Does anyone buy into the idea that African Pyramid culture arrived in South/Central America via the Atlantic about 5,000-8,000 years ago?

I am starting to think it's way more plausible than isolated native populations creating very similar structures.

Thanks for the mention of that series, I'll have to check it out!

Just a few of my own thoughts:

- why no pyramidal ruins along western edge of North America?
- Egyptians/Mayans both wrote in glyphs.  Picture concepts, as opposed to East Asian writing systems.  Chinese wrote down everything, North American cultures wrote down nothing (generalizing, of course).
- the Olmec head statues appear more African than oriental, IMO.
- almost straight swath from Egypt, Mexico, SE Asia
- layouts of pyramid/temple/courtyard areas eerily similar across continents

I don't 100% buy in, just very peculiar similarities in my opinion.

How else can you build a structure to the heavens without cement or steel? Stone blocks build pyramids, plain dirt or baskets of dirt build mounds.

I've read there were migrations from India which went all the way to South America perhaps 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

I see what you're saying.  The ancient greeks used stone, that was not a pyramidal culture as far as I know.  No pyramids amongst the Mongols, Chinese, Japanese?

No. Not a chance. Someone realized a pyramid was the best way to stack up rocks, whether you're in Egypt, Central America, or Indochina. Africa was stone-age and still is in many parts, Egypt was far more technologically advanced than sub-saharan africa.

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All of the pyramid cultures have stories of the Apkallu. IMHO without a doubt there was a more advanced society before the younger dryas impact that survived in some form and spread that knowledge globally post impact.

A pyramid is just a pile.  The simplest way to make a tall structure.  It shouldn't surprise anyone if they were independently developed without any cross cultural contact.

If you pour some sand out of a bucket and you just made one.

Exactly. Not a very complex notion.

Build a mount of dirt to elevate your temple above the hoi polloi. Want it to last? Add a bunch of rocks and wooden palisades in. Want it to be even more stable and perhaps even decorative? Use stones specifically cut for the purpose. Helps if you have lots of slaves.

Fun fact.  There is a island off the coast of South America where the population had their DNA tested.  Their closest living relatives are in Japan.

Phoenician artifacts found in the Amazon.  All sorts of stuff was happening that we will never know about.  

As the Amazon rain forest is cleared there is all sorts of evidence pointing to a large population living in the region.  

Then there is the 125,000 year old Mastodon skeleton found in California with butchering marks on the bones and stone tools.  The evidence has been studied for over 10 years and no one has been able to figure this one out.  

23,000 year old footprints in the ground at the White Sands National Monument.

I haven't seen anything credible to indicate that there would be a connection and I've visited over 20 pyramids in Mexico and Egypt.

The two closest related I could think of would be Chichen Itza and the Step Pyramid of Djoser.  They aren't built similarly, they weren't utilized similarly, they didn't evolve into their designs similarly, and their surrounding complexes were wholly dissimilar.  It just doesn't seem terribly likely on it's face, and when you consider the likelihood of a connection in conjunction with the likelihood of a heretofore unknown atlantic migration of a heretofore unknown, highly developed civilization.. Well, let's just say I like a lotto ticket as much as the next guy but it aint an investment.

Magical thinking is fun, I like fiction, but we don't live there.

Is there any thought to the story of the Tower of Babel has had any influence on the need to build so high?

Building to heaven?

When some people hear hoofbeats, they look for zebras.
Some people badly want to believe they saw the zebras.
Some want you to think they saw the zebras. Sometimes because there's a nickel to be made, or simply because they'd rather climb a tree to tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.
While the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, neither does it support a wild guess.
Prudence and Occam's Razor should be preferred to wild guesses, however plebeian that renders reality.

My main problem, with archeologists and historians, is if it doesn’t fit the accepted agenda or narrative it gets tossed.

To me it would be much easier to mold bricks on site than to quarry, carve, and haul massive stone blocks all over the landscape.  Not to mention lifting and setting them in place.  We really don’t know what we don’t know.

But it’s a good question OP, that I’ve pondered for years. Some of the most impressive monuments ever built.

The story of the tower of babel likely has its roots in the large number of Jews who were held captive in the city of Babylon which had a massive ziggaraut to the Babylonian patron god Marduk.  Ziggarauts were not built with the purpose of 'building toward heaven', as heaven as is viewed through a modern lense would be a pretty foreign concept to the Mesopotamians.  They built ziggarauts to elevate their city temples and governemnt facilities (usually also part of the ziggaruat grounds) so they could be seen by all in the city.

So to come back around to your question, it is likely that its the other way around.  The desire to build high is what influenced the construction of the tower of babel (which has a high likelyhood of being the zigaraut of Etemenanki).  In ancient times much like in modern times people who had a desire to build for religious as well as entirely non-religious reasons wished to build tall buildings for a large number of reasons.

Something worth looking into if interested is comparing a lot of mesopotamian history and mythology to the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testiment.  There are a lot of things that start to look familiar.

Good soils for bricks aren't found everywhere. Bricks can't bear as much weight as stone, and usually weather less favorably.