom/analysis
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u/CitizenCue Aug 07 '26
Plenty of pro athletes ARE autistic. Yeah, obsessive interest in something doesn’t inherently indicate autism, but extremely niche obsessions are one of the indicators. It’s literally in the DSM.
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u/Wolfeman0101 Aug 07 '26
I keep trying to get people to understand the rise of autism is really just a rise in diagnosis. It's always been here.
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u/mightylordredbeard Aug 07 '26
slaps roof of the day
“You see this bad boy? You could fit so much autism in here!”
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u/Taricheute Aug 07 '26
Intellectual curiosity is now autism ?
This world is cooked ...
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u/YouCantKillGrool Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Honestly, autism is probably what helped build the pyramids and made agriculture and medicine possible in early tribes. People with the passion and pattern recognition to recognize problems and things others didn't realize needed fixing or noticed. Hey, don't eat that plant or it will kill you, eat this instead, put the seeds in the ground on this day, the rain patterns this season indicate drought so we need to ration, put the fulcrum of the lever here, make a hill of this height with a hold of this depth to drop the obelisk straight... Just do it or shut up and get out of the fucking way so I can do it. Etc.
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u/blip01 Aug 07 '26
Ok, everyone, head to the backyard, grandpa is gonna show us how the Egyptians moved big rocks again.
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u/shart_attak Aug 07 '26
Wally Wallington laid waste to Ancient Aliens theories
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u/Useful-Purchase-2127 Aug 07 '26
He made “ancient aliens” look a lot less necessary when leverage and patience already do the job.
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u/shart_attak Aug 07 '26
It's almost as if ancient peoples were smart and could figure things out
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u/willinaustin Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Not to mention they had forever to figure it out. Massive ancient structures like Stonehenge and the Pyramids weren't built on a strict timetable while needing to come in on time and under budget.
No TV, no kids soccer games you gotta go ref, no social media, no having to mow the backyard. Just all day sitting around trying to figure out how to make the Pharaoh happy by getting his fancy death house built. You need dudes? You got 'em. You need materials? You got 'em. You need a few extra decades to haul all those giant rocks? No problem, we ain't on a schedule!
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u/tanstaafl90 Aug 07 '26
They were built around the farming. They only had so much labor to task full time and the majority were needed during harvest. While Egypt was quite wealthy from the volume of trade it's agriculture provided, the Pharaohs were not likely to plan for a project of this size and just tell everyone, finish whenever. They had a complex economy that relied on seasonal, communal labor, meaning they needed a budget and timetable.
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u/AbilityCharacter7634 Aug 07 '26
I fully agree. Ancient humans weren’t just dumb idiots. I also think knowledge can be lost with time. So they did not know what we know, but we also don’t know what they knew.
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u/Earlier-Today Aug 07 '26
And that's all him working by himself. A team would make all of that go faster and more smoothly because it's easier to stay safe when there's multiple eyes on the work.
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u/WeAreElectricity Aug 07 '26
Dawg his name is Wally Wallington [r/nominativedeterminism](r/nominativedeterminism) much?
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u/GandalfSwagOff Aug 07 '26
This video was made 3 years after Stonehenge was completed.
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u/skinnymatters Aug 07 '26
It does weirdly seem older than it looks, right?
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u/Baldrs_Draumar Aug 07 '26
it was filmed in the late 90's
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u/triplec787 Interested Aug 07 '26
Was it? There’s home camera footage from September 2000 - 1:50 when he moves the barn.
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u/EasyTimes420 Aug 07 '26
Is there a version anywhere with more pixels?
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u/NRMusicProject Aug 07 '26
Remember when posts like this wouldn't make it to the top of /r/all because the quality was awful?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
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u/Alright_doityourway Aug 07 '26
Ancient Aliens theory on principle is underestimated ancient human intelligent.
Human in those time are as intelligent as us, they just don't have access to thousand years of knowledge we have.
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u/Shroom-Kitty Aug 07 '26
I was travelling a decade or so ago and got stranded in a town due to weather, and ended up watching a 4 or 5 hour documentary on YouTube debunking Ancient Aliens. It was good. Now I watch Miniminuteman for the same content only with lots of swear words and drinking beer on camera.
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u/Zerothian Aug 07 '26
Never heard of that channel before, oh man, I have content to watch while eating dinner for months!
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u/Careless-Emergency85 Aug 07 '26
His content is fantastic! He covers archaeological sites, political misinformation, googledebunking, and lots of other stuff. Always high quality.
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u/incunabula001 Aug 07 '26
The one episode where Miniminuteman did a drinking game on an Ancient Aliens episode was hilarious.
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u/jerseygunz Aug 07 '26
I don’t think ancient alien theory underestimates all human intelligence
Put it this way, you ever notice how apparently aliens never built anything in Europe?
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u/iamadragan Aug 07 '26
Uh... Where tf do you think Stonehenge was built
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u/This_Elk_1460 Aug 07 '26
Didn't you hear the British left the European Union, they're not European anymore.
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u/Alright_doityourway Aug 07 '26
I originally was gonna included that "Racist aspect" but stop myself before I did.
But yes, Ancient Aliens theory also quite racist in principle
"There is no way these brown people could build something like this"
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u/Consistent_Horse6529 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
It’s not a surprise when you realize modern ancient alien theories are rooted in Nazism. The largest publisher of ancient aliens literature was the Ahnenerbe. Sure Erich von Daniken’s “Chariot of the Gods” is the most prolific single text. But in terms of volume of texts it’s the Nazis.
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u/tomtomclubthumb Aug 07 '26
"This African style of house looks a bit like a Roman Villa and uses the same passive cooling techniques. How did the Romans get here?"
"They didn't."
"Wow, aliens!"
"Or maybe Black people had the same issues, thought about them and reached a similar conclusion?"
"That doesn't seem credible to me."
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u/Emperor_Mao Aug 07 '26
I dunno isn't this one about the Stonehenge? A famous monument in Europe?
But there is genuinely a tendency to over-praise the Romans and the Roman empire era buildings + architecture + other empires like Egyptians and Persians.
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u/Artichokiemon Aug 07 '26
Michigan Man > Florida Man
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u/glowdirt Aug 07 '26
Peninsula FIGHT!
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u/Artichokiemon Aug 07 '26
I'll say this: Bugs Bunny never used a saw to cut Michigan away from the US
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u/flamesonwater Aug 07 '26
I think it was Archimedes who said "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
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u/DenKHK Aug 07 '26
It was indeed Archimedes. He gave the first rigorous mathematical proof and scientific explanation of how the lever works, linking force and distance.
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u/zombie_spiderman Aug 07 '26
I can't wait to be retired so I can do random insane shit like this
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u/Warburgerska Aug 07 '26
That's boomer privilege. You are going to work till you drop.
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u/Jogger_Dodger Aug 07 '26
Aliens...
The human race didn't have anything to do for thousands of years except build civilization. Just imagine what you and your friends would accomplish over the course of 10,000 years without the distractions of cellphones or internet. The ancients did some things that were never written down and we'll never know about.
That's more interesting than space monsters.
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u/Dont-Fear-The-Raeper Aug 07 '26
Important to differentiate that civilisation is essentially agreeing to live along side, trade and exist with others, instead of murdering everybody not in your tribe, on sight.
Doing so, made it possible for us to build things. It's not cellphones or internet that's stopping us.
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u/yournames Aug 07 '26
The conspiracy people are just not thinking enough lol.
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u/BalancedDisaster Aug 07 '26
They literally can’t wrap their heads around the idea that someone may have some specialized knowledge that they don’t. It’s the same lack of logic that Kent Hovind bases his creationist bullshit on.
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u/flubluflu2 Aug 07 '26
I remember when the ancient peoples removed all the concrete roads after erecting Stonehenge to cover their tracks.
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u/BlueMowch Aug 07 '26
and yet I have to take a daily fiber supplement to get any movement
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u/Useful_Tiger2432 Aug 07 '26
Someone share this with joe rogan please, so he can shut the f up.
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u/Th3Stryd3r Aug 07 '26
The process to build them is pretty well understood. The precision and alignment with the equinox and stars in the sky is where it gets interesting
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u/Shadowcleric Aug 07 '26
These alien theories are always so crazy to me, Romans build a huge colloseum that houses thousands of people and survived hundreds of years, but some little foreign tribe builds a pyramid and they must have had alien help. Honestly, some conspiracies are straight up racist lol
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u/Anxious_Ad936 Aug 07 '26
To be fair, most of the Colosseum structure is concrete. You've got valid points though
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u/Wong0nePhotography Aug 07 '26
Hey, can we move your barn?
Yeah, ok.
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u/Live_Background_6239 Aug 07 '26
I cannot stress to you how boring certain times of the year can be for rural folk. Just mind-numbingly dull. Somebody wants to slide your barn around?
Okay.
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u/WhiteRabbit_412_ Aug 07 '26
If Jim Wallington is Wallys son....does that mean his name is Wally Wallington? That's awesome
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u/michaltee Aug 07 '26
Pretty legit name considering his profession.
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u/WhiteRabbit_412_ Aug 07 '26
Oh my god he builds walls
Wally "The Waller" Wallington
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u/Old_Shake3789 Aug 07 '26
People saying the pyramids were built by aliens piss me off. Imagine building something that monumental by master stone masons and engineers of the time putting in all that work for it to be dismissed by some tinfoil hat dude thousands of years later.
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u/hermeticbear Aug 07 '26
"Contrasting fringe theories"
Only people who don't understand high school physics think otherwordly beings helped build ancient monuments.
Nobody in actual archaeology believes fringe theories. Just conspiracy theorist nutjobs.
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u/RadBadTad Aug 07 '26
High school physics
Man, more than half of American adults read below a 6th grade level. "Only people who don't understand high school physics" is a huge portion of people unfortunately.
Hell, in my school, physics was an advanced elective.
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u/dragons_breath Aug 07 '26
i watched a youtube video about a guy that designed a weird shaped rocking cart that was inspired by biblical stories and some other stuff cuz he was thinking maybe the story was describing how they moved stuff like this. idk how factual it is or remember the youtuber but i thought it was a cool idea and his design did work!
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u/Mental_Thing_7899 Aug 07 '26
According to what I have learned in years of history Channel... this man is too smart. So... he's an alien.
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u/gunsandsilver Aug 07 '26
“Honey, you need to get more exercise”, start obscure hobby trying to move 20 ton blocks
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u/fuckyouijustwanttits Aug 07 '26
I dunno, aliens still seems like the more obvious option....
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u/FestivalRampage Aug 08 '26
That is genuinely one of the most interesting things I’ve seen online. What a clever guy.
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u/brown_bird_ross Aug 08 '26
I love this just for all the ancient aliens conspiracy theorists claiming it was impossible for our ancestors to build these things. I'm sorry you think so little of humanity. Now go use your cell phones with atomic clocks in them that use electromagnetic waves to send your dumb tweets telling us humans can't solve problems...
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u/MTNCollections Aug 07 '26
Conspiracy theorist dumbfucks will believe in anything but climate change.
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u/This_Elk_1460 Aug 07 '26
God damn so many alien conspiracy theorists are convinced that humans are entirely incapable of doing literally fucking anything without the intervention of extraterrestrial life. Pyramid? Aliens! Stonehenge? Aliens? Easter Island statues? You guessed it, aliens! Stupid worthless humans couldn't actually build those things in the past!
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u/thiscantbit Aug 07 '26
This is why they are putting shit into the water there. You guys are getting too powerful
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u/QuandariousDingle54 Aug 07 '26
"Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum to place it on, and I shall move the world" -Archimedes
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u/Program-Emotional Aug 07 '26
This is a mythical post to pull when Im this high holy shit I am flabbergasted.
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u/Natgeo1201 Aug 08 '26
Not enough people realize that ancient people were exactly like us. They were just as intelligent and creative as people are today, they just had less advanced technology.
Combine that with the fact a lot of people can't wrap their head around the trades and you get people who don't understand how these ancient structures were built leaving the door open for conspiracy theorist grifters to swoop in and peddle their bullshit to unfortunate, ignorant people.
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u/Kilgore47 Aug 07 '26
theres a place in florida called coral castle where a guy built big stone monoliths all by himself, kind of like this guy, people cant hardly believe it was all built by one guy
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u/JessieColt Aug 07 '26
There was an issue with the door that could spin in place by simply pushing on it with one finger.
When work was done to fix the door they found out how it was done.
Turns out, the same process was used as this video shows for the stones spinning in place.
The center of the top and bottom of the door were carved to have pivot points.
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u/Soft_Cranberry6313 Aug 07 '26
It makes sense moving it with concrete as the substrate. But it doesn’t seem like this would work on soil.
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u/BlacksmithNZ Aug 07 '26
If you have ever had to do roadway paving like I have, it is pretty simple and modern methods are largely unchanged for hundreds of years other than machinary to speed things up.
The ground get compacted; normally by just hitting it repeatedly with a chunk of weight (even just people jumping up and down/logs/dropping stones).
You then rake a fine sand mix to make a smooth surface before laying pavers; which are effectively just flattish stones, and fill gaps with fine sand. Luckily people living near deserts have lots of stone and sand.
Road I helped pave (in a fancy plaza in a town centre) is still carrying cars and trucks years later and no concrete substrate was used other than the kerbs.
Once you have a paved road/surface, you can build platforms using logs and stone, before starting to move larger blocks.
Roman roads built using pavers are still in use in some places, so they stand upto a lot of weight and traffic
Or check out Diolkos in Greece - about 600BC and kilometers of good quality paving allowing entire ships to be moved overland
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u/Vanedi291 Aug 07 '26
Then built the pyramids on soil and sand, I’m sure they could figure that out. Besides they had far more people available to help.
This is one guy demonstrating what can be done solo in ideal conditions with limited tools and physics.
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u/ThePensiveE Aug 07 '26
We have evidence that the Egyptians were paving roads around the times of the Pyramids.
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u/Shameonyourhouse Aug 07 '26
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world"