Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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No one alive today has seen an actual Bronze Age pendulum saw. No frameworks or blades have been excavated. Yet archaeologists have suspected for nearly 30 years that a contraption capable of swinging a sharp piece of metal back and forth with human guidance must have created curved incisions on large pieces of stonework from Greece’s Mycenaean civilization. These distinctive cuts appeared during a century of palace construction, from nearly 3,300 years ago until the ancient Greek society collapsed along with a handful of other Bronze Age civilizations. Mycenaeans built palaces for kings and administrative centers for a centralized government. These ancient people spoke a precursor language to that of Classical Greek civilization, which emerged around 2,600 years ago.
In Blackwell’s view, only one tool — a pendulum saw — could have harnessed enough speed and power to slice through the especially tough type of rock that Mycenaeans used for pillars, gateways and thresholds in palaces and some large tombs.
How a backyard pendulum saw sliced into a Bronze Age mystery
This is very cool.
