TruthArchive.ai - Tweets Saved By @FoMaHun

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Okay, winter is over, it’s high time to release this beast to the wild. An obelisk. Cast, not carved! The mess you are desperately looking for is at the bottom: I cast it upside down into a bucket 🪣 Fake granite from silica sand (as I don’t have useful granite grains). V3 recipe: no bubbles and only a pinch of slaked lime as a catalyst only. Why is it broken on the top? Because impatience is a blessing: I removed it too early from the mold. It’s 3 months old now so my bet it will endure the torture of nature for years to come. But who knows? We’ll see. That’s why I put it under the sun ☀️ outside.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Glad you asked: it’s from potassium waterglass. From silica 🐈 litter.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Hello CAST Cult Members! 😁 It took my friend and me a few days, but we managed to figure out the exact casting sequence of this floor section seen in the video. The animation itself took another day. What a pity that almost no one will understand it. Oh well—those few determined followers of mine who do watch it might at least notice how much seemingly insignificant details matter, like angles or the lengths of the boards. We looked at it from every possible angle and tried starting the casting here, then there. But only one particular casting sequence produced any meaningful result, and that’s the one shown in the video. Nothing here happened by accident, and the whole investigation was actually quite exciting as the casting order of this little fragment gradually came together. For example, the broken edge of block number 4 is far from trivial. It took us quite a while to realize that ancient craftsmen were forced into that solution. In the video, that will be the short red “slat.” The builder simply couldn’t insert it in a continuous piece, which is why the side of block 4 didn’t end up straight. I’m not sure how clearly this comes across in the video—unfortunately I couldn’t think of a better way to illustrate it. Enjoy this 41 seconds of colorful boards dancing!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

The vase 🏺saga continues🧵 I’m pretty good at reopening old wounds. Remember when @DrZamilov declared the case closed, because he had proven that all the ancient stone vases were carved? (Somewhat) surprisingly, I actually accept that they were all carved—at least on the inside, that’s certain. That’s exactly how I made my own little translucent vase. Cast stone, but I scraped out the inside.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. However, Max has samples that supposedly prove the vases were carved on the outside as well, because the carving was abandoned at a point where the handle is still embedded in the original block. We’ll get a wonderful explanation for those at the end of this thread. Fine, carved, not cast—let’s move past that for now. That’s not even the point I want to harp on. Because there’s something far more important. What can that be? Well, real evidence that the stone used for these vases didn’t come from quarries.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. So where did it come from then? And what is this whole thing about? One fine day, @Antanarivo_88 drew the world’s attention to an interesting study. I had always thought that no one had ever seriously examined the material of these precision stone vases. That’s standard practice among archaeologists: with zero professionalism they just declare something to be something, and that’s that. All artifacts are spiritual or religious, and all stones are natural—because artificial stone doesn’t exist, says the guy sitting in an office made of concrete. Which, incidentally, is artificial stone. Well, in one thing I WAS WRONG! There actually is—rather, there was—someone who seriously examined not only the vases but also the accessible Egyptian quarries using petrographic methods. Her name is Barbara G. Aston, and using thin-section petrography she examined 43 vases and personally visited 18 ancient quarries—driving around in a Toyota Land Cruiser (that’s how these scientific papers are, they mention even the most irrelevant details)—and analyzed the stones from those quarries as well.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. She published all this in 1989. “Then those results must be outdated!” says the average naysayer. Not at all. They may have been forgotten, true—but the value of the measurements hasn’t diminished one bit. The small publication appeared in 1989, more than 35 years ago. Which means we could have known for more than 35 years that something isn’t quite right with the stone used for these vases. Barbara G. Aston doesn’t claim that the vases were made from artificial stone. A petrographer can’t say that. She didn’t even know anything about artificial stone as a topic. Instead, she says something else—what she actually encountered, what the truth showed her. I read the entire book so no one can accuse me of cherry-picking sentences without having read the context to support my supposed argument. (CAST!) No, no. I cherry-pick after reading the whole thing and knowing exactly what it contains. The lady traveled across Egypt, took a total of 197 rock samples from 18 ancient quarries, and examined 43 ancient stone vases from four different museum collections using petrographic methods, trying to determine the origin of the stone. And what did she find? Let me quote from the final chapter, Conclusions, where we find the following all-important sentence: “Conclusions deriving from collecting rock samples from potential quarry sources and comparing them with stone vessel samples are mostly in the form of negative evidence.” (p. 169, middle of the page) Hello @UnchartedX1 , hello @MattBeallPod , hello Adam Young!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5. Uh-oh. How many vases did she examine? Forty-three. And how many quarries did she analyze? Eighteen. And there’s no match. How is that possible? Did the Egyptians import the stone for all the vases? That’s nonsense. So what could be the explanation? Once we get over the initial shock, we can go back to the beginning of the book and highlight the oddities that @Antanarivo_88 noticed early on. Take a look at this: Page 12: “An additional consideration is that rocks may be ‘altered’, i.e. undergo a change in mineralogy, commonly by interaction with hot water solutions. A high proportion of the plutonic rocks which the Egyptians used for stone vessels, when examined in thin section, turn out to be altered rather than fresh rock.” Wait a second—hot water solution? What could that be? Alkalis, perhaps? Page 13: “The rock has been substantially altered, with up to 5% of the hornblende altered to actinolite, and the plagioclase becoming brown and semi-opaque in thin section (= saussuritized).” All I really understood from that was “substantially altered.” 😊 Page 14, regarding diorite vases: “The specific ancient quarry sites for the various varieties of diorite are not known.” Page 15, granodiorite: “The specific source of this rock is not known, though in general terms, it undoubtedly came from one of the plutonic masses in the Red Sea Hills.” So the quarry for these vases hasn’t been identified either—although “it surely came from somewhere in the Red Sea Hills.” Well, something had to be written about the origin if the quarry itself couldn’t be found. I won’t go on. This repeats for 200 pages: Quarry unknown. Quarry unknown. Quarry unknown. Altered rock. Altered rock. Altered rock.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

6. Let’s remember: this wasn’t written by some armchair pseudo archaeologist but by a scientific researcher using a petrographic microscope and thin sections. So where does all this take us? Quite far! Accepting Max’s verdict that the vases were carved (except perhaps the ones cast into empty ostrich-egg shells), we must conclude that they were NOT carved from natural stone. Because there’s a huge difference between carving natural stones like granite or diorite and carving freshly cast artificial stone. After a week of drying, artificial stone can still be carved with a knife, and the inside can be scraped out with an ordinary spoon. I know that because I tried it myself.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

7. In fact, this scientific result finally led me to guess how those mottled “cow-pattern” vessels might have been made. How would you cast something like that? You don’t cast the vase. You sculpt it together from balls of different colors. You simply form a colorful blob, let it dry, and then carve the vase out of that blob. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

https://a.co/d/0faApqM7

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@ToddAMcIntyre @DrZamilov As I have mixed the dry sand with 2% slaked lime, the polimerization is quite strong after a week. I carved the inside without using rubber gloves. I mean not right after removing the mold but the next day. One day drying was needed if I remember correctly.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@bixlereid @DrZamilov You certainly have a good pair of eyes 👀 🤣 it’s from sand. It’s a proof of concept only

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@EuropaParty @DrZamilov 6.5. Amorphous silica binder

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Did someone say “Egyptian blue”? I wonder how ancient Egyptians could possibly invent it… …knowing it appears automagically every time I’m etching granite in the open. This process brings out this beautiful color 🦋 consistently. I mean: I have already posted Egyptian blue before, etching a piece of red granite but this one is a different kind of granite. It’s not even red, it’s ugly brown. And yet, this beautiful blue 🦋 color appeared again while I was busy etching a scoop mark on the top. Heureka 🤩

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Urun pacha. Fantastic waterproof level achieved in less than 3 weeks! Why is it surprising? Two things: 1. I used both KOH and NaOH 50-50% to do the “stone softening”, consequently half of the waterglass produced is sodium waterglass which takes YEARS to be waterproof on its own. What we are witnessing here is the strange and lucky behavior of mixed waterglass (both sodium and potassium). 2. I didn’t add anything to speed up the curing reaction (carbonization). No slaked lime, no wood ash, no metakaolin. Just NOTHING. Adding NOTHING would normally gives us an “indoor only” stone. But not in this case! Why? My best guess is the produced waterglass is not clean (how could it be, it’s not from a 21st century lab but from stone softening) and contains something that helps the carbonization reaction go faster. Like MUCH faster. Exciting, huh! 🤩 “Poor” incas had a much better waterglass for stone making (because of the impurities) than you and I can ever have by buying a bottle of ultra clean waterglass at the hardware store!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Doggy 🐶 is 1.5 years old. He had a rough winter with freezing for weeks. He’s still solid, but has a hard time with efflorescence as you can see. No problem though, the next rainy day will wash that white powder off from the surface. It’s a small miracle he’s still in place! I didn’t know 💩about artificial stones when I made it 1.5 years ago. I didn’t know how to avoid efflorescence. Doggy is a plastered layer of artificial stone like in Peru. A hanan pacha. It’s from sodium waterglass and some kind of wood ash (not pine) and gravel. I didn’t even know back then which plants ashes are good for this. It’s from some random wood ash I found somewhere. Time is ticking, doggy is working on our side still. Keep going doggy!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

And this is how sheer coincidence and a bit of laziness end up helping my research. What you’re looking at here is nothing more than the liquid from a stone-softening batch I made back in December—basically, waterglass. The store-bought kind doesn’t do this nice, gelatinous thing. It just shrinks up and dries out. I’ve never seen it take on this kind of jelly-like form before. But this one—just look at the color—isn’t pure water glass. It’s got other minerals in it, left over from the cooking process. And check out the end of the video to see what it turned into after a month sitting in the pitcher! As for what it’s good for—don’t ask. It’s just one of those phenomena, and we’re happy it exists.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

On the way to create scoop marks on the surface of a rock 🪨 First try. Zero tools used, none. Plain air. Caveman style. Just heating the stone by burning 🔥 logs 🪵 on top. It’s so simple even naysayers can try it with success 🤣 I mean first try with my current knowledge of how to do it at pizza cooking temperature, 168 degrees Celsius. Because yes, I tried to do it for years at 851 Celsius, which is the melting point of natron. Eutectic point at work. As you can see, this is not a scoop mark yet, but a nice widespread etching and hard waterglass on the surface of this rock. So the chemistry works. From now on I need to find tune the exact technology only, and find the root cause of the various etching shapes found worldwide. Yes, this is not natron. It’s KOH + NaOH. And you may say, Natron Theory is dead, because I’m not melting natron anymore. Just the polar opposite! We just went down from 851 Celsius to 168 Celsius with some very basic ancient technique. Natron theory is stronger than ever, as we don’t have to reach ultra high temperatures anymore, simply by adding wood ash lye (potassium) and slaked lime to the mix. But the main component, the sodium source is still natron and was in many parts of the world. (Except Peru). So you’ll start with natron, but if you add this and that to the mix, you can halve the melting point twice! First, you add slaked lime to the mix halving the melting point from 851°C to 390°, then you mix it with lye, and you halve it again to 168°C. This is how nature works. This is not fantasy, it’s not a fairytale, these are the laws of chemistry.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

So the actual technology to reach über quality waterglass and half a pot size bubbles is… wait for it… waiting! So when you pour your 2 dl water onto the rock hard thing at the bottom of your pot, let it rest for a week (instead of 24 hours like I did) before boiling it again. I have long suspected this was the solution, the last piece of puzzle in this picture but didn’t have the proof until now. I mean I didn’t realize 1+1=2 until recently. 🤦‍♂️ I was chasing these enormous bubbles for a while and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and the difference was simple laziness, skipping some days of cooking. Or a week 🤣 Being lazy (and less dumb) was the key. Unbelievable! Because: Waiting = polimerization = longer silica chains = higher modulus waterglass = pot sized bubbles 🫧 Now I know kung-fu. (?)

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Do you remember my tilted tray “Urun Pacha” stone casting, letting the nub juice just flow down? No? Check my pinned post about stone softening that actually works. And now, have a good look at this, after a week! Well, it’s further hard evidence that megalithic nubs are NOT optional IF the waterglass contains unreacted lye. As you can see, practically ALL the beautiful efflorescence patterns happen on the surface of the flowed down “nub juice”. Why? Because unreacted KOH and NaOH go with the water 💦 while waterglass doesn’t. So having a nub or any other way to let the water leave automatically solves a bigger problem: how to separate unreacted (and let’s be honest: stone killer) alkali from waterglass. This way. Ancient high thech chemistry 👍🏻 Now I have to rewrite the nub section on my webpage 😢 Again 😢

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Hello everyone! It’s peer review time again! With this step-by-step “Stone Softening” video, the Peer Review period is officially open. Phew! It took me a while! Over the past few weeks, I didn’t just randomly post “CAST!” There were two reasons for that. One was that I simply didn’t have the time to post or respond to people properly because I was working full throttle on this problem. So why didn’t I just stay quiet? That’s the second reason. I couldn’t stay silent while, for the sake of the video, I went through the entire cycle—from melting stone to recasting—twenty-eight times. Sorry, but I really do have a point. CAST! In this video, you can see the full cycle—from “stone softening” to stone casting. A closed loop. I could have done it using only ancient methods and tools if I lived in intact Peru. This isn’t a “trust me bro” thing—watch the whole thing, and you’ll understand. Well, that’s the end of another mystery. That’s how it is. Peace to its ashes. Huge stones, hundreds of tons, cast, and done. The heaviest object the ancient Peruvian Indians had to lift was a bucket. Sure, I know the road toward Ollantaytambo is decorated with massive stones. There are a few on the mountainside too. Yes, that’s true. But from now on I wouldn’t ask how they carried them down from the quarry (they didn’t). Instead, I’d ask: isn’t the stone’s binder accidentally amorphous silicon dioxide (aka glass)? Because it totally is. “Stone softening” brings these feats down from a superhuman level to something easily doable. It's just masonry work, sorry. Again: this isn’t an opinion. This is a working technology—check out the video. I’m not interested in naysayers’ opinions because they’re wrong. Bye! So, who’s joining me for the peer review? Let's GO!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Suddenly I gained another 500 followers, so for their sake, I'll briefly summarize what the game is all about here. It seems we're going to rewrite the first few chapters of human history. What started as "let's figure out how the unfinished obelisk in Aswan was made" has evolved in a direction where we can now confidently say the past didn't happen the way we thought. Our ancestors were apparently capable of chemically altering stones, dissolving them, and then reassembling them. The evidence for this is that countless others besides me have done this, and it works, and it’s not even hard to do. Unfortunately, there's no need for UFOs or ancient advanced civilizations to transport stone blocks of, say, 20-25 tons, or God forbid, 1000 tons. They weren’t hauling the stone blocks around, but just the raw material. In buckets. The megalithic structures are masonry works, just that the mortar is a completely different material than what we use today. What could it be?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

First Act When I started to decipher the secret of the Aswan unfinished obelisk, I naturally had no intention of rewriting the early history of humanity. This realization came later. The mystery of the unfinished obelisk lies in the mysterious scoop marks, approximately 50x50 cm indentations, which look as though someone gouged out the granite with a giant ice cream scoop. The official explanation is completely wrong, I won’t even go into that, it’s nonsense. However, my experiment was successful, and indeed, I was able to chemically etch the supposedly indestructible granite with simple tools in my own backyard. All it took was a grill chimney starter, some charcoal, and - natron. As it turned out, modern humanity of course knows that molten natron dissolves granite, or more accurately quartz, and this is used in several industrial processes, from pottery (cracking glazes) to recycling rare metals (liberating metals from circuit boards). It's just that archaeologists didn’t know. Which I have no problem with, other than the fact that they know now but still ignore the facts.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Second Act Now that we've successfully etched the granite, let's see what material is produced in the chemical reaction, because maybe our ancestors could use it for something, considering they didn’t know the concept of waste. What could this white stone foam be good for? As it turns out, the white stone foam is nothing but waterglass, Na2SiO3. This is fascinating because waterglass is one of the main components of modern geopolymers. What do our ancestors do if they get their hands on a material with which they can make stone? They make stone with it! And here we reach the point of rewriting history. All those civilizations that were able to produce waterglass were obviously capable of casting new stones from waterglass. The simplest form of this, when wood ash is mixed into the waterglass, results in a beautiful black, Inca stone. The giant stone blocks of Inca walls fit so precisely together that not even a piece of paper can be slipped between them because they were simply cast next to each other, directly into the wall.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Third Act How does the Native American tale go again? "Our ancestors could soften stones with the sap of plants." Well, that's almost right. Not with plant sap, but with the liquid derived from the ash of plants (lye), and not soften, but decompose. Everything else is correct. However, it’s true that when I do this at home in a small pot on the stove, the result looks exactly as if the stone had softened. And this is essentially the same process (to produce water glass), like above with natron. Because it's not just one everyday substance that can "eat through" granite—I myself already know of four. An interesting question is, if the Incas figured this out, did other peoples come to the same realization? Wherever we find scoop marks on stones around the world, they are traces of chemical etching, evidence of waterglass production. Peru. Egypt. Stonehenge. Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. The Barabar Caves in India.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Fourth Act What makes this all the more interesting is that if a more advanced civilization encountered the same relationship (waterglass + ash = stone), like the Egyptians, they might try to create prettier, not just black stones. Like artificial granite. Okay, artificial granite doesn’t exist—I’ll give the experts that. But fake granite? Not only does it exist, it’s sitting right there in your kitchen: your countertop. But that's definitely different from the natural granite using epoxy as a binder. Hmm. How ancient Egyptians did it? It took me a while to figure out one method for this as well, using caveman tools and resources only. All I needed was to find a material that, unlike ash, isn’t gray but transparent, allowing the original granite grains glued together to remain visible. Ancient fake granite differs from this only in its binder. It uses the same material as natural granite, ensuring that scientists can’t easily distinguish between the two: SiO₂. This is a never ending story, with surprises each and every day. —— Now that you’ve got an idea of what this is all about, I can totally recommend my book — it’s written in the same kind of style as what you just read. You’ll get to see all the research, struggles, and results I’ve been through lately, all told in a story-like way. Honestly, I just can’t write in a dry, boring, hard-to-understand “scientific” style — even though I know that’s what people usually expect. It’s just not me. In my book, we’ll not only dive into the story of my research, but also explore tons of historical sites, evidence of ancient stone casting, proof of massive environmental destruction. And to top it all off, there’s even a little cookbook at the end, just in case you want to try it all out at home and need a place to start.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

https://a.co/d/0gAq4q5i

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@terrilynnmurphy Thanks 🙏

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

CAST! How? The whole mountain? Exactly, this way: Step one: you build a positive mold, a giant sand castle 🏰 . Enforce it with some waterglass to keep the weight later on. (Anyone can build a high precision sand castle with straight lines, perfect spheres etc. Did you see my sand spheres?) Step two: pour your slurry onto the giant sand caste and wait until it sets. Step three: wash the sand caste from below the freshly cast mountain. Glossy finish = waterglass TADAAAM!

@4gottnHistory - Forgotten History

The Barabar Caves, Bihar, India, cut straight into some of the hardest granite on Earth. The mainstream says, iron chisels and hammers. Yet… 📍 Iron → Mohs hardness ~4 📍 Granite → Mohs hardness 6–7 Softer tools carving harder stone, with mirror-like precision? That doesn’t add up… unless something crucial is missing from the story.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

I’m still learning this f🤯ing “stone softening” technology but this is just beautiful. Still learning after more than a year discovering it 🤦‍♂️ OK, ancient people had endless time to play with this, but I’m a little bit bored after more than a year cooking the same again and again. But I will find the key, no water mat! I end with these beauties randomly, and I’m meticulously investigating the parameters what causes this and what else could block these giant bubbles to form. Setup: It’s a regular stainless steel pot ($10) on an extremely cheap electric stove ($10). An ancient electric stove 🤣 That’s the current “technology”.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

The same recipe with red granite grains this time. Large bubbles 🫧 = waterglass So I’m an ancient Egyptian guy right now, not Peruvian. https://t.co/iGkLFnacK5

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Wow https://t.co/riVAClEclZ

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@JustMeBob123 Wow 😮

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@ARomeoSierra 🤣 no. It’s not needed I’m afraid

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@Cit_Reload But they say they inherited it 🤷🏻‍♂️

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@alchemist_digi Absolutely! I’ll move to the top of a rock as soon as the weather allows. Scoop marks ftw!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@Sketchy_Kid001 I’m planning to use the top of a rock 🪨 (aka scoop marks) as soon as the weather allows it

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Official result for geeks only: 50 days It takes 50 days for potassium waterglass (mixed with sand) to reach fully waterproof levels. These two samples spent 24 hours underwater and remained intact. Water is not slippery so top quality. I made these sample “cubes” Nov 30, and it took nature (actually co2) to turn waterglass into real glass.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Failure No. 6. Casting an ancient precision vase in an empty eggshell. The two ostrich eggs are patiently waiting in the background while I struggle with the cheap temu plastic eggs to fine tune the process. Today’s failure: I pushed a plastic cup into the goo from the top to make the carving out phase easier but it stuck in and I can’t remove it without risking the vase itself. Anyway, the next failure (failure No 7) will be different and I’ll reach my goal no matter what.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Lately, a lot of new information has come to light about ancient Egyptian precision stone vases. Most recently, flat-out stated that he has closed the book on this topic — mystery solved. But where one old book closes, a new one opens. 🧵 Don’t get me wrong: I fully accept Max’s measurements and conclusions, especially the point that there is no high-precision vase for which we can say with certainty which tomb it was taken from, by whom, and when — meaning that it is unquestionably ancient and original. Yes, all the precision vases are in private collections, with zero track record. By contrast, the vases whose provenance is absolutely rock-solid — well, those are not insanely precise. In terms of accuracy, they fall into the same category as stone vases still being made by hand in Egypt today. With these measurements and conclusions, I completely agree. And yet… something still doesn’t add up. Max himself showed that the type of imprecision in the ancient vases is different from that of modern ones. Let's see: I’m thinking of this diagram, taken from Max’s website:

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. On the left, you see the external accuracy of the vases; on the right, the internal accuracy. Both based on two metrics: circularity and concentricity. From this, it’s easy to see that although the accuracy of the ancient vases (blue) falls into the same order of magnitude as modern handcrafted vases (red), they must have used a different technology — because the blue cluster does not overlap with the red cluster. Neither the outside (left) nor the inside (right) of the vases was made thousands of years ago the way modern vase carvers do it today. The exterior is one thing — the ancient vases are somewhat less precise on the outside than modern hand-made vases, which can easily be explained by the vastly superior tools available to modern craftsmen. But the inside? The inside of the ancient vases is MORE precise than that of modern ones! Look at the right-hand diagram, the blue cluster! Yes, you heard that right: the INTERNAL precision of the ANCIENT vases is BETTER than that of modern handcrafted vases — some of them even rival the internal precision of fully machine-made forgeries! Even so, I still agree with Max’s conclusion that the interiors of the ancient vases were carved out. So how the hell is that possible? Only one kind of explanation seems to come up: some strange “force,” some sort of “magic,” helped them remove the interior material more precisely. Sounds stupid? It isn’t — keep reading! Additional input from UnchartedX: he observed that the walls of ancient vases get thicker toward the bottom — a phenomenon known as tethering. At the top, the wall thickness is consistently thinner than at the bottom. (Max did not measure or account for this.) How can that happen? Well, if the “stone” isn’t actually stone, but the artificial goo I’m proposing, tethering emerges automatically. How? When someone casts using my V3 recipe, they are not actually creating a geopolymer. Not quite — because we don’t add aluminum oxide to the mix. As a result, the block doesn’t set quickly into its final state; instead, time (specifically the CO₂ content of the air) completes the process, very slowly — and obviously from the outside inward. This goo hardens from the outside in. Anyone can try it: cast a stone, and after a week, smash it with a hammer. What you’ll find is a thin, rock-hard outer shell, behind which the material is still crumbly. You can easily scrape it out with a spoon — or even by hand. It takes months for this shell to become 1, 5, 10, or even 20 cm thick.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. This is exactly how I made my very first translucent vase. It’s that simple. I let it set a bit (one week), a shell a few millimeters thick formed, then I drilled in from one side until I reached the softer interior and scraped it out. Yeah. Tethering? Is just caused by gravity: at the bottom, the shell ends up somewhat thicker than at the top. https://t.co/gJ6M4OSrvB

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. Now comes the naysayerism: “But the mold! Every cast object is only as precise as its mold! How do you make even a fairly precise mold — with some hidden math in it, no less — using ancient tools?” And besides, every vase is unique. It would be utterly absurd to use a precision mold to make only one stone vessel — or not at least two, or better yet, a whole series. Right? Sounds logical at first. But when I watched UnchartedX’s vase video for the 86th time, it hit me like a lightning bolt what the mold actually was. Here's your riddle for today: We are looking for a precision mold — actually VERY HIGH precision — which is both unique and extremely cheap, because you never use it twice. It must be abundant and cheap enough to throw away after a single casting session. And it must have beautiful hidden math in its geometry. Anyone who has already heard the solution from me, please stay quiet. Let the guesses begin. And if you figure this out, vase casting is next I promise!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Oh f*ck! The Post algo removed @DrZamilov from the post and I cannot edit it now! The famous Max I mention a hundred times is Dr. Max Fomitchev-Zamilov. Sorry about letting you out, I certainly didn't, your name was removed by the algo.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@DrZamilov This is not. And I nevet told it is. Your diagram is way below. Read on!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Quenuai, Peru. 🧵 This is not bedrock and not carving, I’m 100% sure of that. A hundred percent sounds a bit much—where does that confidence come from? From the fact that the same thing showed up in my little lab while I was messing around with Inca “stone softening.” If it’s not bedrock, then what is it? I wouldn’t call it casting; it’s more like a kind of plastering: a layer of artificial Inca stone smeared onto the real bedrock underneath.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. First, let’s see how I killed the long, boring hours of the Christmas break. Well, I cooked stone soup—Inca stone soup, to be precise. Here’s the recipe: 100 g water, 25 g NaOH, 25 g KOH, 100 g sand. Why exactly NaOH and KOH? That's a long story, it's just simulated peruvian wood ash lye, accept it as is. If you cook this slowly, over low heat, on a regular hot plate, all the way to full hardness—by that I mean concrete hardness—then some portion of the sand (we don’t know how much) turns into waterglass. The reaction isn’t complete because the temperature is too low, but that foam is definitely waterglass, born from the marriage of sand and alkalis.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. I did this about 28,000 times, no problem there. The problem was what came next. First of all, it took an absurd amount of time for my stupid brain to realize that no matter how pretty the foam looked, the reaction was incomplete, and my waterglass was still contaminated with the two alkalis above. I just kept pouring and pouring and pouring new Inca stone samples into plastic cups, and it wasn’t waterproof, and it wasn’t waterproof, and it wasn’t waterproof. I didn’t open a nub in them because I felt bad about cutting the bottoms off the plastic cups. (I’m an idiot.) I showed that huge crack in one of my Inca samples a few days ago—now I know why it’s there, but for months I had no clue. Then one day the darkness lifted from my stupid brain and I realized the core problem: the imperfect reaction. After that I proceeded to waste another two months chasing the perfect reaction. I cooked so much stone soup it was unreal. Of course, I never achieved a perfect reaction with homemade methods. And if I couldn’t achieve it, I had to accept that the Incas couldn’t either. Dead end.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. So there I was, sitting around shattered, just about to sprinkle ashes on my head (some Arab custom—no way I’m doing that), when by some divine inspiration (or anger?) I didn’t pour one of the new mixes into a plastic cup, but splatted it onto a tray instead. F*ck it! 😀 Then I tossed the tray (calmly) on top of a pile of other junk. Completely by accident, I left it slightly tilted. A few days later I noticed that a ton of “water” had collected in one corner of the tray. The “water” felt slimy to the touch—so alkali—and it didn’t set, not that day, not even weeks later. So there’s no waterglass in it. It was my bloody contamination coming out from the stone! And what about the stone pancake on the tray? Well, it lost a lot of “water,” so it set much faster than the ones in plastic cups. I’ll show it as one piece. Urun Pacha.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5. I had absolutely no hope that it would be waterproof right away, so I smashed it into small pieces and put half of them into my usual little time machine (a CO₂ chamber) to let them carbonate. Two weeks later I took one piece out of the time machine—plop, into the water—and it’s waterproof! What the hell? After two weeks? But I still had like 20 more fragments waiting in the time machine, fully expecting they wouldn’t work the first time! Alright, outside the time machine I also had about ten fragments left. Trial and error—plop, into the water—and those are waterproof too! Without the time machine! WHAT THE HELL? And that’s when I realized I had invented the nub like a caveman. Or if not the nub itself, then definitely the effect of letting the alkali escape and drain out. If you smear the goop made from “softened” stone onto something, it turns into solid stone. But if you put it into a sealed leather pouch where nothing can escape, and it sets there, it only looks good—it’s not waterproof. We can safely assume that even over generations they didn’t figure out why it became excellent stone when you did it outdoors, smeared it onto something (the alkali runs out), and why it turned to crap if you tried to cast some rock-like thing in a leather bag (the alkali stays inside). That could explain why for centuries they could only use the stone goop for plastering—but they could do it on a scale like this, as here in Quenuai. And you think it’s bedrock.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

6. This also explains the other oddities. See this window recess in the bedrock? Inkilltambo. It’s one thing that they could carve around it, but how exactly did they stick the pry bar under and behind the block they wanted to remove? Here’s my answer: they didn’t. Can you see the brutal color difference? They cut some kind of hole, then “precisely” plastered it back with the “softened stone” material. You don’t believe it?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

7. Then look at this other window, especially the edge of the window recess. Oops! This window is also at Inkilltambo. Don’t tell me this was machined straight! Have you ever watched a mason work? He’s got this little L-shaped tool he uses to pull the corners straight. Same thing now as a million years ago.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

8. This one. The heavy machinery used by the Incas. https://t.co/Qcz7KH69Un

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

9. If we need a name for this technology, let’s call it plastering-back. Somehow (copper chisel, pounding stone, whatever) they smash up and butcher a rock, carve it out in some crude way, then plaster it back with geopolymer. There are countless examples of this in Peru, and Petra is a great example too. You don’t have to believe it. This isn’t a matter of faith. You can do it yourself with the recipe above. You know: 25 g KOH, 25 g NaOH, 100 g sand, small pot, cook. Okay, I'll make a video about it soon. The full circle, from "stone sofftening" to Urun Pacha. Interesting, huh? Why don't you read the whole story from the beginning?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

https://a.co/d/3rq7L8e

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Only for stone nerds: reaching full waterproof level with potassium waterglass. From left to right: weeks in CO2 chamber (time machine). The first cube turned into a sarcophagus 🤪 They all spent 24 hours underwater in an aquarium 🐟 respectively. https://t.co/9hcZPvXur6

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Prototype No3: after 3 weeks water still found a tiny hole to get in, but hey, there are more weeks in the calendar to wait! And yes, prototype No3. is a hard stone, sound on 🔉 And no, that white piece didn’t come off from No3, if you watched it carefully you could see that it was there on the table already. It’s a dirty table.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Bent Stones in Egyipt (and elsewhere) 🧵(a long one) Alright, let’s talk about this granite wall, especially the bent stones. This wall is in the Sphinx Temple, right in front of the Sphinx’s feet, and in every corner of this multi-chamber complex you can find these “precisely carved” stones. This is one of those phenomena where the official explanation can be completely ignored without any hesitation — because it’s nonsense. No sane person would grind away 4–5 cm of stone along the entire length just to end up with this little curl at the end. Sorry, but that’s bullshit. So what actually happened here? One very telling detail is that perfectly straight, uninterrupted vertical line that runs all the way down the corner. What could that be? The trace of a pole? And how did it get pressed into the stone? Let me show you. Let’s suppose (ahem) that it was possible to cast artificial granite. And let’s also suppose that, to make the material completely bubble-free, it had to be mixed under the surface of a liquid — so that later generations would immediately say “it’s natural, look, there are no bubbles!” If that were the case (ahem again), then the formwork (shuttering) would have to be completely waterproof to hold the slurry during pouring. Let’s say it’s made of animal hide, okay? (Or waxed canvas if you prefer — it doesn’t matter for our story.)

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. Now, if it’s animal hide, two things are necessary: 1. It has to be supported with planks from behind, otherwise it will inevitably bulge outward (aha!). 2. The hide has to be stretched tight, otherwise you get wrinkles in the cast stone. (Poor Incas did not have sophisticated shuttering, just a few wooden planks to keep the slurry in place behing the animal hide. Same casting technology btw.) And this is where the poles in both corners of the wall above come into play — perfect for stretching the hide across. So we stretch it! How?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. Well, just nale itt to the pole, right? Let me draw it for you from a top-down view. Egyptian Shuttering V1.0 Don't worry, this is not the final version, this one is dumb af for several reasons. First, you can’t stretch hide this way. Anyone who has ever tried knows you have to wrap it around the pole and then nail it. This way it’s completely unworkable — the slurry would just flow out between the nails. Second, we forgot to close off the left and right edges of the mold. The slurry would pour straight out the sides.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. So we need waterproof formwork there too — again, animal hide stretched and supported by planks. I’ll mark that in a darker color because it will matter that two pieces of hide meet each other. Egyptian Shuttering V2.0 That would actually be a nice solution — it would hold the slurry at a right angle — but where do we nail it? Nope, you can’t nail that piece of hide like that.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5. Then maybe like this? Egyptian Shuttering V3.0 Nope, same mistake again. The hide isn’t wrapped around the pole, the slurry flows out between the nails. So where do we actually nail it? https://t.co/NIAaesQNhY

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

6. Right here! Egyptian Shuttering V4.0 We overlap the two pieces of hide and nail them together nicely on the side away from the slurry. And indeed, in every second tow of stones, that’s exactly how it is. But wait a minute, that's not a bent stone! Yes, Those are the normal, non-bent stones. Now let's see how normal stones' shutterint looks like from above.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

7. Here you are. A picture is worth a thousand words. But what about the “bent” stones? A real mason lays his stones in bond — or in this case, pours them in bond. You know, like in a brick wall: every stone overlaps the joint below it. This wall is also built (poured) in running bond. Now, how would we achieve these “bent” corner stones with minimal effort?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

8. Like this! See? The first hide is fully wrapped all the way around the pole, while the second hide is wrapped just enough that it can still be properly tensioned. (And that’s exactly why, in the corner blocks, we see that characteristic smooth, continuous curve with a sharp vertical line in the middle — the imprint left by the pole that the hide was wrapped around and nailed to.) This simple formwork trick perfectly explains the mysterious “bent” megalithic granite blocks in the Sphinx Temple — without needing any bronze-age Egyptians to sculpt granite with copper chisels and dolomite hammers for thousands of hours.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

9. Let's wrap-up ... the animal hides for the "bent" stones as well. Here is the shuttering from above. Fascinating, isn't it? Sometimes logic takes you somewhere absolutely mind-blowing! Interested in ancient tech and artificial stones? Why don't you read my book? If you've read this freaking long thread this far...?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

https://a.co/d/431Pdiz

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

So I went to Dendera to see the “lightbulb” and the melted stairs, which I’ll analyze later. Because I found something absolutely mind blowing here, a serious proof of casting limestone. And casting just recently! (Okay, some 2000 years ago.) If we can accept the weird assumption that roofs are usually built after the walls of a structure, then… I found “cyclopean wall”, “cart routes”, depressions, a gazillion of square drill holes and everything else on the rooftop of the Hathor temple! A temple that was finished in the Ptolemaic era. Ooops! It’s very important to lick 👅 everything (which I didn’t do because I didn’t want to be arrested), and to climb up onto everything that is in your way. So I went up there and found absolutely everything you would find if a stone is CAST! NOT CARVED! Twitter let me attach 4 pictures only so I show you the “cart routes” and other interesting stuff below in a 🧵 1/4

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

These are the “cart routes” on the rooftop. These are definitely not cart 🛒 routes, and I have a theory what are these I’ll share later in a serious paper about the whole topic. Oh and the square drill holes 🕳️! 2/4 https://t.co/6c5CjCSkpJ

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

I couldn’t count the amount of square drill holes 🕳️ up there. A gazillion? Or more? A ton? I stopped taking pictures of them after a quadrillion. Okay, let me show you a stone in stone in the next step. 3/4 https://t.co/rP0ZkvWrxk

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Nothing is more easy than to carve a stone to fit in another stone. A piece of cake, and it’s very logical also (not). The stone blocks on the roof of the Temple of Hathor are cast. Period. 4/4 Okay, one last thing: How about a piece from the cyclopean wall from Easter Island, and Peru and the cover picture of my book? Are you ready?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Any resemblance is purely coincidental. https://a.co/d/hcKJV4g https://t.co/u8eHA8ehxt

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

The Split Trap. A 🧵 1. The Mission In July 2025, armed with an XRF device, I traveled to Croatia to find out whether the limestone blocks with nubs contain any foreign material — in other words, whether they’re natural or man-made. This device can determine which atoms are present in a thin surface layer of a material by analyzing its X-ray backscatter. Since my artificial stone mixture contains potassium, that’s exactly what I was looking for in the ancient stones.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. Ancient Croatia Croatia is full of megalithic relics, though most of them date back to the Roman era. There are about a dozen abandoned towns like this one scattered along the ridgeline of the Dinaric Alps. I visited five or six of these sites and eagerly pressed the XRF device’s lens against the walls, but it didn’t detect any foreign material. Instead, I found something else: mortar between the stones. And where there’s mortar, it’s not true polygonal masonry, so it’s no surprise there was no potassium.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. Brač Searching for ancient sites led me to this limestone cave on the island of Brač. It’s called Dragon’s Cave, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone attempt the hike without the official guide — the scorching heat is one thing, but at the end of the trail the cave will be locked. The guide is the one with the key. Well, guess what — was there any potassium in this rock? You win! There wasn’t!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. Diocletian Palace in Split My final destination was the city of Split, where the beautifully restored 2nd-century Diocletian’s Palace is the pride of the city. And sure enough, we find limestone blocks with nubs all over the place — sometimes in truly impossible locations, but that doesn’t deter a real researcher from scientific investigation. Out with the XRF device! No potassium. What the heck?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5. In the basement I had almost given up hope; I thought either the tool went wrong or I fundamentally didn’t understand how the device worked. Back then I didn’t yet know that this instrument only ‘sees’ a few micrometers deep — a depth from which potassium could easily have been washed away by thousands of years of rain. In hindsight, I now realize I should have looked for a stone in a protected location from the start, say one that’s down in the basement of Diocletian’s Palace.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

6. Bingo! A stone exactly like this one here. I’ll show you the way if you ever feel like making a pilgrimage to it. It’s not far: down in the basement, first room on the right, then straight across, and voilà. Sure, it’s cracked all over the place—which is already weird for a lintel stone—but the important thing now is: it DOES have potassium in it! Bingo!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

7. The potassium content Why do I think the potassium content means the stone is artificial? Because in marine sedimentary limestone—like the kind the Dinaric Alps are made of—there is definitely no potassium. And the reason is that potassium compounds are highly soluble in water and simply get flushed away with the displaced seawater. The only natural limestones that can contain potassium are those where the water gets trapped and evaporates, leaving it behind. Pamukkale limestone, for instance, contains potassium. It is a fresh, freshwater limestone formed by evaporation.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

8. Mud cracks So, where’s the catch? Pay attention: these aren’t just ordinary cracks. They didn’t come from weight—there’s nothing above, only a cavity—but from drying! That’s right: so called mud cracks! But how could that happen? Does natural limestone swell underwater and then crack when it dries? Absolutely not.Natural limestone can’t do that. Only some soggy sludge behaves this way.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

9. Our ancestors were idiots?! If the cracks couldn’t have appeared afterward, what if they were there from the start? That would mean the ancient stonemasons were bloody idiots. But seriously—what are the chances that the stonemasons back then would pick the absolute worst, all-shattered stone for a lintel? A LINTEL ffs!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

10. Catch-22 So the cracks couldn’t have formed afterward, because natural limestone doesn’t do that—and artificial limestone didn’t exist. And it couldn’t have formed beforehand either, because then they wouldn’t have chosen it as a lintel. We’ve reached a crossroads: this lintel is either made of artificial limestone—or the people who installed it were complete idiots, putting a cracked stone in as a lintel. Q. E. D. The best part? At this point, it hardly matters whether this lintel stone has potassium—though that’s exactly how I discovered it. That's just the icing on the cake. A lintel cracked all over with mud cracks, but without any load, already reveals exactly what we’re dealing with. And yes, it happens to contain potassium too, as a bonus. Image: another stone in the basement with potassium content.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

https://a.co/d/1CAC8z9

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Today we’re going to settle the question that keeps coming up over and over again 🧵 “This stone casting is bullshit! I tell you why: where did the ancient Egyptians get their crushed granite from??" "Do you think they crushed granite with no tools? You see? Got you!” I found the CORRECT (and mind blowingly simple) answer to this question myself when I started looking for crushed granite (granite grit/powder) that was cheap—or even better, free.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. Sure, you can buy 5 grams for 50 dollars on Amazon, but trying to cast a multi-ton stone block with that… well, it’s not exactly cost-effective. So I started tracking down local quarries (in Hungary), and what I discovered honestly shocked me too. Here it is: The overwhelming majority of quarries in the world—roughly 80–90%—produce nothing but crushed stone (aggregate). Solid granite slabs, let alone thick monolithic blocks (for obelisks, for example), are quarried in only a tiny handful of places. Really. It’s no coincidence that if you die in Europe, you’ll probably end up with a gravestone from South Africa, India, or China. And that’s not because we’re chasing luxury—it’s because those are the “closest” places where decent-quality solid granite slabs can actually be extracted.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. Quarries don’t produce almost exclusively crushed stone because they’re stupid or because they wouldn’t love to make a hundred times more money than they get selling aggregate for road base (about $10 a ton). They do it because flawless, unbroken, high-quality solid granite is rare. Like extremely rare! And there’s one main reason for that: this planet we call Earth is incredibly old. Four billion years is no joke! Wherever you look, the rock is falling apart. In fact, most of it has already fallen apart. Topsoil is nothing but ancient disintegrated rock mixed with organic material. Time to zoom in on Aswan.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. Everyone says, “Oh, in Aswan you can only quarry gigantic solid blocks.” Yeah… no. Even in Aswan, flawless, monolithic, huge blocks suitable for cutting are rare. Rare compared to what? There’s the famous quarry with the Unfinished Obelisk, and in that particular quarry, good solid granite is fairly common—the whole place is made of it. Yes, but here comes the brutal surprise! The Aswan region contains a roughly 150-square-kilometre continuous “granite sea.” Within that granite ocean, the quarry with the Unfinished Obelisk is just one tiny droplet. People have been quarrying this area for roughly twenty thousand years—mainly for CRUSHED STONE. Granite rubble isn’t just common in Aswan; you literally can’t take a step without stepping on granite fragments. In this zone even the desert “sand” isn’t quartz sand—it’s pulverised Aswan granite. Across this ~150 km² area there is practically no soil—just granite grit and exposed bedrock. You don’t even need to crush anything! A broom and a shovel are enough. The most common particle size (in some places up to 70% of the material) is 1–6 mm—perfect for casting artificial stone. Once you walk just 1 km inland from the Nile floodplain, 98% of the ground is granite grit. Even the dust is granite powder.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5. I’ve been there myself; I could say I’m speaking from experience, but unfortunately back then it never occurred to me to pay attention to this. To look under my feet. Huge mistake—who would have thought it would matter one day? So how much effort does it take to produce tons and tons of granite grit in a place like this? ZERO effort. That’s it—case closed. Crushed granite has never been a problem here. Piece of cake 🍰 The real problem EVERYWHERE is the gigantic, flawless monolithic blocks! It’s exactly the opposite of what most people think. Let mi emphasize again: IT IS THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK! Please share this 🧵so it reaches even the most stubborn naysayers.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Answering the artificial granite waterproof question publicly. Thank you for asking, good question! So: Is the sodium silicate version fully waterproof? Well, if you plunge your (at least 2 weeks old) stone sample in water for let’s say 24 hours, you’ll see it’s standing under water like a champ. However, that’s misleading because unreacted (not gelified) sodium silicate gets slowly washed out. You can tell that by touching the water: it gets slippery. It’s still standing like a champ, but its strength is severely decreased. Just give it a hammer and you’ll see. And I found this behavior changes veeeeeery slowly, like over the years. I was able to make it fully waterproof in a CO2 chamber (I call it a time machine) only. Because CO2 turns waterglass into silica gel (although extremely slowly). With that said it’s not that it will fall apart outside in the rain. Or at least not quickly. There’s a chance that on certain climates CO2 wins over raining. Like in Egypt. Or different climates rain would win, like in Peru. That’s why they added pine 🌲 ash which made it waterproof but inked their stones gray. Because pine 🌲 ash, namely it’s aluminum oxide content turns waterglass into real geopolymer, in the Davidovits sense. Hence fully waterproof. I’d test a small piece outdoors on your climate to see what happens. But you still have these two options: pine 🌲 wood ash or waterproof coating. Or a different waterglass, the potassium version. Now about potassium waterglass: the ~36% will pass the spirit test almost certainly. Glad we have this nice test we can use to tell it before casting. What I did recently is that I boiled the 36% waterglass to lose more water, reaching higher density. It sounds counterintuitive but boiling a 36% (with good spirit test results) will not make it a bad, ultra stable 40 or 45% version. Luckily, we can’t reproduce that stability ar home, so the result is a much more dense (consistency between oil and honey) version of the same highly reactive waterglass.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

🚨Ancient Secret Revealing Day🚨 This day has finally come. On December 1, 2025 — that is, today, right now — I’m revealing the “secret ingredient” that more than 100 volunteers around the world have already used over the past two months to successfully cast artificial (fake) granite. And since a hundred people do a hundred things a hundred different ways, we’ve made huge leaps forward. When I first announced the “secret material,” I was honestly convinced I knew everything and I was the one handing out wisdom. Yeah, right! No. In these two months I’ve had to introduce versioning, and we’ve jumped two major versions ahead — the recipe is now at v3.0. This team made it possible to invent no-mix casting, which kills two birds with one stone — actually, three: 1. No more hunting for gigantic ancient concrete mixers, because we don’t mix the material anymore (at least not when it’s wet). 2. No more cursed frequencies or ancient vibrators either, because with the v3.0 method we can produce perfectly bubble-free stones. 3. The role of nubs is clear. These positive experiences led me to a decision: let a thousand flowers bloom. I’m not going to bother with patents or any other restrictions — I’m making the “secret ingredient” public. And it is: A pinch of slaked lime 🤣 That's right! I'm not kidding! See the video. Slaked lime borrowed from the leather tanning guy next door. Now, some of you might say that this means I’ve been chasing my own tail for at least two years, because quicklime and slaked lime are also components of wood ash — and we’ve known for two years that wood ash, especially pine ash, creates stone when mixed with waterglass. True. And yet no one before me tried adding even a pinch of slaked lime to waterglass — not 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. Why? Because it is counter intuitive! This day has finally come. On December 1, 2025 — that is, today, right now — I’m revealing the “secret ingredient” that more than 100 volunteers around the world have already used over the past two months to successfully cast artificial granite. And since a hundred people do a hundred things a hundred different ways, we’ve made huge leaps forward. When I first announced the “secret material,” I was honestly convinced I knew everything and I was the one handing out wisdom. Yeah, right! In these two months I’ve had to introduce versioning, and we’ve jumped two major versions ahead — the recipe is now at v3.0. This team made it possible to invent no-mix casting, which kills two birds with one stone — actually, three: No more hunting for gigantic ancient concrete mixers, because we don’t mix the material anymore (at least not when it’s wet). No more cursed frequencies or ancient vibrators either, because with the v3.0 method we can produce perfectly bubble-free stones. These positive experiences led me to a decision: let a thousand flowers bloom. I’m not going to bother with patents or any other restrictions — I’m making the “secret ingredient” public. And it is: A pinch of slaked lime. See the video. Now, the sharp-eared might say that this means I’ve been chasing my own tail for at least two years, because quicklime and slaked lime are also components of wood ash — and we’ve known for two years that wood ash, especially pine ash, creates stone when mixed with water glass. True. And yet no one before me tried adding even a pinch of slaked lime — not 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. So what exactly does it do? The calcium ions in it destabilize the water glass and kick off the formation of silica gel. Our binder is dried silica gel — essentially a type of glass. Meaning: natural granite’s binder is quartz, which is transparent, has a Mohs hardness of 7, and its chemical formula is SiO₂. Our artificial granite’s binder is amorphous silica, also transparent, with a Mohs hardness of 6–6.5, and — no joke — its chemical formula is also SiO₂. If someone looks at these stones without suspicion, it’s insanely difficult to tell the two apart. You need instruments — and an open mind. And why is slaked lime counterintuitive in this recipe? Several reasons. First, it’s alkaline. Any acid — even lemon juice or vinegar — can precipitate silica gel from the solution, but an alkali? No way! Also: lime turns everything white. And at first glance, that seems to be happening here too. But once it stops being lime and becomes just a thorn under the water glass’s fingernail — a catalyst — it turns transparent. And no, this doesn’t turn our material into concrete. The binder is not Calcium Silicate Hydrate — you’d need at least ten times more slaked lime for that. This remains amorphous silica gel, even if calcium ions lurk inside here and there. So what exactly does it do? The calcium ions in it destabilize the waterglass and precipitate silica gel. Our binder is dried silica gel — essentially a type of glass. Compare: Natural granite’s binder is quartz, which is transparent, has a Mohs hardness of 7, and its chemical formula is SiO₂. Our artificial granite’s binder is amorphous silica, also transparent, with a Mohs hardness of 6–6.5, and — no joke — its chemical formula is also SiO₂. If someone looks at these stones without suspicion, it’s insanely difficult to tell the two apart. You need instruments — and an open mind. So the secret of the set is gelation. If you add nothing, water glass simply will not set at this thickness. The mixture can stay liquid for weeks, and you can just pour it back out. But once gelation starts, you’re dealing with a completely different set of physical properties. Gelation gives the entire casting its own internal stability. I’m curious how this behaves at larger scales, but I’m hopeful you can cast multi-ton megaliths without the formwork bursting apart like it would with concrete. This stuff doesn’t flow. Gelation also explains why the surface ends up so smooth it looks polished. As for how the ancient Egyptians polished fist-sized depressions? They didn’t. Silica gel did the work. Water resistance: store-bought waterglass is mainly sodium waterglass, which only produces moderately water-resistant stones. Fine for indoor decorations or desert scenery, but you can’t cast underwater cities — no Osireon — from it. For that you need potassium waterglass — in other words, lye from wood ash. And if any mystery remains, it’s those white veins found in natural stone. “You can’t replicate that artificially!” cry the experts. Ignore them. We can’t replicate veins YET. But since every gear is meshing perfectly so far, the solution to that will come too. Enjoy!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Experiment No. 344225688 🤪 Creating waterglass from crushed granite at kitchen temperature, Inca style 🪨 Yes, its below 200 degrees Celsius. Yes, I started with crushed granite. Yes, the bubbles are telling- it’s waterglass that formed. Yes, DumbInside6 @BrightInsight6 is a clueless idiot and a liar. Ancient people thought it is stone softening. For them, it certainly is. I mean it really looks like it is. Actually, it’s decomposing it chemically, using exclusive Inca source material: their unique wood ash lye 👉🏻 eutectic point is a real magic 🪄 Sounds cryptic? I owe you the complete how-to. It’s promising but far from being perfect. I would like to run another world wide “peer review” with the “stone softening” experiment as well. When? Soon. I mean: definitely this year, 2025.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Let me emphasize this one more time: how exactly the ancient Egyptians produced their badly needed crushed granite? Well, they didn’t have to. The pink area is a “stone desert”, from granite! Where there’s sand, that’s not sand but crushed granite rock. The typical grain size is 1–6 mm, according to Grok, which is ideal for casting stone. Right from the desert. Cross-checked with ChatGPT and Perplexity: this is true. When I was there I didn’t check it because the revelation came later. But it’s true that you’re walking knee-deep in crushed granite in the desert here. It is, and it was, not producing but collecting.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

The Split Trap. A 🧵 1. The Mission In July 2025, armed with an XRF device, I traveled to Croatia to find out whether the limestone blocks with nubs contain any foreign material — in other words, whether they’re natural or man-made. This device can determine which atoms are present in a thin surface layer of a material by analyzing its X-ray backscatter. Since my artificial stone mixture contains potassium, that’s exactly what I was looking for in the ancient stones.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

So I went to Dendera to see the “lightbulb” and the melted stairs, which I’ll analyze later. Because I found something absolutely mind blowing here, a serious proof of casting limestone. And casting just recently! (Okay, some 2000 years ago.) If we can accept the weird assumption that roofs are usually built after the walls of a structure, then… I found “cyclopean wall”, “cart routes”, depressions, a gazillion of square drill holes and everything else on the rooftop of the Hathor temple! A temple that was finished in the Ptolemaic era. Ooops! It’s very important to lick 👅 everything (which I didn’t do because I didn’t want to be arrested), and to climb up onto everything that is in your way. So I went up there and found absolutely everything you would find if a stone is CAST! NOT CARVED! Twitter let me attach 4 pictures only so I show you the “cart routes” and other interesting stuff below in a 🧵 1/4

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

🪨 The nubs are coming! 🪨 I will reveal the “secret catalyst” on December first as promised. With an actual, easy to follow recipe + video instructions. The latest-greatest (v3.0) is now available to peer reviewers all over the world, and the very first result just arrived from @mweryk WITH A BEAUTIFUL NUB! Yeees! We are not cheating anymore by pouring down the excess liquid! Why should we? You can’t tilt a megaton stone block either, right? The only way to get rid of the excess liquid is to open a hole somewhere at the bottom of the mold. Surprisingly (no), you don’t need to instruct the liquid where to leave. It goes through the stone automagically! I was thinking whether this would be tru when the cast stone is several meters thick and realized that the answer is a big yes. Why? How? Well, the liquid on the top doesn’t need to go to the bottom at all. It’s moving half an inch only. Just think about it: you need to get rid of half an inch of liquid: it just soaked on the top as this amount leaves at the bottom. And here we are. A beautiful, religious (or ceremonial!) whatever, with beautifully chiseled surfaces and an ANCIENT nub!

@mweryk - Michael Weryk

@FoMaHun Nubs… here is cast method V3.0. Beach sand with nub drain formed into mould. Smother poured top finish… no precipitate, longer more comfortable working time… https://t.co/BsMvagFpE4

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Great minds think alike. Yesterday I went to the local university’s botanical garden to see STONE PINE with my own eyes, and possibly, steal some to burn it and check its ash. It’s an amazing conifer with giant, 20 cm long needles which I could collect and will burn later. Why? To do exactly what Mondo told us below. I couldn’t collect any branches from it so this test is designed to fail as leaves can have a totally different chemistry than wood 🪵. Anyway, stone pine is worth analyzing for several reasons: 1. Conifers are great aluminum collectors and that’s something that makes geopolymers super strong. This type can be the ultimate stone maker wood ash, because I told you so. Trust me bro! 2. Its name! No one knows why it is called stone pine in EVERY possible language around the Mediterranean Sea. I mean EVERY f*cking language. And no, it’s not because its seeds are edible, don’t be ridiculous. And not because there are rocks around it up in the mountains. No. Then why? الصنوبر الحجري 3. Someone cut down billions, I mean billions of such trees in the past. People think that the Romans did it. It’s true they continued the effort removing the last ones from the Dinaric Alps (modern day Croatia), but they certainly didn’t need billions (!!!) of trees for their civilization. I mean: BILLIONS. 4. Fun So let me burn these dry needles and try Mondo’s formula below!

@JablonskyVik - Mondo

MondoSTöNE 𒈠𒀀𒈾𒁕𒀀𒊕𒋾𒀀𒈾𒂊 🔥 As per our charter at MondoSTöNE for free innovation, I here release the formula for RockPASTE for your own persuit - Mondo 🧩 How to make RockPASTE To make RockPASTE - a paste geopolymer that can be combined with waterglass to create a solid rock material is straightforward if you have the right 'seed' wood ash. All species of tree when burned will create ash that varies significantly from each other in their properties for use in geopolymers. Some species will set very quickly and be extremely brittle, while others will be slow and harden over time. Some will be waterproof naturally and some won't be. The trick is to find a good strong waterproof quick setting ash (seed ash), that you can combine with a weaker 'filler' ash that tones down the strong reaction. The filler ash component can literally be anything burned like old fence posts, cardboard or general rubbish. The seed ash is critical though and needs to be isolated in your geographic area. The steps needed to find the best ash to use as your seed ash is as follows and is as easy as 123. FINDING THE RIGHT SEED ASH Finding the appropriate seed ash for use in a geopolymer paste requires testing various species of ash for their setting properties and can be done in three easy steps: 1. Place 1 gram of selected ash into a plastic bagie 2. Pour 2 grams of waterglass into the same bagie 3. Mix together quickly and check if it sets within three minutes (can't change shape without cracking) If your mixture can be removed from the bagie after three minutes without distorting it's shape and sets hard within 2-3 hours at 21C, then you have found a good seed ash candidate. Next let it cure for five days at 21C and then place in water for one hour. After immersion let it completely dry on a paper towel and check for hardness. If your stone is still hard then let it cure fully for further 28 days and check for fire resistance with blow torch - check to see heat penetration depth through material (should be halfway through after red hot surface with 10mm thick sample). When you have a pass on all tests above, you have found a viable seed ash for use in geopolymers. MAKING THE GEOPOLYMER PASTE Now that you have your seed ash you will need to combine it with filler ash, raw honey, lemon juice and water to make the paste that you can store to later mix with waterglass to create your stone creation. The basic formula for this mixture is as follows but remember that these weights can be changed given the properties of your ash and may need a little refining, such as adding more water for a thinner consistency for casting fine detail or use with fibreglass or cloth materials. BASIC ROCKPASTE FORMULA 3 grams Seed Ash 7 grams Filler Ash 2.5 grams Raw Honey 1 gram Lemon Juice 1 gram Water Mix together into paste consistency and store in vacume seal bag. You now have a natural geopolymer (liquid stone mixture) inspired by our ancient past that you can use at any time for all your artistic desires.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

The potassium experiment. As I already told you, the fake granite created with the “usual suspect”, sodium waterglass is indoor only. It IS waterproof, but loses its strength spending a night underwater. Which is not a big problem but still. The next possible ancient waterglass is potassium waterglass, which is sold today for “waterproof coating”, so it IS waterproof to the maximum. How do you create that version with caveman resources only? Using wood ash lye. Okay, let me show you the current state of this experiment 🧪. I already failed a few times with this, first, by using very weak, diluted potassium waterglass, and then by adding 5% “secret material” catalyst which made the stone brittle. This time, it contains 2% “secret catalyst” only, and so far so good. Naysayer: the “secret catalyst” is not a real secret, I told it to hundreds of people already, under two conditions: 1. This is me who will reveal the “secret” at a later time, not you. Also called an NDA. 2. You cast a piece of stone for the public as a proof of concept. Are you in? Then you can get the “secret ingredient” info. Just dm me.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Here’s a better photo of the two potassium based artificial (fake) granite. On the left: from Székesfehérvár granite grains. On the right: from pavement filler sand. Remember: aesthetic depends on the type of grains used, nothing else. Can it be made from Aswan red granite grains? Ofc. But I don’t have that. So far so good. And beautiful. Let’s revisit them in a week. The 5% version has fallen apart by then 🫣

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Uh-oh. I don’t think charcoal ashes are good for this. First charcoal is made from hard wood usually, that’s a minus (pine would be ideal) and second, I tried charcoal ash a long time ago at the beginning of my journey and found it totally different (=useless) from even hard wood ash. And if that ash is not fresh, then it will be good for you soil in the garden 🪴. Maybe.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@AndrewS31859941 It’s mosty silica gel, aka glass. It’s glass reinforced with crushed stone. It’s f🤩cking strong and durable.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@NgRubix What is that white powder on it? I hope it’s not efflorescence! Shouldn’t be!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@Lyrdane_Z 🤐

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

I told you I’ll kill the fake granite butterfly 🦋 with a hammer. Sorry guys, won’t happen. I just couldn’t do it. I love this butterfly 🦋 too much 💕 Instead, I tried to kill this idunnowhat, another casting with the same fake granite recipe, same silica sand, everything is the same except the shape. As you can see it virtually refused to die. For your reference: it’s 3 weeks old. It’s harder than a natural pebble, yeah. Extremely hard.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

In the battle to achieve ever-lower temperatures during waterglass production, I’ve reached the absolute minimum possible. This blue concoction is potassium waterglass, made entirely at room temperature. I didn’t heat it at all — just gave it an occasional stir. Sure, the process took three days, but who cares? We’ve got all the time in the world. Ingredients: 0.9 liters of water, 200 grams of potassium hydroxide (or potash from wood asj), and 300 grams of silica cat litter That last one definitely didn’t exist in ancient times, so our ancestors had no way to make blue water glass with zero heat input. But we can. The color? It’s from the cat litter. There are a few blue grains mixed in to show how full it is with 🐈 pee 🤣 Cool, isn’t it?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Suddenly I gained another 500 followers, so for their sake, I'll briefly summarize what the game is all about here. It seems we're going to rewrite the first few chapters of human history. What started as "let's figure out how the unfinished obelisk in Aswan was made" has evolved in a direction where we can now confidently say the past didn't happen the way we thought. Our ancestors were apparently capable of chemically altering stones, dissolving them, and then reassembling them. The evidence for this is that countless others besides me have done this, and it works, and it’s not even hard to do. Unfortunately, there's no need for UFOs or ancient advanced civilizations to transport stone blocks of, say, 20-25 tons, or God forbid, 1000 tons. They weren’t hauling the stone blocks around, but just the raw material. In buckets. The megalithic structures are masonry works, just that the mortar is a completely different material than what we use today. What could it be?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

First Act When I started to decipher the secret of the Aswan unfinished obelisk, I naturally had no intention of rewriting the early history of humanity. This realization came later. The mystery of the unfinished obelisk lies in the mysterious scoop marks, approximately 50x50 cm indentations, which look as though someone gouged out the granite with a giant ice cream scoop. The official explanation is completely wrong, I won’t even go into that, it’s nonsense. However, my experiment was successful, and indeed, I was able to chemically etch the supposedly indestructible granite with simple tools in my own backyard. All it took was a grill chimney starter, some charcoal, and - natron. As it turned out, modern humanity of course knows that molten natron dissolves granite, or more accurately quartz, and this is used in several industrial processes, from pottery (cracking glazes) to recycling rare metals (liberating metals from circuit boards). It's just that archaeologists didn’t know. Which I have no problem with, other than the fact that they know now but still ignore the facts.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Second Act Now that we've successfully etched the granite, let's see what material is produced in the chemical reaction, because maybe our ancestors could use it for something, considering they didn’t know the concept of waste. What could this white stone foam be good for? As it turns out, the white stone foam is nothing but waterglass, Na2SiO3. This is fascinating because waterglass is one of the main components of modern geopolymers. What do our ancestors do if they get their hands on a material with which they can make stone? They make stone with it! And here we reach the point of rewriting history. All those civilizations that were able to produce waterglass were obviously capable of casting new stones from waterglass. The simplest form of this, when wood ash is mixed into the waterglass, results in a beautiful black, Inca stone. The giant stone blocks of Inca walls fit so precisely together that not even a piece of paper can be slipped between them because they were simply cast next to each other, directly into the wall.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Third Act How does the Native American tale go again? "Our ancestors could soften stones with the sap of plants." Well, that's almost right. Not with plant sap, but with the liquid derived from the ash of plants (lye), and not soften, but decompose. Everything else is correct. However, it’s true that when I do this at home in a small pot on the stove, the result looks exactly as if the stone had softened. And this is essentially the same process (to produce waterglass), like above with natron. Because it's not just one everyday substance that can "eat through" granite—I myself already know of four. An interesting question is, if the Incas figured this out, did other peoples come to the same realization? Wherever we find scoop marks on stones around the world, they are traces of chemical etching, evidence of waterglass production. Peru. Egypt. Stonehenge. Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. The Barabar Caves in India.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Fourth Act What makes this all the more interesting is that if a more advanced civilization encountered the same relationship (waterglass + ash = stone), like the Egyptians, they might try to create prettier, not just black stones. Like artificial granite. Okay, artificial granite doesn’t exist—I’ll give the experts that. But fake granite? Not only does it exist, it’s sitting right there in your kitchen: your countertop. But that's definitely different from the natural granite using epoxy as a binder. Hmm. How ancient Egyptians did it? It took me a while to figure out one method for this as well, using caveman tools and resources only. All I needed was to find a material that, unlike ash, isn’t gray but transparent, allowing the original granite grains glued together to remain visible. Ancient fake granite differs from this only in its binder. It uses the same material as natural granite, ensuring that scientists can’t easily distinguish between the two: SiO₂. This is a never ending story, with surprises each and every day.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Now that you’ve got an idea of what this is all about, I can totally recommend my book — it’s written in the same kind of style as what you just read. You’ll get to see all the research, struggles, and results I’ve been through lately, all told in a story-like way. Honestly, I just can’t write in a dry, boring, hard-to-understand “scientific” style — even though I know that’s what people usually expect. It’s just not me. In my book, we’ll not only dive into the story of my research, but also explore tons of historical sites, evidence of ancient stone casting, proof of massive environmental destruction. And to top it all off, there’s even a little cookbook at the end, just in case you want to try it all out at home and need a place to start.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@ARomeoSierra And most of the cases, they didn’t. They just crushed the stone. It’s much more easier to do.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@balint_taborski Hi! High cost actually. The price of waterglass makes it prohibitive

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@GaryNicholls52 Wooden buckets 🪣? Let me guess…

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@gurunimenunir1 Really? 🤣

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@RustySashwaite Exactly. If you examine them with the usual preconception that “artificial stone doesn’t exist” then you’ll successfully categorize it as natural. That’s the beauty of it 🤣

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Artificial granite: so, let’s see the secret ingredient! 🧵 The component that has given me the best results so far on my quest to create artificial granite. Or maybe I’ve actually made it? Honestly, the results are so good I have to say it — this might be the solution, though I’ll admit, it’s not the first time I’ve said that. But this time, the results are so impressive that, to the naked eye, I can’t tell the difference from real polished stone anymore. Look, I zoomed in on a detail of the butterfly. Mohs hardness? 6–7, easily! (More on that later.)

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. Those who’ve been following my experiments for a long time know that even my very first stone — the now well-known neopolymer, which has made quite a name for itself — was made from waterglass mixed with wood ash. I cast over 100 little Moai statues from it and plastered a wall with a dog-themed relief. It works. Why did I start experimenting with waterglass (and what even is that)? Well, here’s where the story takes an interesting turn.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. So why waterglass? Because when I first managed to etch a bit of granite using molten natron, and that whitish, hard foam formed on the surface, I discovered that this dry foam is waterglass — which, when dissolved in water, becomes an adhesive used by 21st-century humans to create geopolymers. GEOPOLYMERS! Ring any bells? It sure did for me. I thought, it can’t be a coincidence that granite “sweats out” waterglass, so I began experimenting with it — but strictly with ancient, natural additives. That’s history now, but one of those additives was pine wood ash — and we know why: because of its high aluminum oxide content, which is typical of conifers but not of hardwoods. But how does this connect to our story?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. The ash? Not at all. Because it turns everything gray. So I started searching for other substances that could solidify waterglass but produce a clear, transparent result. I mixed waterglass with all sorts of ancient materials — from honey to alcohol, vinegar, and baking soda. A lot of these worked, more or less. That “vitrified” state everyone assumes the ancients achieved by melting granite can actually be created with all sorts of things: alcohol, baking soda, vinegar, fruit juice — basically, any acid. Among them, alcohol transformed the waterglass the fastest, turning it into a transparent, gummy bear, gel-like silica — all you need to do is knead in some stone powder, and voilà, artificial stone. But the alcohol and other versions always had this “meh” vibe. Good, but not perfect. Like this Nespresso capsule holder stone. Meh. I needed a substance that, when used in the process, would make a stone so convincing that not only the average person, but even experts — the kind who have already decided in their minds that “artificial stone doesn’t exist” — wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5. So, after nearly two years of wandering and testing new additives, I finally arrived at this new material I’m talking about now. TADAA! Beautiful, isn’t it, @iammartinstrayd Just 2% of this magical (yet everyday) substance in waterglass, and within hours, it transforms into silica gel. Then, over time, it dries, contracts, and tightly grips the granite (or sand) particles. And because it’s transparent, the expert can still admire the original, multimillion-year-old grains. Two percent, man! That’s practically undetectable in the composition — it’s within the margin of error.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

6. This “secret” ingredient is, for many reasons, a completely illogical choice — and once you find out what it is, you’ll agree that adding this to waterglass sounds utterly ridiculous. The person who thought of it is nuts, the one who tries it is nuts, and the one who believes it works is nuts. And yet — it works. And the artificial stone made with this new material has a Mohs hardness of 6–7, just like natural granite. Why? Because the amorphous silica gel created through catalysis is, in fact, glass. And glass has a hardness of 6, while natural granite grains have 7. So go ahead, and scratch my... pears :-)

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

7. And finally, here are my conditions for revealing exactly what this substance is. You’ll need to meet two requirements. 1. Peer review: within 30 days of receiving the information, you’ll make an artificial stone using the “secret ingredient,” and you’ll share photos or a short video of the results publicly. 2. Non-Disclosure Agreement: You agree to keep the “secret ingredient” confidential — that is, you grant me full rights to decide who else I may reveal it to in the future. One more thing: those who fail to meet the first condition will simply be thrown to the lions. BUT ANYONE WHO BREAKS THE NDA — well, I’ll unleash the curse of Pharaoh Tutankhamun upon them, and I’m dead serious about that! If you can accept the two conditions — meaning you can mix three materials and pour them into a plastic cup, and you can keep your mouth shut — send me a DM. If not, you’ll have to stick to guessing and marveling. Which isn’t so bad either! Mystery!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@danalcoe It’s totally dependent on the mold. It will fill it up 100%

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@pnwufor Except if the granite is easily falling apart as it does in most of the quarries. You can’t even cut good sized slabs from it. So they don’t. 95% of today’s quarries are producing crushed stone ONLY. I wonder why 🤔

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@Rick67791437974 I can’t follow you

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@AlfredXcellent I’m sure it’s possible. Moreover, I’ll try to cast one!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@eyecubed85 Pulverized! 🤣

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@eric_broderick1 What do you mean? The granite grains I use have grain features being original, natural granite grains.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@eltapoloco The price of the amount of waterglass needed is prohibitive I think.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@Trowbowtie11 @BrightInsight6 DumbInside6? Forget him. The greatest fact denier and grifter of our time.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@CLAU5EN It’s a little bit weaker. But, as we all know (?), Egyptian granite objects are surprisingly brittle. Why is that?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

I might have found another connection. This is Ahu Vinapu, a statue platform on Easter Island. And in the stone wall, there’s that characteristic, inexplicable small stone wedged in. More precisely: "carved so precisely that you couldn’t even slide a razor blade into the gap". Let’s call this stone a keystone. Now, here’s the thing! It dawned on me that this wedged keystone only appears in places where the wall stands free on both sides, and perhaps this small stone goes all the way through the cross-section. As big an idiot as I am, I can’t even say for sure about the small stone I visited myself at Sillustani, Peru, which I photographed and even ended up on the cover of my book. Because when I took the photo, not only did I know nothing about these small stones, but I didn’t know much about stones in general, and frankly, I wasn’t even interested! So, I photographed it from one side, and while I remember that the stone wall there was also two-sided—meaning it wasn’t backed by a hillside or embankment—I have no idea whether the keystone was visible from the other side. So, my question to you all is: does anyone have a photo of the other side of Ahu Vinapu, perhaps? So we can check if the small keystone goes all the way through? Anybody?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

🚨BREAKING NEWS 🚨 Mysterious precision carved granodiorite object has been found in my lab! Mohs 6-7!!! Purpose? Unknown! 😮 Alien 👽 origins? Probably! I’ve just seen a few five legged asymmetrical creatures walking out of the door! 😱 (It has absolutely nothing to do with the yellow sand mold in the background I picked up in a sandbox out in the park! No connection whatsoever!!!)

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

This week I promised to reveal the newest—and perhaps the ultimate—“secret ingredient” that finally lets me cast artificial stones so convincing, even their own mother couldn’t tell them apart from the real thing. Granite, basalt, diorite—makes no difference. Just look at this texture in the pic, it’s simply stunning! And the hardness of this artificial, fake granite also measures Mohs 6–7, just like the genuine stuff, for two reasons: -first, it’s made from ground-up natural, ancient granite (or diorite, or basalt, whatever), so the grains themselves keep their original hardness -second, the binder is actually glass, more scientifically known as amorphous silica gel, which also rates Mohs 6–7 But I’ll have to postpone this revelation, because I’ve realized my results are still too fresh to claim with 100% certainty that this is the final solution. (Yes, I got some good advice on this, and I’m taking it.) After all, my oldest sample made this way (the butterfly) is barely two weeks old, so it’s not even fully dried yet. Every stone I’ve made so far with this "secret ingredient" looks extremely promising, no matter what rubble I’ve used. But at this moment the only thing I can state with absolute certainty is that they’re PROMISING. Thanks for your patience. Just 10 more days.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

And now, something different 😉, thanks to @iammartinstrayd . The best example of a nub serving as a lifting point - for idiots. But hang on! Our ancestors weren’t idiots after all. So this nub is not a lifting point after all? Because if it is, it’s like a potty with a handle inside, very useful indeed. Now Martin had no idea where this beauty is located, so I did a little bit of digging and found it in Antalya, Turkey 🇹🇷 The name of the site is Kyaneai Ören Yeri and there is a huge amphitheater besides these boxes with inexplicable nubs. Exact location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/VyJBYsgLcLRYzMNT6?g_st=ic Enjoy 💐

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@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

They did not. The obelisk is from a different material than the bedrock around it. Even this very photo is a proof of that. Watch the color difference. Another proof they didn’t is that there is no undecut below the obelisk, none, zero. The bottom of the pit is flat. The usual photo of the undercut you plan to show me now as a counter argument is a real photo indeed, it’s not fake, but was taken under another stone nearby in the same quarry. NOT under the obelisk! Now if all this 👆🏻is true (it is), what was the REAL plan with the unfinished obelisk? I honestly don’t know. But lifting and carrying was certainly not on their list.

@beforethewest - Before the West

How did ancient Egyptians 🇪🇬 plan to move a 1,200-ton obelisk—without cranes, trucks, or modern tools? At 137 feet long, the Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan offers a glimpse into a colossal project that was abandoned due to a crack. But the real mystery remains: what technique could have possibly raised it upright over 3,000 years ago?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

This is your lucky 🍀 day! Two in one! First, that’s me at the Unfinished Obelisk, and second, the totally flat bottom of the pit. Enjoy 😉 I also made a photo from the undercut myself. This is how I know it’s NOT under this. That’s my photo yeah. How do I know? I put that two pebbles there just to see the scale. Ooops, that 3 in one 🤣

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Day 2442246621463. My next result in the pic. Noooo, it’s not an ass, don’t be rude!These are pears 🍐🍐! The latest-greatest version of my artificial, recreated granite poured into a stolen sand mold. (Stolen from the kids from the sand pit.) Yes, it’s not red, it’s more like 💩, but that’s because this is the natural color of the granite grains I can source locally (from Székesfehérvár). But! If it looks like granite, walks like granite and quacks like granite, that’s not a duck 🦆!!! The next step is to find/buy/steal really beautiful RED granite grains and do it again. @JablonskyVik , you can safely throw away the sample you are drying in the desert for me. The whiskey version is not the real solution. This new version is waterproof from day one. I’ll tell you this fantastic new ingredient in DM. @MartinStrayd , you could do another meaningful, scientific and beautiful peer review if you accept the challenge 😉 Oh yeah. What’s the ULTIMATE additive I used this time? I tried gazillions of easy-to-find, everyday materials to have this result from the usual two ingredients: waterglass and granite grains. This is the latest finding. I had this material on the shelf since the beginning, but I didn’t use it in the mix because it’s totally counterintuitive to do so for several reasons. Like its color: WHITE. It’s a white powder. Surprisingly it turns transparent when you mix it with waterglass 😮 Yes, I’ll publish what it is later on. But you need at least a few days of uncertainty and mysticism before I tell you what it is. Until then, good luck guessing! 🍀

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Hello DumbInside6 (@BrightInsight6 ) and TheDumber (@DeDunkingPast ), here’s my latest-greatest granite etching technology, not 6-7 hours but works immediately, and not on 851 degrees Celsius but ~170 only. Yeeeeees! I’m creating waterglass from (crushed) granite! Recipe: 1 part NaOH, 1 part KOH, 2 parts granite grains. The “typical” Peruvian recipe as their wood ash contains both luckily 🍀 What’s happening here is EUTECTIC POINT at work, lowering the melting point of both NaOH (323 C) and KOH (406 C) to some ~170 degrees Celsius, effectively etching granite on kitchen temps. The only problem remaining: molten alkali eating my pot as well, somewhat ruining the outcome. BUT! That’s why I brought that huge boulder here! That rock 🪨 below will be my next “pot”, if it melts, it melts, adding some more waterglass to the result.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

1. Here’s an overhead view of the Great Pyramid of Giza. I used this image in my newly published book to prove a point. Then along came a so-called "real archaeologist," trying to make a fool of me. "Real archaeologists" come and go—I don’t even remember his name. But a few things have happened since then. Let’s see who was right. Let’s zoom in!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. In this image, we can spot all kinds of interesting details—from the impressions spanning multiple stones (top right, orange frame) to the skillful use of a square drill (bottom left, green frame). In my book, I wrote that these are clear signs that these stones are artificial. To which the real archaeologist responded: “So many people have been on top of the pyramid, entire TV crews—it’s obvious they chiseled out those square holes.” Alright, fine. Let’s say you’re right. (You’re not—we’ll see in a moment.) But who in their right mind carves indentations into stone? And are we seriously supposed to believe that TV crews carry precision square drills? I had no idea. I always thought they just used dowels and screws to mount things.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. The easiest way to let go of the TV crews with precision square drills theory is to suddenly find hundreds of these square holes somewhere else—in this case, on the roof of the Hathor Temple in Dendera, Egypt. BTW: These are 4k photos, tap, tap&hold and download in 4k. So, what happened here? A film festival? On this roof? This argument is about as solid as saying that Quenco in Peru was once a venue for ritual celebrations.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4.But what kind of ritual was it in Quenco, Peru? The Ankle-Breaking Festival, of course! They still reenact it every year—kind of like letting bulls loose among tourists. Both are cherished traditions, after all. Just think of the happy faces of those boarding their flights with a cast on their leg, eager to return next year for another round of the Ankle-Breaking Festival! Oh wait… that’s not a thing.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5.But back to Egypt. On the roof of the Hathor Temple, we don’t just find evidence of excessive square drill usage—there’s also such a huge number of indentations spanning multiple stones that I have to say: this must have been an actual profession back in the day. A whole guild of artisans, masters of the Great and Meaningless Indentation-Carving technique. Holy Indentations. Now that is a thing!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

6.Let’s also note that in some places, the stone joints and carvings are so precise that you couldn’t even slip a razor blade between them. Yet another piece of evidence in favor of precision stone-cutting. (No.) https://t.co/SRaxNc5Dvj

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

7. And we haven’t even mentioned that up here on the roof, we’re looking at poligonal masonry, a true cyclopean roof. Why did they carve it this way? For the glory of the gods, of course! Unfortunately, the idea that this could be some kind of concrete—not with Portland cement, but with some other binder—and that it was just poured in place is completely unacceptable. Because, as we all know, there is no other binder besides Portland cement. There never was.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

8. So what is this, then? How the heck did I manage to pour a pyramid out of artificial limestone? I mean, that’s IM-POS-SI-BLE! Maybe it’s not even limestone at all! Well, if someone checks it with an XRF Scanner or do mass spectrometry, they’ll find that—oh yes—it is limestone. But here’s my take: no, not really. It’s actually a geopolymer that binds together limestone grains and limestone dust. 96% limestone, 4% binder. And the binder? It’s made of compounds that occur naturally in limestone. So… good luck proving otherwise.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

9. But don’t run off just yet—I’ve got something else to show you. These so-called wheel tracks—that aren’t wheel tracks. The roof of the Hathor Temple is layered like a sandwich. What you see in the photo is the middle layer. It’s not the ceiling, but it’s not the final surface either. Now, if another layer of cast limestone were to be added on top, what would a smart stonemason do to keep the two layers from slipping? He’d roughen the surface. He’d poke it with sticks, or maybe press a wooden board into it to create a random texture—something to help the layers bond. And once they’re set, you won’t be slipping a razor blade between them, blah blah blah…

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

10. Are we done yet? Nope, not quite. So, how old is this temple? It’s supposedly from the Ptolemaic period, meaning it’s not that old—only about 2,000 years. Which leaves us with two possibilities: Either the dating is wrong, and it’s actually twice as old—4,000 years. Or the Egyptians never forgot the art of casting stone, but after a certain point, they just stopped using it on a large scale—maybe only for ceilings (because, let’s be honest, casting a slab is way more practical than carving one). And if the second option is true, then the real question is: Why do we see fewer and fewer artificial limestone surfaces as time goes on?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

11. If the knowledge wasn’t lost, then the raw materials ran out. And I think that’s exactly what happened. Anyone who’s read my book knows that the idea of Wadi El Natrun being an unlimited natron source to this day is nothing more than a myth. I used to believe that story too. But the truth is, that deposit was exhausted thousands of years ago. Somebody mined out every last bit of natron from that lake system. Gone. Just—gone. And if there’s no natron, how are you supposed to cast millions more artificial stones? You don’t. You hold back. You only use artificial stone where it’s absolutely necessary or makes the most sense. This is an amazing story. I gathered everything I could find on the topic and packed it into 372 pages. It’s one of those “once you see it, you can’t unsee it” things. And once you’ve read it—you can’t unread it.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Here is the book with concrete examples from history when humanity almost killed itself in a frenzy of production: https://a.co/d/2x9vGcj

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

I’ve always been fascinated by the question of how prehistoric people could have come up with such complex technologies without the help of wise visitors from the East—or from outer space. There are some simple examples that work just fine without UFOs, like wine. To “invent” wine, all you need to do is forget a jug of fruit juice in the sun. That’s it. No further steps required. But what about artificial stone? I’ve written a few essays about that, though they always had weak points—you could easily poke holes in them—because my explanations usually started from some fragile, almost invisible, insignificant accident, and it takes a lot of steps to get from that to good-quality stone. Honestly, it ends up being more a matter of faith: I believe it could have been developed, you believe it couldn’t. Stalemate. Take, for instance, the thin limestone “pancakes” that sometimes form at the bottom of fire pits (yes, that really happens—CaCO₃ forms out of calcium-containing ash), or stones faintly etched by lye, which could hint at waterglass production. But then last summer Claudia Ulrich @Ulrich1976c gave me an idea that pointed me in another direction. You could still slip a UFO or a winged bounty hunter into the very beginning of the story, but they’d stick out awkwardly. Claudia reminded me that both quicklime and slaked lime, which appear in every recipe, were already used by prehistoric people. After all, the very first step in tanning leather is soaking hides in slaked lime for 24 hours. That process triggers all kinds of chemical changes in the raw hide and loosens the hair follicles. Now—who would dare claim that the ancients didn’t know about tanning? And who would seriously argue that this everyday process, which actually involves some pretty remarkable chemistry, was taught to humanity by Great Traveling Sages who roamed the world? Because—AHA!—tanning was known everywhere! Mesopotamia, Egypt, Nubia, China, the Maya, the Aztecs, the Aboriginal Australians, India, and so on. Isn’t that “proof” of the Traveling Teachers? And yet nobody thinks humanity couldn’t have come up with tanning on its own, on every continent. And tanning is not nearly as simple as leaving juice in the sun—it’s a whole sequence of complex steps. So with tanning, we already have one of the key ingredients for artificial limestone: quicklime (CaO) and slaked lime (Ca(OH)₂). The inventor of artificial stone must have been the neighbor—or the son—of the local tanner, on every continent. But we still need one more thing. And surprisingly, it’s NOT natron. As I admitted in my book, the Earth isn’t laid out so neatly that you can find natron deposits everywhere. My “Great Natron Map” ended up embarrassingly patchy, so I erased it. Yes, Joseph Davidovits proved that the Egyptian pyramids were built with geopolymer cement made from natron and slaked lime. But the problem is: natron isn’t available everywhere. Whole regions, like Western Europe, don’t have it at all. Yet there are cast-limestone objects in Europe too. Oops. So if not natron, what else could work to make cast stone? It has to be some kind of alkali. Even in Davidovits’ recipe, the natron (Na₂CO₃) reacts with slaked lime (Ca(OH)₂) to form sodium hydroxide (NaOH), a strong base that catalyzes the bonding of limestone particles. Another alkali… lye, maybe? Ash lye? And here we sail into another ancient craft, one not brought by mysterious teachers from the East or from the stars, but something people just… figured out everywhere: soapmaking. If the artificial-stone inventor had a tanner living to his left, then to his right must have been the soapmaker. Why? Soapmaking in a nutshell: you take a pot with a hole in the bottom, lay some straw on the base, pile wood ash on top, and put another vessel underneath to catch the liquid. Then you pour water over the ash, it trickles through, dissolves the soluble compounds, and drips out below. That’s potash lye, the foundation of all ancient soapmaking. When I made my first batch of ash lye, I thought it would work straight away for stone casting, since it’s supposed to be mostly potassium hydroxide (KOH), a strong base and a worthy rival of NaOH. Of course, I was wrong. Because in an open fire, wood ash is exposed to plenty of CO₂, so the potassium ends up mostly as potassium carbonate (K₂CO₃), not KOH. And that’s a much weaker base. (Quick chemistry detour: if potassium meets oxygen, you get K₂O, which with water vapor becomes KOH. But in a fire, oxygen gets used up elsewhere. Poor potassium is left with CO₂, so it turns into carbonate instead.) K₂CO₃ is so weak that even soapmakers grumbled—it wasn’t good enough for higher-quality soap. So what did they do? They turned to their neighbors: “Hey, Tanner! Any ideas for boosting my lye?” “Sure do! In fact, I’ve got just one idea. Try adding some slaked lime. Here’s a bucketful.” And that’s exactly what happened. The cleverer soapmakers set up their ash-lye filters with a layer of slaked lime under the straw, so the lye dripped through it before being collected. Ancient people didn’t need to understand the chemistry. Reaction? Molecules? What’s that? All they saw was: weak lye in, strong lye out. Good enough. We, of course, know what’s happening: the carbonate reacts with slaked lime to yield a stronger base, KOH, plus limestone powder as a byproduct: K₂CO₃ + Ca(OH)₂ → 2 KOH + CaCO₃ Note: not only do you get twice as many KOH molecules as you started with K₂CO₃, but you also get limestone powder thrown in for free. Which makes me think… maybe it wasn’t the tanner at all. Maybe the soapmaker himself discovered artificial stone. He slipped a layer of quicklime under the ash to make stronger lye, and if that lime wasn’t perfectly burned, some simple limestone powder got in too. Result: artificial stone formed right there, under the ash pile. Or maybe he just bungled his soapmaking, when suddenly a spaceship landed in his backyard and gave him the final push. Or maybe the Traveling Sages knocked on his neighbor’s door instead, and said: “Mix the tanner’s lime with natural limestone powder, then pour over the soapmaker’s lye, and you’ll get artificial stone.” Either way, when I ran my own summer experiment—just sprinkling ash over limestone powder, adding water, and waiting for stone to form—I was missing one ingredient. About 5% slaked lime from the tanner. So I tried again. This time I added that 5% lime to my homemade ash lye—and voilà! I’ve now cast several solid chunks of artificial limestone. So finally, I can say that using only ancient materials and ancient methods, I could (at least theoretically) build dolmens, bridges, even whole cities out of cast limestone. The full technological chain is now complete. Now, if you’ll excuse me—I’m off to pour myself a dolmen!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Hi! I'm back! 👋 What better way to sum up where we stand right now than with the green stone of Hattusa in Turkey, which has the following peculiar traits: 1. We don’t know what it’s made of. Opinions are split on whether it’s an extremely rare kind of jade (nephrite) or serpentine. Both are greenish stones, but unfortunatelly (or luckily?) neither matches the Hattusa cube. 2. We don’t know where it was quarried. The nearest possible source is at least 500 km away in the Taurus Mountains. Where there’s jade—but not this kind 🤷‍♂️ 3. There’s no other like it. Only this single block was ever mined. No more stone of this type has ever been found in that quarry in nowhere land. Oh, and don't forget it's purpose: it's for rituals 🤣 I guess most people’s inner “bullshit alarm” starts ringing at least when they hear that Stone Age people lugged this one rock over 500 kilometers or more to place it here. Of course, these (easily verifiable) facts are exactly what make the stone exciting, while also screaming that it’s not natural but artificial. But how could that be? Well… in the last two years, I’ve come to the point where I can say out loud: creating artificial stone is not only possible—it’s actually ridiculously easy. There are as many recipes for it as there are stars in the sky. And I’m not even counting modern geopolymer solutions. You simply don’t need modern materials (like metakaolin) to produce solid, durable stone from available resources using ancient techniques under the Earth’s natural conditions. Personally, I’ve found at least six (!) different substances that precipitate amorphous silica gel from waterglass, which can then be used as a stone binder, hardening into glass once dried. Everyday stuff like whiskey🥃, vinegar, baking soda, and plenty more that would have been accessible even in prehistoric times can make the trick. I don’t go around saying “whiskey 🥃 is the answer” anymore, because when it comes to the granite problem, there are so many possible solutions it’s dizzying. Sure, some methods are weaker, others stronger, but all of them get you from point A to point B. If I set aside a year, I’m pretty confident I could create a green, polished stone similar to the one in Hattusa. I’ll admit, I haven’t managed to make a green stone yet—mainly because I haven’t even tried. But what I have tried…? 🧵

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. This butterfly, for instance, I made using one of my “secret” recipes (found in my book), from sand, home made waterglass, and a pinch of a special catalyst material. In other words, it’s from “sandstone", but vitrified! Its special feature? It hardens almost instantly, even underwater (see: the cast stones of Osireion), and the mixture barely shrinks or deforms at all. It just pops right in and out of the (stolen) kids’ sandbox mold I used.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. And that’s only half the world of stone. The other half is limestone. And here, I can finally say—I’ve nailed it. Remember how I fumbled around with those experiments earlier this summer (pic)? Needless to say, those attempts failed. I couldn’t produce limestone by simply layering ash on powdered limestone and wetting it. It later became clear the experiment was doomed from the start because of one tiny issue: 21st-century materials are so pure, so artificially refined, they’re nothing like their natural counterparts. In practice, this meant my lab-grade powdered limestone lacked the one thing you’d expect from an ancient fire: quicklime. If I had piled wood on raw limestone rock outdoors and burn it, quicklime would have been produced too (at about 850 °C). But in my carefully controlled lab setup—nothing. No quick lime (CaO) Ciao CaO! Long story short: this was a spectacular flop, the setup went in the trash—but what I discovered through the failure could fill another book: How to actually make artificial limestone without the help of space aliens or mystical “teachers from afar.”

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. Here it is: artificial limestone, waterproof, with not a single gram of 21st-century material in it. (Well, at least in theory. I did not calcinate the limestone myself, I bought some slaked lime in a hardware shop 🫣 Sorry about that.) But the lye! I made myself—from wood ash. Yeah. It's high time for a long YouTube video, right? (Ughh...)

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5. So, to close out today: my goal for 2025 was to cast something bigger out of artificial stone. By September, I’ve partially achieved that—but only partially. Because in my mind, “bigger” means at least a ton. That’s when it starts to mean something. And I don’t have a one-ton block yet. What I do have is a cast limestone walkway, 4 inch thick. And now that autumn rains have arrived, I can say—it’s holding up just fine. The next step must be something gigantic, right? How, and where—that remains a mystery even to me for now. I have no idea how can I make this happen. But one thing I can say with confidence: the “never give up” method works wonders!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@dakotawint According to my sources, the closest quarry is 500 kms away 🤷🏻‍♂️

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@JulianSolros It’s one year old now 🤣

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@FritzMarby Nubs are required when the slurry is pushing out water while curing. Not all mixtures do that. Artificial limestone does, and some fake granite recipes too. Yes it’s always at the bottom. If not, then either the stone was rotated after casting or the protrusion is not a real nub.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Slowly but steadily back to work. After a loooooooong holiday I “sourced” five big granite boulders to finally create meaningful (and beautiful) scoop marks on them. I know much more about the chemical processes that dismantle granite than a year ago. Namely, we do NOT need 851 degrees Celsius in order to etch the granite. 3-400 Celsius is just enough. Thanks to the phenomenon called “EUTECTIC POINT”. You know, when you mix two things together and the melting point of the mix is below the melting point of both components. Yeah. Natron’s melting point is 851 degrees Celsius. But if you add slaked lime to it, it will produce NaOH, and this mix’s lowest melting point is just 290 degrees Celsius. And with that, you can created these beautiful scoop marks worldwide: 🧵

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Sigiriya, Sri Lanka https://t.co/hd9giJSK5C

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Somewhere in Peru https://t.co/QufO4rhNwU

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Stonehenge https://t.co/MggHj3uiB5

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

NOT under the Unfinished Obelisk (it’s definitely NOT there people are just repeating false info to “prove” their point) https://t.co/5o3Ggt8Tu7

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Barabar caves, India And so on. It’s an endless list. Enjoy 😉 https://t.co/07rdoCf7I7

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@metamick14 Just wood. Nothing special is required to reach 3-400 degrees Celsius, not even charcoal.

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@Up_n_atem_n_Eve My latest experiment went for 7 hours but I think now I can do it much faster. 1-2 hours. We’ll see

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@DaroniusS85133 Here’s the pandora’s box widely open: https://www.crct.polymtl.ca/fact/documentation/FTsalt/FTsalt_Figs.htm

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

@bulbousbrainIII Sure! I’ll do my best documenting it!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Two months after casting my version of the Dendera roof from artificial limestone. I promised full transparency so here you are: The good, the bad and the ugly. The good news is that the casting is still there, after various climate changes and days of heavy rain and then scorching temperatures. So the basic idea is solid. (What is the basic idea? This: natural, billion-year-old limestone rubble and dust can be “glued” together to form a fake limestone using a strong alkaline that forms a semi-geopolymer based on the impurities of the given limestone. So it is a fake limestone that looks like the natural limestone.) The bad news? I made a series of stupid mistakes so the casting looks less beautiful by now. Okay, how ugly is it? 🧵

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

2. This ugly. Only the bottom left corner remained intact. The rest suffered various types of stupid damages I made being clueless about the ancient process. The bottom left corner proves my point beautifully so I’m not crying. I’m learning and discovering things by doing, and doing things can have a price. So wtf happened to the rest of the casting?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

3. First, efflorescence is s bitch. As I was casting the thing I ran out of potassium hydroxide (wood ash lye) so I switched to sodium hydroxide instead, hoping the change would go unnoticed. Hell no. I cast the piece in the red rectangle with sodium and natron, ffs! NATRON has precipitated not only there but “infected” its surroundings and there are white efflorescence several inches from that bloody rectangle as well. As it turned out sodium (natron) doesn’t respect boundaries. That’s one huge, irreversible mistake I made. What else?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

4. Cracks The problem with this part is that I put quite a few various-sized (=big) filler stones below the slurry to save material. Saving material is one thing but different shrinkage between the slurry and the filler stones is another. So this is mistake No.2. What is important though is that these cracks are IDENTICAL to the cracks I found in the basement of the Diocletian palace in Split. Please compare. Okay. What else?

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

5. Why is it soft there? There’s this region where the material is still soft-ish. I have absolutely no idea why. It’s dry, evaporation did its job a long time ago. Then why is this region softer than the rest? A mystery. Anyway I put a few additional stones there to see what happens with it under that weight. We’ll see. AND THE REST of the casting IS PERFECT!!!! 🤩

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

6. This bottom left region is just perfect, just saying. I love it 💕 (Okay, with a huge crack I made when removed the mold too early 😭 Patience? What is that?) Sadly, sodium efflorescence attacked it from the neighboring area, but that’s an error “imported” here, so it doesn’t count. Still beautiful. At least for me. What next? It’s clear I need to recreate this casting without these blatant mistakes to be able to tell that I solved this problem. For now all I can say is that I tried and had partial success. End of thread 🧵 for now. It’s an endless story, a sequel, so stay tuned!

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

If you think it’s a totally irrelevant photo from a boring science lab, think twice. Because this can be the correct answer to the burning question why we find cast fake granite only in Egypt. There are all kinds of ancient artificial stones worldwide but beautiful, like fake rose granite, not a dirty grayish mess? That’s a thing that only appears in Egypt. Why? Because… From left to right: the same 1 year old fake granite pieces (from ordinary gravel this time) plunged into water. The difference? A new word I just recently learned: syneresis! Syneresis is the irreversible progression of silica hydrogel in which it loses all its water content — down to the last drop. This is when that bloody silica gel turns into stone for good. Now how is it possible that the left one fell apart after ONE YEAR of drying (but the other didn’t)? Well, as it turned out, this is because the humidity level is too high in my country to reach syneresis ever. @NatronTheory Martin I told you that it would take a lot of time for “your balls” to be waterproof. Now it looks like it’s forever in Hungary. I don’t know about Taiwan. So the piece on the right spent a day in the Sahara desert, and voila, that piece is everything proof now, including the hardest challenge ever: being waterproof. You may ask did I teleport that piece to the Sahara and back in one day? Close but no cigar. I have a Sahara machine at home. And if you’re collecting mushrooms 🍄‍🟫 like we do you probably also have one at home. It looks like this (next post):

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

A fruit dryer. That’s my teleport machine. Be prepared to a bunch of surprising results from my kitchen. I’m back to cooking! 🧑‍🍳 https://t.co/5eRB7wDTBF

@FoMaHun - Marcell Fóti 🪨

Knowing this it looks like I ran into a climate issue that prevents me from creating a really large fake granite object, like a cube outside in the open. Actually, I’m not alone. No one else has ever done this outside of Egypt before. Because it requires higher than usual temperatures and lower than normal humidity to cure. Now I need to solve this “minor” problem in order to be able to move forward with scaling. Stay tuned! (I have absolutely no idea how to circumvent this at the moment 😭)