This video is an update and continuation from my last video diving into the structured light scanning results from a pre-dynastic, ancient Egyptian granite vase.
Check that out first if you haven’t seen it: https://youtu.be/WAyQQRNoQaE
In this one, we get into some further analysis (including the area between the vase handles) and I’m happy to say the full scan file or STL file is now available, you can download it right here (below) in this post!
I also get into some of the response generated by the last video, and share with you the rest of my conversation with Alex, Nick and Adam.
Executive Producers for this episode:
Thomas Violante
Todd Beaulieu
Alberta Esposito
David Sicilia
James Dickie
Chris Finefrock
SteveVille
Joey White
Jack Demcak
Joseph Martinez
Associate Executive Producers for this Episode:
Brian Hoots
Strasbaugh Instruments
Douglas Young
Ahmed Adly
Emily Peyton
Hi, i find your effort to investigate and work very interesting. When i have some spare cash i am going o send you it.
ps: cannot download the STL file
yes, file downloaded, no worries, thanks x
thank you
I don’t know how to thank you !
awesome stuff! ancient water powered/steam powered CNC/lathe tech? ultrasonic/vibratory tools? or aliens 😉
Steam powered Computer Numerical Control – unlikely
Download of stl file was OK.
Attempt to slice stl file for 3D printing not working?
When inported into slicer, vase is very small. I had to it scale up.
Could you publish the height of the vase so I can scale correctly?
When I slice the vase a layer gap develops where the holes are in the handles?
There may be missing data?
I don’t believe the inside was scanned with the structured light process that was used. You might need to fudge it or create a cylinder based on the mouth. All the analysis was to the outside of the vase.
I did get it to 3D print by using a stl repair tool.
Anybody know how tall this vase is?
Looks to be about 8″ in the video.
Thanks Again!
The file is in inches. Scale the whole model by 25.4 and you will get the correct size in millimetres.
You must import it as STL in imperial units (inches) not metric.
Before running slicer, you must most likely prepare the file (closing holes and so on). This is a model from scan, probably not intended for printing without additional treatment.
By the way, what kind of data processing was used to create a model (smoothing)?
I am pretty certain that the height is 4.72 inches. I am attempting to 3d print it as well, you would need to solidify the model first in Fusion360 or some other CAD software because the inside of the vase was not fully scanned and neither were the insides of the handles. Then scale it to the correct height in your slicer.
scale to 2540 precent but file needs repairing to 3d print
Love your work Ben, I downloaded the STL file, was going to 3D print in with Cura, but when I imported the vase, it was microscopic. I can resize it, but wanted it to be the same size as the original. Do you know how tall the vase is? Thank you, keep up the hard work.
It may be interesting to use x ray micro analysis and EDS to see if there is any material left on the surface that doesn’t belong. This may give insight into what materials were used to make the part. Some of the grain boundaries between the hard and soft stone may contain interesting content.
Also CT analysis of some of the objects would give a lot of detail to the parts we can’t see well.
UnchartedX! Sending you an email about some laser scan data I had from a project in Luxor (VotK) that might be of interest.
the STL was missing some geo preventing 3d printing, so i made changes to the mesh. the edit can be downloaded over at my sketchfab ‘https://skfb.ly/oE7GL’
Thank you so much for providing this file! Will there be further analysis of the interior and lug holes to complete the file? I hope to be able to determine the equation of the curvature of the ellipsoid, and matching the inner and outer profiles may further demonstrate an anomalous technology at work.
We have been successful in determining the equation which describes the curvature of the vase with an R^2 value of 0.9996. The points of the STL all fall within 30 microns of the parabola described in our upcoming work. More soon.
I have imported the stl file into Blender, but the scale is not correct, is there any measurements for the diameter , height etc available?
Also it was not centered on x, y =0, so when rotated on z axis, it is not aligned.
I have started to adjust it to correctly center it, I am willing to share the file once I have reset it so it is pretty much perfect, the measurements would be helpful.
Also I added horizontal and circle guides for various diameters, it is incredible how fine the tolerences are!
I just wanted to add an interesting observation my friend made (He was a fitter and turner, and has used Cnc machines for metal working.) He says based on the surface finish of the vase, that it was not made on a lathe. He said it shows no sign of lathe work, or even Cnc tooling marks, based on his industry experience, he has inspected a lot of Cnc machining and says this is different technology.(Maybe chiseled somehow, but he was pretty baffled by it). Now I am really thrown, as I had been assuming the whole time it was made on a lathe. To be continued, I will upload my file to Sketchfab including the rotational animation, for public examination, once I have taken it as far as I can and am happy with it..
Tool marks can be removed by polishing, it is very hard to judge only by surface tool marks if it was polished
Hello,
I made some testing on Vericut Machine simulation program on the STL file.
And found it being a really accurate on the concentricity of the outside surface to inside of the lip.
I used probe function to set datum on the centre of the inside lip and lined up top of the lip being parallel to XY-axis within 0.005mm and then checked concentricity of the outside and found it being concentric within 0.03mm, so being very accurate.
This is great to see – full public access to the raw scan data.
This is _science_ as it should be, and we need more of it!
Are there plans to publish the assessment documents with regard to parallelism, perpendicularity, concentricity, etc? I’d like to render some diagrams showing the key features with regard to the primary datum reference planes, axes, and points.
I helped some associates develop some nice granite textures, and they have been applied to a 3D render, in case anyone would like to see that / DIY.
http://news.povray.org/povray.general/message/%3C63f7920e%241%40news.povray.org%3E/#%3C63f7920e%241%40news.povray.org%3E
Hi, I’m not sure how to write this comment or what I should say. I’ve watched your Youtube videos and find them extremely interesting.
I’m semi-retired now but my previous job involved cutting, smoothing and polishing mineral and organic substrates. I served my apprenticeship before the age of computers and worked in my industry for 35 years.
What you see in Egypt are the results of progression in technology based on what humans do naturally. Humans don’t do things the hard way and you don’t have to use the tools and equipment we use today to achieve what you see in Egypt.
John, it would be extremely helpful in our age of CNC machines and automated procedures to describe the older ways of manufacturing and polishing, for people who are ignorant, such as myself, where one could get relative tolerances of thousandths of an inch in hard materials like granite.
As with other commentators…
Please could we have the basic dimensions of the varse, to define the STL file properly. Just the height and mouth diameter would do.
Thanks,
Ralph
The povray is beautiful!
I would like to find some 3D filament that will print like the povray image.
The height I measured was 120MM.
Thank you so much for making the scan data publicly available Ben! You’re doing some great work here.
I found some very interesting geometric properties in the composition of the vase, and did a writeup of them here: https://unsigned.io/granite-artifact/ which I think you will find quite interesting 🙂
It’s an excellent article Mark! Thank you for taking the time to get into it, you’ve furthered our understanding of this artifact. I’ve just put up a post about your article – and we’re in touch over email now 🙂
Ben
Here is the basic rotation animation on Sketchfab, note that the speed can be adjusted when viewing the model. I have put this up as a start, and will try to refine and upload better versions as I can.
https://skfb.ly/oEvGB
This is an improved version of the model, am fairly happy with the result.
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pre-dynastic-egyptian-vase-9d0564976fec4d718aca1d661cec212a
Greg – very nice.
I’m working on this slowly – it would be great if we got the coordinates and dimensions of the reference shapes so we could easily add them to the models.
Here’s what I’ve got so far –
Render:
http://news.povray.org/povray.general/attachment/%3Cweb.63fc14029ce67fcf1f9dae3025979125%40news.povray.org%3E/vase_pov_scene.png
Message in thread:
http://news.povray.org/povray.general/message/%3Cweb.63fc14029ce67fcf1f9dae3025979125%40news.povray.org%3E/#%3Cweb.63fc14029ce67fcf1f9dae3025979125%40news.povray.org%3E
This link above has a very in depth analysis of the geometry and dimensions of the Vase.
https://unsigned.io/granite-artifact/
3D printing this is amazing, I had to scale the STL file by around 2500%. The file needs modification to hollow out the center, I find myself in awe of this ancient artifact even though it just a copy and made of plastic. Some rich individual needs to be buying up these items that are available in private collections and further work needs to be done. I’m a geologist and this line of evidence he reignited my intertest in the topic.
Jason,
I would like to get the vase 3d printed but don’t have access to any of the software you have used to create a printable version and making the necessary changes to the STL is well outside my skill level.
If you have a modified, printable version of the file would you be willing to share it?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Peter Nevin
Amazing, thanks for your impressive work! Innocent and maybe stupid question about the scoop marks in Aswan’s quarry and more in general: is it possible that the stone hardness may haven’t been exactly the same at the time when these marks and other tooling were made? Thank you!
Automotive engineer here with 30+ years experience in petrol and diesel engine design and manufacturing at a major auto company. The thought comes to mindb after watching this video and its earlier companion, that it’s a good thing the predecessor society that produced the vase never applied their technology to making millions of internal combustion engines, or there wouldn’t be any oil left in the world for us to use. Ancient technologists who had the ability to machine incredibly hard stones with this level of precision would have had no problem achieving the tolerances needed to produce aluminum pistons, steel crankshafts, compacted graphite iron (CGI) cylinder blocks, camshafts, etc.
Or did they actually burn fossil fuels, if not in internal combustion engines, then for other uses? The thousands of stone vases and other objects and machined megalithic stone blocks and statues strongly suggest that the ancients had tech good enough to drill oil and gas wells if they wanted to. Perhaps at places in the millions of square kilometers of now-submerged lands, much of that in the southern hemisphere and relatively unexplored even today by the oil majors, they did. There is a lot of speculation on channels related to ancient lost societies that a Younger Dryas impact event may have led to sudden melting of the ice from the last global glacial maximum, but could instead or additionally anthropogenic carbon dioxide release from a precursor industrial civilization have played a role? There was a large release of CO2 at the end of the glacial max, for unknown reasons. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-thawed-the-last-ice-age/
PS – I tried to post this comment on YouTube, but YouTube is glitching and blocking the post.
yes its a setting, no links in my comments on youtube. it just degenerates into a link-fest.
I have a hypothesis about the origin of those amazing high-tech vases. Check out the Prepottery Neolithic A (PPNA). Ask yourself, why would neolithic farmers use stone vases instead of much easier to make ceramic ones? Look at the distribution of the PPNA.
Assume for a moment that the Bible is correct that prior to a worldwide deluge, humans lived on earth in a more optimal environment that allowed lifespans just short of 1,000 years. How far could their technology advance when the working life of a man was 5 centuries instead of 5 decades?
The Bible says that Noah was instructed to take a large supply of food along with pairs of all the animals, presumably including rats. If as Josephus says, Noah was the priest at a temple near the Garden of Eden, then he would have a warehouse with 1500 years worth of temple offerings, which included liquids like olive oil, wine, and perfume, as well as grain and animal sacrifices. That means he had a large supply of fancy stone jars at hand. The kind of gifts that people would give to their god. The best of the best.
After the Flood, Noah’s wife left him and ran off with Nimrod to Egypt. And she demanded her half of the property. Hence, a lot of the predeluvial stone jars ended up under the Step Pyramid which was her stash house.
Continuing my previous comment… The discovery of such elite objects in the burials of Mesolithic people is what one might expect if a ship (whether from Earth escaping a flood or from space) from an advanced society was wrecked on planet Earth. The survivors repopulated the world but did not have the division of labor to continue making such objects. They had to revert to stone tools because in the new world, they were stranded in, they had not yet found the metal deposits required to develop metal tools.
Whatever treasures were in their ship/ark were handed down as heirlooms, but by the fourth or fifth generation, most of them had been buried with their owners as grave goods. Thus, several generations of stone-aged people are found buried with highly advanced grave goods. This is not uncommon in PPNA graves in Asia, it is not just Egypt.
I would like to know what the margin of error is by default in the equipment used to take the scan. That is the first big thing. Second, on The CMM how many points of reference did you use for for each circle, and what were the readings for concentricity and parallelism? Obviously, the more points of reference, the more precise the readings, and most systems require a minimum of 3 reference points per fearure. These are all very important. Just wondering as a machinist to have a fully educated opinion.
all addressed in the video and in the reports.
Do you have the original scan data? Can you tell me what equipment was used? I use blue light scanners at work and would love to see your data.
The vase is built from a rotated parabola. The rotation is 8 degrees. This 8 degree rotated parabola is almost perfect only tapering out near the base.
The unrotated parabola is:
y = 22.0818 (mm) + 0.913078x -0.00683784x^2
where x is vertical (positive down) and y is horizontal (distance from center axis).
So rotate that parabola by 8 degrees and it will fit exactly on the side of the vase.
Mean error is 0.0987mm (only outer shell points used, inside removed, no handles, no top and no bottom).
Standard deviation is .0661
So 95% of all the points are within 0.23 mm (less than 1/100th of an inch) of the parabola. I think the points that are further away are all located near the base as it diverges a bit there as it tapers out to form the bottom.
So if the people who made this used a lathe, they set the grinding arm at an 8 degree offset. These people knew about parabolas and how to move and use the vertex of the parabola to create a more rounded shape for the bottom half of the vase. And they didn’t have the wheel???
I’m not saying they knew about parabola equations per se, but that they at least knew that tapering both ends equally could create a more pronounced curve on one side if you rotate the mid point of the curve.
Correction: the rotation of the parabola is 9 degrees, not 8. Not sure why I said 8.