somehiker
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airborne1092 said:I've read this thread, and want to say up front, In so far as the Aztecs, I know squat - except what the movies tell me.
However, I don't believe you need to know the Aztecs, to know where all that gold is. Several thoughts come to mind;
The picture of natives collecting gold from the river is interesting. It would however be very tedious and not net you a whole heck of a lot. Most if not all that would be placer type powder and flakes.
The picture would be consistent with my next thought, that I disagree with some here on one point - You do need some level of understanding of metallurgy, to mine and process gold and silver. Hard-rock mining? how are you going to accomplish this, without iron or bronze? Even bronze is fairly soft. Certainly wood won't break rock very well. When you smelt and homogenize the gold or silver, how the heck are you going to do that without a bronze or iron cauldron? A stone cauldron you say? How are you going to carve that without strong metal? A natural rock bowl for a cauldron? That would be very tedious, my friend. IMO to process these metals, you need to first have a grasp on iron and bronze craft with which to make tools. BTW, gold melts at 1850 F. The Aztecs stored their gold in places like AZ, UT or NM? That's a stretch. How many people would it take to carry tons of gold and silver that distance? Way too many, IMO.
Here's the conclusion I came to. The Spaniards were explorers, commissioned by the king/queen of Spain. That was their livelihood. What was their first thought, when they reached the shores of central America and were met by people wearing deer-skin thongs and living in adobe huts? Oh crap - these folks are pretty poor! Of course they're going to make up some spectacular story about how the pyramids were shod with gold! everyone wore gold, even the commoner. Sure, perhaps most had ornamental gold, but as one previous poster said, it was whatever they found in the rivers or in the caves. It was nothing substantial. "Oh! Yes Sir! More gold than you can imagine!" "Of course we need to go back, this is but a sample of what we found. There was too much to bring back all in one trip!" Wouldn't YOU want to keep your well financed job and your reputation? Of course you would! Then, upon hearing the initial stories, more explorers came, and failed to find these magical pyramids clad in gold, so the locals were tortured to get an appropriate answer. Wasn't this about the same time as the Spanish inquisitions? Some how, the locals striped all this gold off the buildings, and now there is none to be found. How much gold have we mined commercially in the US?
Roughly 4,600 tons since 1970.
http://www.goldsheetlinks.com/production.htm
How much is that?
In my estimation, that is a solid block of gold the size of the USS Nimitz.
1x 25 ton stone from Stonehenge is average 13 x 7 x 4 feet <times> 2 (for 50 ton stone) = 26 x 14 x 8. 50 tons per stone is roughly 1.1% of 4600 tons. so I multiplied that org. dimensions by 100 and came to 1300 x 700 x 400 or a better estimation would be roughly 1100 x 450 x 300. A solid piece of gold, the size of the USS Nimitz.
But that's not too much gold, right? think about industrial applications of gold. Computers and electronics, cell phones, dental prosthetics and more. Since 1970. In 40 years with modern technologies and a quantum leap in extraction and processing technology experienced in the 1980s, we've only managed to extract this much gold, in the US. Also it's important to note, the US averages between 10% and 25% of total gold production, year to year.
I digress though. I would think, there is no sudden jump in gold content hidden in the ground, once you cross the border into MX. The border is merely a geopolitical line. I would think the land would generally be as homogenized in Mexico as it is in America, with localized veins of pockets of gold, here and there. How much gold could the Aztecs really extracted from the ground? Not much, IMO. I would hazard a guess that most of it was found laying around, and pounded into crude devices for wear. Yes, the building and buildings and structures could have been shod with gold. I know gold can be extruded into an extremely thin sheet, as it is in many other instances, but even that would require more than rudimentary tools. Again, as another poster pointed out, I believe most of the gold from Mexico and central America is currently on display in European museums as components of other artifacts and crown jewels pieces. If we want to find the gold in Mexico and central America, we better start digging.
Not to try and downplay anyone's dreams, it's just my 2 cents...
page 14 http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7053018M/The_goldsmith's_art_in_ancient_Mexico.
Found this info=cactusjumper said:As I recall, Diaz, and by extension I believe we can assume Cortez, were convinced they had recovered and found most of the treasure of the Aztecs. If that is a true statement, they would be the best evidence for that belief.
Anyone know when the "Aztec Treasure" story was first published, and by whom?
Joe Ribaudo
I went out and asked my builder. He is the man who told me the ancients mixed the small rocks cast out of ant hills here, with juice of nopal cactus, and milk, to make a very hard concrete. I am not convinced they did not also use quicklime, which they had the capacity to bake, but he says not.
piegrande said:@airborne: >> 1x 25 ton stone from Stonehenge is average 13 x 7 x 4 feet <times> 2 (for 50 ton stone) = 26 x 14 x 8. 50 tons per stone is roughly 1.1% of 4600 tons. so I multiplied that org. dimensions by 100 and came to 1300 x 700 x 400 or a better estimation would be roughly 1100 x 450 x 300. A solid piece of gold, the size of the USS Nimitz.
Sorry, but if a 25 ton rock is 13 X 7 X 4 feet, then a 50 ton rock is 26 X 7 X 4. 26 X 14 X 8 is 8 times as heavy as 13 X 7 X 4, not twice as heavy. Thus, the latter rock would weight 200 tons, not 50 tons.
I do not know what sort of rocks they have in Stonehenge, but I live in a quarry town here in Mexico. And, the travertine marble here has a specific gravity of around 2.5, which means a cubic foot weighs more or less 150 pounds. So, that weight of the 13 X 7 X 4 feet rock is right on. Good job on that. And, I conclude our rocks weigh about what Stonehenge rocks do. Interesting.
The specific gravity of gold is around 19.3, I believe, which means a cubic foot of gold is around 1200 pounds, not 150 pounds.
I was not smart enough to figure out the US gold production over the last 40 years from the URL you linked, but I can see 4600 tons might be right. So, I am not bothering to figure it out for myself, and am taking your word for that. Gold is usually listed in mt, that is, metric tons, but because I am lazy I am going to use US tons, around 10% lighter to make my life easy, and you did not state differently.
4600 tons X 2000 would be 9,200,000 pounds. A cubic foot of gold weighs around 1,200 pounds, I believe.
9,200,000 / 1200 = 7,626 cubic feet.
My house here in rural Mexico is 2,850 square feet, and the inside walls are 9 feet high. That is 25,650 (edited cubic feet, so 4600 tons of gold would only fill around 30% of my house which is not all that large.
That is, it would be around 32 inches deep if evenly distributed on the floor of my house.
I am sure it would destroy the floors, of course, with that floor supporting 1.6 tons per square feet. (4600 / 2850)
Wiki says Nimitz class carriers have a displacement of 100,000 long tons. I don't think the Nimitz would move very well if you plunked 4,600 tons on it. But, truthfully, I don't know.
I do not intend this as any sort of personal attack, airborne. Just pointing out the correct math.
desertmoons said:I went out and asked my builder. He is the man who told me the ancients mixed the small rocks cast out of ant hills here, with juice of nopal cactus, and milk, to make a very hard concrete. I am not convinced they did not also use quicklime, which they had the capacity to bake, but he says not.
This sounds like a fun experiment. What kind of milk do you think they used? Goat?