By David Hambling
October 22, 2009

The story of geopolymers is worthy of a Dan Brown novel, with an unlikely cast including a maverick French scientist, a secretive caste of ancient stone masons and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. Along the way, the mystery of the pyramids gets solved, but it might just end with American bombs bouncing off impervious bunkers. Geopolymers are technically described as synthetic aluminosilicate materials, but they might be more easily described as super-cements or ceramics that do not need firing. A mug made of Geopolymer will bounce off a concrete floor.

The technology of cement-making has been repeatedly lost and rediscovered. The Romans knew how to mix crushed rock (”caementitium”), with burnt lime and water to make a versatile building material. The Pantheon in Rome boasts the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, still just as strong after 2,000 years. But cement was unknown in medieval times, with lime mortar serving as a poor substitute.

However, by the 1950s, it was obvious that much modern cement is not as durable as the ancient variety, and many buildings succumbed to concrete cancer caused by water penetration and chemical action. Ukrainian scientist Victor Glukhovsky looked into why the ancient cement recipes were so much more durable than modern ones and found that adding alkaline activators gave a greatly superior product. His work inspired Joseph Davidovits, a French chemical engineer, to discover the chemistry behind geopolymers and how it can be manipulated.

Professor Davidovits was awarded the French Ordre National du Mérite, and is President of the Geopolymer Institute. His most remarkable claim is that the pyramids were built using re-agglomerated stone, a sort of geopolymer limestone concrete, rather than blocks of natural stone. This would explain many of the mysteries of pyramid construction. Handling barrels of liquid concrete and casting in place would be much easier than moving giant blocks of stone. Remarkably, recent X-ray and microscopic study of samples has supported the theory that the pyramids are made of artificial stone.

The progress of geopolymers as building materials has been slow. Builders have an understandable tendency to stick to materials which have been around for decades and whose properties are well understood. However, the U.S. Air Force has been among the more enthusiastic early adopters — I look at military applications in the current issue of Defense Technology International (page 42). For example Pyrament, a geopolymer-based cement is handy for the rapid repair and construction of runways. After just a few hours a Pyrament runway is ready for the heaviest aircraft, reaching a strength that conventional concrete can only match after several days.

The Air Force Research laboratory has funded geopolymer research for runways, insulation material, rocket nozzles, and other applications. It’s even been developed as special glue for holding satellite components together in the harsh conditions of space. But the U.S. does not have a monopoly on this sort of technology. A couple of years ago Danger Room reported suggestions that Iranian scientists were working on ultra-high-strength concrete compositions. (Incidentally, high-hardness concrete is used in the construction of nuclear plants.)

The University of Tehran’s Faculty of Civil Engineering has its own Construction Materials Institute, which conveniently lists research papers in English. And it turns out that there is a lot of research into concrete technology, including fiber-reinforced concrete and concrete with ultra-high electrical resistivity. The Iran University of Science and Technology also displays some of its research in English – including a number of patents for new geopolymer cement formulations. The expertise is there; the only question is over whether there are other, unseen Iranian projects in this field.

The giant new Massive Ordnance Penetrator is reckoned to be able to break through 200 feet of 5,000 pounds-per-square-inch concrete, but just 25 feet through 10,000 psi concrete. Much harder concretes might be a real challenge. Back during the First World War, warships were equipped with armor made of a new type of steel: this was so hard that earlier armor-piercing shells would simply shatter against it. Military history records many rounds of offense and defense leapfrogging each other: new concrete technology may see this happen again. The trick is always to be one technological step ahead of the opposition…

Wow very interesting stuff.

Yet another evidence that in a previous life, human beings had a lot of advanced technologies at their disposal and something like the noah's storm wiped it all off. I know Mr. G loves these stories. Indeed very interesting.

I know Mr. G loves these stories. Indeed very interesting.

LOL. You know it bro. :)

It's the only theory that provides explanations for many unexplained pheonomenon from Gods to God, Atlantis to Noah, Egyptians to Mayans, Africa to South America (migration patters), split in Eastern & Western philosophies and even the concept of the Messiah, Emam Zaman, etc.

It's the only theory that explains how we could perform prosthetic eye surgery 6,000 years ago in modern Iran and how we could build buildings (alledgedly) 4500 years ago that could not be matched for another 4300 years! How the pyramids build during different periods and in different location on earth, py people who supposedly had no knowledge of one another, corresponding to start charts from 12 millenia ago.

It's what brings science, myth and religion under one umbrella. And believe it or not, taking it a step further, it will provides such a grand vision of mankind's existence on this planet that parallel only what you see in Star Trek! I think Khayyam sums up the discontinuity and sicoonet in the two prevailing shcools of thought (science versus religion) perfectly in this Robaii: :Oldguy:

قومی متفکرند اندر ره دین
قومی به گمان فتاده در راه یقین

میترسم از آن که بانگ آید روزی
کای بیخبران راه نه آنست و نه این

I think one of these days they are going to find a whole bunch of copper underground from 6000 years ago, and some remains of a wifi router. Just wait and see. ;)
By the way, for the record, I am not denying any of your theories, in fact I like them.

:chekerim: Mr. Ped. They're actually based on a lot of research and I didn't pull them out of a hat. The problem with the scientific community is that they base their theories on some initial assumptions and everything from that point on is gauged against that basic "fact" (i.e. incorrect assumption).

For example, the Mayan pyramids are "assumed" to have been built sometime between the 7th and 10th century A.D. After a while and without any definitive proof, this assumption became a "fact" and our subsequent understanding of Mayan society, decrpytion of their hyroglyphs and decoding their highly complex and advanced calander has been based on this simple "assumption" and ridiculous assertions that the builders of the pyramids were a barbaric society with sacrificial rituals who succumber the superior knowledge, fire-power and spirituality of the contisdoroes. Making the calendar fit into this ridiculous theory, it is now also a commonly accpeted "fact" that the designers of the calendar made an approximation in the number of the days in the year and included them as 360 instead of 365.25! We've even gone so far to claim that there are 91 steps in the Chichen Itza pyramids and that with the landing on top this represents the 365 days of the year (clealry contradicting the 360 day assumption from earlier)!!!

If we were to start out with absolutely no assumptions on the construction date of the pyramids and hypothesize based only on available "facts", they will paint a completely different picture of how, why and when the pyramids were built. The most basic and prevalent fact is that the Mesoamerican calendars are based on a vigesimal (base 20) numbering system. As an IT guy, I'm sure you appreciate the fact that our society is entirely run on a decimal system and it wasn't until the later parts of last century when we felt the need for a Hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system to deal with a specific application (computers). In essence, the designers of the Mesoamercian calendars had a more complex numbering system long before we did - but why? It certainly had no purpose in performing sacrifices to the Gods!

The 2nd important fact is the acoustic phenomena observed in Chichen Itza. This is well documented and I have witnessed this first hand, that the facade of the largest pyramid there, converts the sound of clapping to the chirping sound of the native bird in that area in the form of an echo. There is also a "playing fild" there, nearly the size of a football field, which exhibits the same sound qualities of those dishes we saw in Baltimore, with the exception that there are no dishes and this is done over a distance of more than 50 yards, not the 10 yards that separated those two dishes. Again, this creates a clear contradiction with the "barbarians" assumption, while shedding further light on the mathemitical mastery and advancements of those who built these structurs and their need for a vigesimal numbering system to carry out these complex calculations.

The 3rd important fact is that the number of steps on each facade of the pyramid is actually 90, not 91! This is incorrectly documented in every source that you can find from books to online sources. Since, this did not jive with my theory of "advanced" civilization, I actually travelled down there for the 2nd time last December to literally count the number of steps. Surely enough, the steps on one of the deteriorating facades of the pyramids was actually numbered, the picture of which I previously posted on ISP. There are only 90steps and this is in line with the 18 and 20 "day" cycles of the long count calendar (90 x 4 facades = 360). While some pseudo-scientists are confortable making an assumption that this is indeed an approximation of the 365 day solar calendar, I for one can not help but hypothesize (based on other facts discussed earlier) that 360 actually represents the number of degress in planetary orbits!

My research has further demonstrated that the 13 x 20 cycles in the long count calendar is in fact intended to create a 13 x 20 matrix or grid overhead, accurately predicting the relative locations of the sun and the moon in the sky at a specific time of the day. While I have abandones this research due to a serious lack of time, this may explain why the mayan were able to accurately andeasily presdict eclipses (both lunar and solar) and predict certain events on earth which may realted to interplanetary gravitational forces.

My theory on the Mayan pyramids is that they were built sometime during the Younger Dryas by a highly advanced civilization residing at that time in the Mesoamericas. This advanced civilization interacted with other advanced civilizations in different parts of the world including those in Egypt and South East Asia. Having looked into the unpolluted skies for nearly 15,000 years prior to that, uninterrupted by major catastrophic changes on the planet, they devised a calendar, not only capable of measuring earth days and seasons, but those in the solar system and the Milky Way (i.e. the effects of the pcrecession of the Equinox). Becoming aware of the major changes that were taking place on the planet, they built large monuments and based them on extra-terrestrial objects (namely the Orion system) to draw our attention (as the future inhabitats of this planet and their children) to what they considered predictable and catastrophic changes on this planet that would challenge our existence in the years to come.

Hoping that one day we would be able to decode this information, they hacked their stories and knowledge into one of the hardest stones on this planet in the form of glyphs (easiest way to communicate large amounts of information and hence the expression "a picture speaks a thousand words"). Since all these civilizations were located near bodies of water, much like out biggest cities today), they were all wiped out following the sudden change in water levels that is well known to have occured at the end of the Younger Dryas (Plato pretty accurately dates this to have occured 9,000 years before him). Their stories survived through a small group of survivors which I believe ended up somewhere in the Iranian plateau.

Of course, the nomadic tribes of the time, by virtue of living in higher altitudes, also managed to survive this catastrophic event. As they continued their migration toward bodies of water (the same way their ancestros had done before them for 10's of thousands of years), they simply "found" these enormous monuments, Unable to associate it with anything they had seen or heard of, they interpreted the imagery in the glyphs to mean that these pyramids were built by Gods. The Gods in this case simply represented the highly advanced civilizations of human beings that lived in those areas and had vanished thousands of years before.

In the centuries that followed, these Gods became a tool for the ruling class (most likely the offsprings of the small groups that originally found the pyramids) to enslave the new migrants to the area forming large hierarchial societies which themselve were based on pyramids and continue to this day. Of course, the only glitch was the small group of survivors (from the advanced civilizations) whose offsprings eventually started to spread through the world again with a completely different story of what took place. This is the story of God and a higher order which has survived in very fragmented forms through both Eastern & Western religions, but later butherized again by the builders of social pyramids for to overpower and manipulate the masses.

All religions and philosophical schools of though, whether Eastern, Western, nomadic or native, all our mythology, and our scientific knowledge of the universe supports the occurence of future catastrophic events on this planet that will test the evolution and survival of our species - it is not a question of if, but when. I believe that the actual timeline can be calculated to within a few years based on currently available information. The pyramidical structure of human civilization can not and will not stand through this type of major evolutionary test. We will return to simple nomadic life and how much of our current knowledge we can manage to pass on to future generations through this event, will depend greatly on how soon we can determine this date and how prepared we are for it. At the moment, things are not looking good!

Mr. G, I have read your mayan theories before, and I don't have anything against them. In fact I am amazed by them. How did you get into this field of archeology and how much time did you spend for this research? I think you are absolutely right about wrong assumptions the researchers make. In fact these wrong assumptions are made in every day life by almost everybody. But when you do research you need to let go of all the assumptions until you see evidence. I think you are on to something. Maybe in a few years you can retire and start your archeology research.

I spent a good 2 years doing about 5-6 hours a day a few yars back. It wasn't just on the Mayans though. I was trying to overlap and connect all arhceological and scientific evidence to ancient religous and mythological stories. The nice thing about all this is that you don't really need to go on major archeological expeditions and most of the data has already been extracted (unless misrepresented as was the case with the number of steps of El Catillo). It's always good to do some sort of hands-on work though. For example, I noticed the existence of algae at Stonehendge which further supports my dating, back to the Younger Dryas and its destruction due to the sudden rise in water levels at the end of this period - there are no bodies of water near Stonehendge as you know to provide another explanation for the existence of this type of algae.

It's really hard to do this type of research though, because you need a certain level of disconnection with "reality" as we know it in order to cleanse yourself from all these assumptions and prejudices that we have on interpreting data - as you suggested. Other than lack of time, I started to notice that this factor was really affecting my everyday life and apocalytic theories seldom make good conversation in response to people asking what you've been up to!!! ;)

Of course, I don't look at any of this as apocalyptic but a simple evolutionary fact. We're here in this shape and form, having evolved in relatively small steps over time, by adapting to the new conditions created by these catastrophic events. In essence, they are as much a part of our existence as they are a part of our destruction. The follow-up research needs to be extensive and requires a team of experts in various fields, rather than an individual collecting and connecting data. For example, a certain connection must be established between Avestan storoies and the Mayan timeline, if the survivors did in fact settle in modern day Iran (this is according to the Avesta). A simple correlation between the solar clendar and the astrological importance of the Mayan calendar is not enough to draw any conclusions from.

This particular correlation requires a team of archeological and linguistic experts familiar both with bronze age middle eastern civilizations and mesoamerican civilizations. In order to pain a complete picture, there's also the need to tie all this into norse mythology. As you can see, the research needs to be extensive and requires major funding and/or grants. It will be difficult to obtain any government grants for this reseach - the notion of a major catastrophic event that will wipe out over 95% of mankind within 100 years, would hardly be considered something worth investing in and its mere suggestion is just as dangerous to our way of life as the event itself!

And this was part of your school work or all extra curricular activity? I have a archeologist friend who is my elementary school classmate. I am sure it would be interesting to get the two of you together and just sit aside. ;)

Ghorboonet beram Pedram joon, school koja ma koja chand sal pish! ;) It's coming up on the two decade mark soon, since I was in uni! Plus, you know they don't let you go outside the box in school. This was all freelance stuff. For sure put the two of us together if he's around. That's the very first step to putting a team together. :)

Ghorboonet beram Pedram joon, school koja ma koja chand sal pish! ;) It's coming up on the two decade mark soon, since I was in uni! Plus, you know they don't let you go outside the box in school. This was all freelance stuff. For sure put the two of us together if he's around. That's the very first step to putting a team together. :)

Really? I thought you were only about 30 years old. :NoTooth:
My friend should be in Iran right now. But he was teaching in the US at some point. I will see if he is interested.

Really? I thought you were only about 30 years old. :NoTooth:
My friend should be in Iran right now. But he was teaching in the US at some point. I will see if he is interested.

LOL. I'm 30 only if you're 32 (funnier with a paki accent)! ;)
Sounds good bro. I'd love to take this to the next level.