This is a question about fantasy/sci-fi/games...

[SamNichols]

I watch sci-fi, not all of it - as most is dross - and for the most part I enjoy it.
I sometimes play computer games, I am thinking of games such as tomb raider (why didn't they call that game 'grave robber' by the way? They should do...)
I enjoy films like Indiana Jones occasionally; as a child of the 80s, it is pretty much obligatory that we have seen them.

I do, however, have a question: has humanity, at any point in history actually made a temple that reacts to filtered light by having to move mirrors so that they align and focus light on a specific point? It always seems that the puzzles of those films/games are built around the premise that ancient civilisations always do temple architecture around the way in which light will be refracted around and about. Has this happened ever? Or is it a common, simplistic, ploy by lazy script writers who can't be arsed to think of any other action by a mystical race?

Has anyone else noticed any stupid ploys in these sorts of films?

 

[andygates]

No, they never made a temple like that. But back when tomb-robbing was in vogue and the jolly Empire was pillaging Tut's tomb, it became common knowledge that the Egyptians used polished mirrors - possibly even GOLD mirrors - to get light into the tombs. No soot-marks from lamps, see? So this image of sunlight being bounced down into tombs and around corners - that's spot on, for the construction of the place.

The photocell is alas a modern invention. It's tricky to do gallium arsenide with stone-age tech.

 

[Elmer Fudd]

Stonehenge is built to align with the sunrise on the summer solstice (OK, OK, no mirrors involved). But andygates is right about the Egyptians using mirrors to light their work areas

 

[SamNichols]

Right, so who wants to build a temple with me? Now mirrors are all perfected, and we have gallium arsenide, let's found a new religion for everyone to ponder? We can create a ridiculous system of mirrors that leads people to a can of Bitter, or something like that. I have always wanted to create something that will confuse future generations.

 

[col]

Stonehenge is built to align with the sunrise on the summer solstice (OK, OK, no mirrors involved). But andygates is right about the Egyptians using mirrors to light their work areas

Could have been the moon too?

 

[papercorn2000]

Right, so who wants to build a temple with me? Now mirrors are all perfected, and we have gallium arsenide, let's found a new religion for everyone to ponder? We can create a ridiculous system of mirrors that leads people to a can of Bitter, or something like that. I have always wanted to create something that will confuse future generations.

PLUS, as a new religion, you get all kinds of tax breaks!

 

[Arch]

Not to forget that pretty much all churches are aligned East/West, so although they may not specifically light up on certain dates, they are connected to the rising and setting of the sun.

I'll join the temple building if you like. As an archaeologist (I hate it when people say stuff like that on telly, we know who you are for gods sake, stop padding the script...) I can give you in insight into the level of utter crap you can get away with suggesting, in terms of Hawke's ladder of inference etc (the idea that some aspects of life are easier to draw conclusions about than others - an axe is an axe and used to cut wood and you can probably prove that with microscopic and residue analysis, but can also be a ritual object, something about which we can only conjecture...).

 

[andygates]

High status. Ritual purposes.

Deadfall traps for the win. They actually *did* have those in Egypt. Just a bloody deep hole with rubble at the bottom to break your legs...

 

[Fnaar]

I try to sit facing east in work meetings, and align things so that everyone thinks the sun shines out of my @rse