Thread: Has anyone ever heard of Edward Leedskalnin?

I searched the forum using his last name and nothing came up so I thought I would bring this up under the against the mainstream heading.

This fellow was a Latvian immigrant with only a fourth grade education. He was barely over five feet tall and weighed between 100 and 120 pounds. He lived in the early to mid 1900's. What he accomplished was truly amazing. He built what he called Rock Gate park, now known as the Coral Castle.

Using only primitive tools and always working alone in secrecy he managed to cut, shape and move over three million pounds of coral stone, some of the blocks weighing up to 30 tons each I believe. He claimed he knew the secrets of how the pyramids were built and in his own unconventional way tried to explain some of these insights in several pamphlets.

The Coral Castle has been featured on many television shows such as "In search of", "That's incredible" and such shows. Because he lacked the technical jargon of that time's scientific study his words seem rather mysterious and hard to follow, but there seems to be little doubt that this man had some usable knowledge at his disposal.

There is a website which offers some of the details of his musings which I found quite interesting and would like to hear from you guys to see what you think. Here's the URL:

LEEDSKALNIN.COM: MAGNETIC CURRENT RESEARCH

I've seen some television programme on a fellow who built some Stonhenge-like structure in his back yard without any power equipment. Don't know if it's the same guy.

Originally Posted by Coelacanth

I've seen some television programme on a fellow who built some Stonhenge-like structure in his back yard without any power equipment. Don't know if it's the same guy.

Hi, Coelacanth...Opps, I forgot, you don't like purple...my apologizes. Yes, this is the same gentleman. He was remarkable for what he accomplished. It'd be amazing to find out what he had in that black box of his.

I looked over some of the stuff that this guy wrote and man, talk about confusing. I thought I was bad with accepted technical terminology. Still, there were certain things I could sort of grasp.

A couple of things he did write about, not so much related to the workings of his understanding, was a claim that he could "see" chromosomes and "shining things" Here is an excerpt:

"This is for biologists. I can see chromosomes without a microscope. To see I close my eyes and then I open one eye just a little to look at the blue sky. Then I can see chains of beads floating in the liquid in my eye. Some chains of beads are longer than others. Most of the chains are folded over in irregular shapes and between several beads in a chain there is a bigger bead and sometimes there is one, two or more beads hanging outside the chain, and sometimes I can see one, two or more beads floating separately. Each bead's center is light, and the outside rim dark, If I open my eye a little more and look sharper, then I can see round shining things running in every direction in jumpy paths. Some leave shiny wave like a path before they disappear. Each shiny thing is many times smaller than each smallest bead. They are not crowded, they all use the same speed, but the speed is a little too fast for good observation."

By this description it seems pretty clear to me that the "chromosomes" he claims to be seeing are simply hair or lint fibers on the surface of his eyes, commonly called "floaters". Anyone can see these pretty easily. As for the "shining things", I believe what he is describing are the individual blood cells moving through the capillaries of one's eyes. These too can be seen by anyone who knows how to look for them. I watch them all the time and have shown many friends how to see them. Many people only see them when they bump their head and see "stars", as they become chemically activated from the injury/impact. I once visited the exploratorium in San Francisco and there is a machine of sorts that you look into with a blue background which allows you to see the blood flow in this manner but much more cleary than with the naked eye.

So clearly it seems, the man did have his misconceptions, but still he must have known something to have been able to accomplish what he did. Though there is another fellow who moves huge blocks (and even buildings) without the use of modern hoisting equipment I came across while surfing the internet.

Forgotten Technology

The guy that David and deadfishy are referring to is a man named Wally Wallington. Yes, that's his real name and he's legit.

He demonstrated one possible way that the druids constructed stonehenge using simple physics- Leverage.

Edward Leedskalnin is an entirely different, and Highly Imaginative man.

He believed that simply making up ideas off the top of his head and then giving them vague illusions as justification was enough to please the world. Well, sadly, he was born a few centuries too late.
Snake oil salesman are probably a constant in human nature- but when it comes to the Scientific Method- He couldn't compete. And the Scientific Method was hot on the heels of the industrial revolution. Science was becoming mainstream instead of reserved for the wealthy elite around the time of the turn of the century (that one, not the most recent one).

So, like all crafty individuals with something to hide, he kept his stuff pretty secret. This entices people into thinking he knows something that they do not.
Kind of the same drive as moon hoax claimants and the conspiracy 'theorists' who must create their own special place in society as more knowledgeable than EveryBody Else.
God Bless the Illuminati.

That no one knows how he built his coral gate castle thing to this day doesn't impress me much. I do not know how a lot of people do a lot of interesting things- this does not lend credence to the idea that there was some highly intuitive or amazing and unknown method to how they did it.
I don't know how David Copperfield or the Amazing Randi committed their tricks.
That doesn't make it magic.

This guy probably spent twenty years trying to figure out how the pyramids and stonehenge were built... tried many different methods, all of which worked on the smaller scale he was using, but not satisfactorily to explain what he wanted... So he gave up and claimed that he knew but wasn't telling.

Well...
I happen to know the cure for cancer.



But I'm not telling.



Please pick up one of my pamphlets on homeopathy on your way out...



EDIT: As a side note, I'll point out that properly treated, coral floats.
You can float a piece or coral for many months, as a matter of fact.
Edit to my Edit:
I mean, it floats on water, jughead. Not air.