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Caltech Team Raises 6900-Pound Obelisk, By Kite
Paintthemoon writes: "So, this crazed entrepreneur and Caltech buddies this weekend staged a successful test of using a 30-foot kite to raise a 6,900 pound concrete obelisk in the Mojave. The theory behind this is that the ancient Egyptians could have used such wind power to raise obelisks and build the pyramids ... " The article is from earlier this month. It's been a lot longer than that since scientists started trying to figure out how the Egyptians moved and righted some of their obelisks.
i live in miami, and it's really cool looking ;)
;)
e .h tm
but... some people do think it's a hoax, built for the tourists. who knows? here's a link to support yer argument
http://www.parascope.com/en/articles/coralCastl
Your knowledge is sorely lacking, then.
In particular, the Earth God Geb and the Sky Goddess (Nuti?) were often pictured as having sex, in full detail. (As you can easily guess, woman was on the top).
Though the pictures above are strictly not hieroglyphs but carvings, the hieroglyphic determinative for "maleness" in general was an erect penis, again in graphic detail.
Firstly there is very little evidence of slaves bulding. Most Egyptologists believe that they did not keep slaves, that people worked part time on the large construction projects and would be farmers or fishermen or whatever the rest if the time. Secondly the Egyptians left no records at all of how they built the pyrmaids or raised monuments. Thats one reason for all the speculation.
Actually from what I recall of the old testament it mentions the building of a storage and treasure city or two, nothing about pyramids at all...
Actualy there is, here is an article that highlights it. Archaeology and the Bible
And it is fairly certain that the Torah was written down within a generation or two after the arival in Israel.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Warning theology follows...
The start of Jewish thought is the Exodus. The Torah tells us that we should act in every generation as if we personaly were brougt forth from Egypt. And the Midrash says that the soul of every Jew ever born was there when G-d presented the Torah at Mt Saini. So while it happened 3313 years ago and I'm only 28, I can quite truthfully say that the Lord G-d brougt me out from Egypt, and that if G-d had not brought us out we might still be slaves to this day.
For more information find a copy of a good Passover Haggada.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It should be noted that the book of Exodus does not say that we built pyramids, it says we built Pithon and Ra-ameses (I probably have the spelling wrong. The pyramids were a 1000 years old by this time.l ogy_and_the_Bible_-_Part_2.asp
As for the archaological stuff see this link: http://aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Archaeo
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It was part of a "Nova" miniseries called "Secrets of Lost Empires". Personally, I felt the episodes focused too much on the theorist's constant bickering. They also had some really strange theories:
"I believe the Incas used thermo-deagregation to build their stone walls, said one such theorist. He then proceeded to use a concave mirror in an attempt to "melt" the stones into place.
Maybe they called them magic flying carpets
instead of kites, and didn't bother documenting
them because it's such a no-brainer.
This is kind of self-evident, but a demonstration that wind power *can be* used for such purposes is entirely different from a demonstration that is *was* used. This only shows that the theory is not totally impossible, not that it is probable or true.
... are neat.
;)
Check this out: it (or larger versions) was used to lift radio aerials during WWII. I had one about 8 years ago but I broke its balsa spars. I'll probably buy a new one and keep an eye out for fiberglass or carbon fiber spars
(here's another interesting lifting kite link..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
The modern view is that all Egyptians were required to give up a month or so for "national service". Considering the leader of the country was a god, it was the least they could do :)
Slaves were probably not the major builders of the pyramids and temples, it was done by ordinary citizens. Of course, you could call them serfs, since their work on the pyramids was basically required, a tax of sorts. True slaves (owned, bought, sold) were rare before the Ptolemaic period, and were mainly house servants.
About four thousand expert stone sculptors worked on the pyramids year round. During the Nile floods, ninety-five thousand citizens did the heavy work.
Also, it could be used as a "greener" way to do building in richer nations!
--
It was Nova. I don't think any of the obelisks were nearly as large as the ancient obelisks they were mimicking. Here's the link to the Nova web site:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/obelisk/
Obelisks couldn't be built from "the bottom up" because they were each made of one solid piece of granite.
I also saw a program on one of the Discover channels recently, describing methods of moving these large, cube-like stones for pyramids. They tied a piece of wood to each of the four sides of the stone, and each piece of wood had a curved face on the outside, such that when you would look at the stone-surrounded-by-wood, it appeared as a square inscribed within a circle. Tilted on its side, it became a "wheel", which was much easier to move up the ramps. Brilliant stuff.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
You are aware of the Cocain Mummies, are you not??? (as for the contact with the americas)
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
In his book The Ancient Engineers, L. Sprague DeCamp hypothesized that they used simple earthen ramps to right the stones, and that they transported them by dragging them through mud. In the ancient world, dirt was a LOT cheaper than timber, especially the kind of quality timber that could hold up Stonehenge blocks.
He thought they got the crosspieces in place by burying the uprights in a huge mound, then dragging the crosspieces into place on top and excavating the supports.
This kite thing is cool, but far-fetched, especially since the researcher has been using modern materials to build her kite. It also leaves you very dependant on the weather.
What are the hieroglyphs for "Keep it simple, stupid?"
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
The point is not whether that's how the Egyptians did it - the point is that they COULD have done it this way, as well as in many other ways. We should not get stuck in our mental image of ramps and countless slaves which isn't based on much concrete evidence, either.
This reminds me of a wonderful experiment which shows that Archimedes could have suspected the universality of gravity and prove it with tools and materials available at the time.
-
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Same person, mostly same words and phrases, just a brief mention that they lifted something heavier.
Lando
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Professor Abraham Malamat of Hebrew University infers from this that the Hebrews were forced to build the city of Ramasses. "This evidence is circumstantial at best," notes Malamat, "but it's as much as a historian can argue."
I do not think the website you cited says what you think it says. The evidence that the Israelites were in Egypt is extremely poor. I don't find it convincing at all. The fact that the majority of the record is in the Bible only adds to my skepticism.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
There's actually no good evidence that the Israelites were actually in Egypt. There's no Egyptian records of it, and they wrote a lot of stuff on their buildings. The Israelite written record was probably created about 580BC. Before that, it was an oral history, which could have been embellished.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
but hemp is often used to make ropes and other textiles.
What, somebody does NOT know this?? Geez, hemp rope was a HUGE business once - used on most sailing ships, etc. Another victim of the 'safe' perverted revisionist history promulgate by the WOD crowd.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
errr. which planet are they from? and where is Egyptio? or is it a new wireless company?
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
But as I remember, the large-scale test (30 ton obelisk) using the elaborate tilting mechanism failed when using man-power. There was a cylindrical log underneath the obelisk which they couldn't keep from being dragged instead of rolled (too much downward pressure from the weight of the obelisk). They eventually had to use an industrial crane to get the obelisk in place, which obviously was unavailable to Egyptians.
The sandbox test worked perfectly, and though it was a smaller obelisk (6-tons or so) it was done totally man-powered. The Egyptians have raised obelisks that weight up to 100 tons, and the sandbox theory seems the most likely one that could have been scaled up for obelisks of this size.
"I can only show you Linux... you're the one who has to read the man pages."
Hm. Why don't these people ask an engineer how the pyramids got built instead of other archeologists. Engineers know how to build things. Archeologists dig them up. That said, if these kites are indeed lifting such large weigts, then they could easily lift a man. This would provide an explanation for how the pictures were drawn that everyone says are only visible from up in the air (plains in South America, can't remember name right now). They could easily have been made simply for the amusement of royalty. After all, who else would be honored with the ability to fly?
-- Some people say they can tell the time by looking at the Sun, but I have trouble seeing the numbers.
The Sphinx predates the Pyramids however they do not show the same erosion patterns as it does. Ergo they were built much later than the Sphinx. Besides that the excavations of the settlements around the Big Three you see in history books has shown that people working on the Pyramids were not in fact slaves but hired help. Hired help isn't that hard to believe in an area where your biggest crops only need your attention for part of the year. Not only do you have an abundance of cheap labour sitting around while fields are fallow but their religion is based on the assertation that the Pharoh is indeed a reincarnation of Amon-Ra on Earth. Look at all the shit people do in contemporary history because they think some god somewhere told them to or wants them to. The labour contractors went to the farms and said "hey want some work to bring in some extra cash this next winter, oh yeah, your god on Earth would REALLY appriciate your help" and that was that. Maintaining a mass of slaves in any one area is a pretty dumb thing to do besides. You can't trust slave labour (especially opressed slave labour) to do much of anything so you need lots of guards to oversee them and ocassionally beat the shit out of them. Thats an army of guards for an army of slaves that require an army of logistical personelle. Every year for 30-40 years? That's sort of ludicrous to suggest. Nor an army of volunteer labour which acts as its own logistical unit is threefold more efficient than an army of slaves. I'm talking mostly about the Big Three at Giza of course. I bet there was probably a pyramid or two built by slaves for some bastard Pharoh at some point. But don't extrapolate too much from the Sphinx's erosion patterns, it's been buried in sand and whatnot over the course of however many thousands of years. Egypt was alot more complex than we thought it was in 1901 and will only continue to grow in complexity as we find out more about it but making extrapolations and assertations doesn't get you much farther than the end of your nose which is practically where you started from.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Speaking of which, my wife and I were very disappointed after we saw the beginning of a trailer for "Atlantis" with just the stylized 'A' sticking above the waves - we both mistook it for a stargate chevron, and leaped to the conclusion that a stargate movie was in the works. Imagine our disappointment to find out it was just another Disney flick.
Another stargate movie, of course, with the TV cast. Not that the original wasn't pretty good too.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Lookout, the wind is dropping!
Huh? _*SPLAT*_
Aside from the lack of direct documentary evidence, this actually doesn't seem that unlikely to me. After all, sail technology was presumably well established at the time. Whether or not it actually happened, it *could* have! :)
I like your .sig, where's it from?
Thank you! A thought-provoking quote - for me anyway, having a tendency to focus on those great, general views. I'll have to get my act together if I ever want to be Emperor of Rome... ;)
Nephythys (Nebthet) Goddess of the dead; sister and wife of Set.
'Mistress of the palace', she wears on her head the ideogram of her name, Neb ('a basket') and Het ('a palace'). Daughter of Geb and Nut, Nephythys was married to her brother Set. They had no children. Nephythys seduced her other brother Osiris by making him drunk; their child was Anubis. When Set killed Osiris she deserted him in horror and helped Isis to embalm the murdered god. She and Isis are the protectresses of the dead; they are shown with winged arms, for in order to mourn Osiris they changed themselves into kites. Nephythys helped Hapy to guard the embalmed lungs of mummified people.
Being that this was/is written in the hyrogliphs
and she was the goddess of the dead, I kind of can put two and two together.
"What do you do with the mad that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite?" - Mister Rogers
Could you be MORE of a quack?
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~pelesl/obelisk.html
You make it sound like they're attaching a huge object to the bottom of a kite and flying it around. They're not, they're pulling on ropes with the kites, and the ropes go through a pully system on a firmly anchored scaffold. How is that dangerous?
It's been a lot longer than that since scientists started trying to figure out how the Egyptions moved and righted some of their obelisks.
Really? I thought that exploration into the ideas of how the pyramids were built was a new area of science. Thank goodness I have Slashdot, that bastion of excellent journalism, to straighten me out.
NOVA Obelisk Episode
They also did one on raising the Easter Island statues.
NOVA Easter Island
http://www.geopolymer.org/archaeo1a.html
from the article: "..., and I remembered my history clear back to the eighth grade that the Egyptians drank beer breakfast, lunch and dinner"
Gee, I didn't know it but I must be part Egyptian!!
Admittedly, it is only a theory, but it seems to have more weight to it than using kites...
I have a book (unfortunately, not nearby, so I can't quote the title and such - maybe I will follow up later with a reply) detailing how the blocks used in the construction of Egyptian monuments could have been cast, in situ.
The author of the book is an inventor who developed a type of concrete that looks and "works" like natural stone - in fact, comparing it with the blocks used in the pyramids, he found the compositions nearly identical. He then goes on to find local (to Egypt) sources of the chemicals and materials needed for this special "concrete", then uses those materials to perform experiments to cast blocks from the resulting mix (mixing the material and casting blocks).
To me, this idea seems to have the most weight, especially given the evidence the author presented. This doesn't mean that this had to be the way, but it makes a lot of sense...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
First off, a link:
Geopolymers
Also, look into "agglomerated stone"...
The man who (re?)discovered this technique, was one Prof. Joseph Davidovits.
Here is his book (unfortunately, it is out of print. I found my copy only a couple of years ago in the discount section of a local Bookstar, so you might check), which is available in PDF format (for the price of 9 euros, which is reasonable):
The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved
The first chapter is available for free online as well - so check that out...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Egyptions? Hmmm, free radical north africans?
I just saw an exhibit on Napoleon and his stay in Egypt. There was a number of sketches of the egyptians showing him how they moved large blocks around, with 1/4 circular wooden 'arches' strapped to the blocks.
Napoleon's thie^H^H^H^Harcheologists then used the same techniques to remove a number of obelisques and other large stones. They even removed a number of large palaces back to France for the wealthiest supporters of the little corsicain. Yup, stone by stone, until the brits sank the french in alexandria harbor. I had a dinner in one of those egyptian palaces a few years ago near Toulon.
So the egyptians already knew of this technique back in the early 1800's, and presumably the 'arches' found in a number of digs date back to the creation of the pyramid.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
It never ceases to amaze me that people are more interested in what happened 5000 years ago than they are in what happened 100 years ago. Industrial revolution? what's that? Scientific management? what's that?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Dude, they didn't have cameras back then :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
True, but there are plenty of hieroglyphs depicting people wearing makeup.
---
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
There are no hierglyphs depicting kites
nice try though.
---
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
Could this theory in any way apply to the mystery of how Stonehenge was built? Or did someone solve that one while I wasn't looking?
"I wish I didn't care,
but I do."
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
The trouble with this is that no scientist has ever tested this hypothesis and succeeded (but there have been several failures).
However, the kite theory has now been tested (Stonehenge comes to mind as somewhere where this would have been perfect).
The 3000 BC population must have been the ancestors of Microsoft
This is a stripped down version of the Gnomite project, which has a lot of extra features nobody uses.
And after materials, then consider the degree of control required. Kites are designed to work in a certain amount of wind. Too much wind for the design and the kite will tear itself apart. Too little wind and the kite won't get off the ground.
A varying windspeed or direction would play heck with pulling a large stone anything in anything like a specified direction.
Basically, it's a lot easier to control sand than wind.
Of course they don't have written records of what happened. That's why there is so much conjecture about how the damn things were built in the first place.
-----
They don't have written records of how the pyramids were constructed. It makes more sense that they would have more personal records on the fact that they were enslaved.
Doubtful. There don't exist many records of ancient cultures who saw value in teaching slaves how to read & write. I'm not saying it's impossible, just unlikely that you would ever find the personal memoirs of one of Pharoa's slaves.
This boy believes in God, and would like to point out that anyone who can create our universe would have no trouble stacking up a few hunks of rock.
What happened in the past always gives an insight of which way to move ahead in the future. For example I was watching a tv show called Frontline on Friday in which the state of the world was being discussed, and how man has destroyed much of it (animals going extinct, plants, algae, etc.) and the scientist predicted that at the rate we're going with global warming, tree deforestation, fishing overkill, that the world is in some serious shit.
In Mongolia as it stands, many of the country's natural grass is barely growing due to the country's collapse, and the boom of farmers raising goats, and not switching to other parts of the land to allow the fields to grow back. In China they faced the same problem years ago, and now within the next 5 years they have to destroy hundreds of thousands of animals in order to avoid losing many resources.
Paleontologists explained how essential things are nowadays, how they're being destroyed, and how this compared to the repeating occurances of extinction with the dinosaurs, and other stuff like algeas, and crap like that.
History is repetitive, and scientist up to this date have still not mapped out means to re-create faster than we destroy. It's expected within 100-200 years a major shortage on things we take for granted unless change happens now. Since they stated their is no more time to waste.
Anyways I would rather see this being studied than missle defense programs, technological bs like Echelons, Carnivores, etc., I think it's more important to understand what happened in the past to gain insight into the future.
Want Root?
We all know the aliens from another Stargate set up the pyramids!
Ok so it wasn't funny. Anyways there was a recent (semi recent about 4 months ago) documentary on PBS depicting how this may have worked which knocked off many theories and made sense. According to the doc., slaves were not used and this was judged based on evidence from an excavation, that showed what were supposedly slaves, were treated like royalty. (Judging from the medical care they received)
Leading engineers calculated block by block how it was done, and their theory was, ramps were made, and the stones were hauled up these ramps by many workers who traveled to Egypt to honor the kings. Enigneers, doctors, you name it supposedly assisted raising the blocks until it was done.
According to the scientists and Engineers I think it took about 30-40 years per pyramid, in which many felt honorable to do. This again was based on evidence from excavation which showed no one was a prisoner, or slave, engineers who recreated the scenario (nice SGI graphics too).
Also in the documentary it showed how ancient medical techniques were used to heal broken bones, etc.
What is Shadowstorm Intelligence Layer?
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WHat did she make her kites out of? Probably, ripstop nylon or some other modern, lightweight, strong fabric.
Now, if she can make her kites out of materials the ancient Egyptians had, using techniques they had, and perform the same feat, then I'll be impressed. Not before.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The economics of using kite power are suspect, as Twitter notes. Most of the countries considered Third World have heavy equipment available and all have high explosives. Even if it is not the latest or most powerful, it is still sufficient, and sufficiently cheap, to build the sorts of village- and district-level projects I assume we're talking about, for less than the cost of building and practicing with kites.
A kite soars, someone screams, and a 4-ton obelisk slides across the desert before tipping up and swinging free from the ground.
Was the person blind?
The shareholder is always right.
I think it should be pointed out that this is a proof of concept only and without further evidence no should except this as the true method that the ancient egyptians uses.
However it is important that many of the excepted theories on ancient egyptian construction methods are not based on very convincing evidence either. Most of them do not even have a simular proof of concept experiment (at least a successful one)to verify thier validity.
I once saw a documentry on the subject where many estabalised egyptologists where given the opportunity to verify excepted theories aswell as their own pet theories on egyptian construction using low-tech techniques. As I saw it not a single one even came close to being successful. It was very obious that the egyptologists were academics and not engineers. No matter how badly thier experiment failed none of the egyptologists would let go of their theories.
A few of their failed theories included the "oblelix up the ramp, to a hole with sand in it" the sand is drained out and poof the obelix falls into place. Even with much scaled down version of their obelix and a little aid from modern equipment - no luck what so ever. Another one was the contention that the obelix's were inscribed using stone tools. They had a guy pound on the obelix for over a 3 weeks, he had at least another 12 weeks to go before he would have dotted an "i". According to the egytologists timeline the obelix was inscribed within 3 months using stone tools. From the results of his own experiment that strikes me as being extremely unlikely.
So does their experiment prove the egyptians used kites, No, but at least there is a proof of concept here, which is much more than can said for many of the accepted theories on egyptian construction methods.
"I thought beer was invented in Europe sometime around or in the middle ages."
No, you're thinking of 'sex'. Beer is much older. http://www.spatenusa.com/germanbeerhistory.html. Moron.
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That and the fact that the picture (posted elsewhere by pyramidiot) clearly shows them using a parafoil - invented in the late 1960's if I recall correctly.
The ancient Egyptians definitely didn't have access to the theory behind these, let alone the materials necessary to build them. Could they have done it with a regular kite? Did they have kites in ancient Egypt?
I like the sand hydraulics theory myself.
jmp
Don't let Charlie Brown build pyramids.
One way was to have a huge platform over the landing area and then use ropes to tilt the obelisk over the platform and hopefully land it in it's place.. This experiment took a full day to set up, another day to try and work out and in the end modern machinery to save the day.
There was also a separate experiment going on at the same time(although, with a minitaure obelisk) where a sand box was used.. It worked beatifully. They had a high platform with a sand box in front of it and as the sand was removed the obelisk tilted down gracefully onto it's place.
Later in the show they did an experiment with a full size obelisk at a granite mine in usa (first part was filmed in egypt) using first miniature prototypes and after a full size obelisk and a sand box(with dry sand vs. the damp one used in egypt).
Once the old-style(no modern machinery used here, except to set up the box and obelisk) ropes were gently released the obelisk practically pushed the sand away from underneath it and lowered itself into the right place. Final adjustement of about 15 degrees was performed by pulling the ropes.. Everything worked beautifully..
I believe the program was called Secrets of the Angient Egyptians, etc..
In the end of the program they did try the sandbox method on a large obelisk(probably 30ton) and it worked. They had a quite a few people working at an american granite mine pulling it up the last 15 degrees...
Even with the best will in the world, I'm kind of curious how the Egyptians, with their technology, could have got a kite of that size to stay together in thirty mile an hour winds, let alone fly in any controlled fashion.
Practice, reasonable Egyptian technology, and living with a high failure rate.
I fly kites; mainly big single-line deltas. They use weird modern fabrics, but generally wooden poles - God's own composite material. Egypt had quite sophisticated fabric technology, certainly up to the task of making large kites. There's no reason why they couldn't have developed something like a Cody, or even a Peel - and either of those will lift me clean off the ground, even without pulleys.
Hi!
Regardless of whether the amateur Egyptologists are correct or not, this is a significant piece of work for reasons only alluded to at the bottom of the DailyNews article: using kites affords low-tech (or no-tech) societies the means to achieve substantial power. They demonstrated substantial lift capacity in the Mojave Desert--but think about applying that lift to a lever, or using blocks (systems of pulleys) to lift, pry, or drag.
That's substantially more important than most /. readers might think. While we're living in a high-tech world that seems to only be getting that much more sophisticated, there are vast parts of the world that are still farming, building, and lifting with oxen. The Rodale Institute International Program has worked to get international food organizations away from a North American mindset that focuses on capital-intensive (and diesel-fuel-intensive) methods with big tractors and combines. Instead, they've applied a lot of what's been learned about farm implements to traditional means of propulsion (oxen). They're making a lot of headway--showing that a lot can be accomplished using low-tech methods.
This nice and neatly fits into the same scheme. Nobody's hoisting obelisks these days--but if you're building a road in Senegal, or upstream from the Three Gorges Dam, you may have a multi-ton rock to move. Instead of tackling the problem of finding earth movers big enough to solve your problem, you can drag it out of the way with kites. A vastly simpler, less expensive, more feasible solution.
If I had enough people for a bucket brigade, I'd make a bucket brigade. Flying enough small kites to be useful would not be practical!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Trying to move small things by kite involves more effort than simple wheeled carts.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Like you, I imagine some sort of anchor point but the system is still dangerous. Once the load is in the air, it's at the mercy of both low level winds and the wind that holds the kite up. A 180 change of wind direction is possible and fluctuations are the norm.
Even if you manage not to squash yourself, you won't be able to build much. It's difficult to control a load hanging from a conventional fixed boom in the wind. It would be next to impossible to control a load hung from a kite. If you can't put your load down where you want it, your structure will follow suit and fall over.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is nice if the kite can be contoled from the ground by other than brute force. After all, if you can't you will expend just as much effort bringing it down as you got out of it while it was going up.
I still don't see it being very practical. A regualar wind mill exploits the wind in a more controlable fashion. I'm also still weary of relying on something as inconstant as the wind for a power source. When the wind dies, the load comes down unless it's well ratcheted. If I had all of that derick work, I'd get some friends to pull the load up. Still, it's a very interesting idea.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So will this help out? I doubt it. It sounds unwieldy, dangerous, and impractical.
This thing will kill people who take it seriously. Let's imagine our big block is up and we want to put it down someplace. Contoling loads suspended from modern cranes is difficult enough when the wind blows. A kite has no firm foundation, twice the line to contend with and is utterly dependent on the will of the wisp. I would not want to be under or even around a heavy load lifted by kite.
Power is still needed to control the kite. Even with clever contorls built into the kite for elevation and swing, how do you control radius? It would take lots of work to haul your line in. OK, someone brings a big deisel engine. Great! Now that you have spent all that money, why don't you just buy yourself some angle iron and plate so you can make a boom and a proper crane?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Until they repeat this stunt with a kite made from wood, hemp rope, etc. I reserve the right to believe it's not possible.
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
He wrote an interesting article about tetrahedral kites for lifting, published in National Geographic magazine in 1908 if I remember correctly. As a topical coincidence: some kites had pyramidal structure.
Heyyyy, who modded this down? Someone give the AC an informative point, huh?
I'm all for elegant solutions, but do we have any solid (or more convincing) evidence, other than the fact that it works? Let's not forget that the Egyptians had a lot of slaves, and didn't much care if a hundred died trying to lift an obelisk the hard way.
The problem with this is they left drawings with ramps for construction but I am not aware of any with construction kites.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
There has been wild speculation that I drove a "car". The wacky supporters of this so called "car" theory tell us that it is a machine with parts made all over the world & then assembled in Michigan. The "car" uses a complex internal combustion engine which is regulated with a microprocessor. The fuel for this "car" is pumped out of the ground, shipped to a refinery(which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build), and then shipped by truck hundreds of miles to my community. In that community millions of dollars are spent building and maintaining roads so I could drive this "car" And then there is the idea that I work so i can buy a car so i can drive it to work. Obviously the simpliest solution would be that I walked home.
took math that hadn't been invented in Egyptian times
How many times has claculus been invented? Eudoxus, Pascal, Newton, Leibniz ? Occam's razor refers to cutting away unnecessary assumptions. We don't know what the egyptians knew or their capabilities 6000 years ago. Maybe their important information was kept on magneto-optical media. We have to make assumptions about what the ancient egyptians knew.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
They used a giant air-filled dirigible to airlift a huge diamond atop a pyramid in an imploding oasis.
Saw it in a documentary somewhere, I think.
How do you explain those pyramid things at Giza !
They are obviously tailor's dummies for these giant construction kites !
It also explains the origins of paragliding, as it must have been a white knuckle ride driving those obelisk bearing kites in a gale, and no sensible person would have invented it otherwise !
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
The other view I have heard expressed is that they used ramps.
The ramps were made of mud bricks, and the obelisks were dragged up them. There were holes on the ramps filled with sand where the obelisks were to go. On getting the obelisk in place, the sand was removed from the bottom. Ther obelisks eventually sank onto place. The sand and brick ramps were then removed, leaving no visible signs of how the obelisks got there.
Personally, I would prefer the kite theory to be true, purely on grounds of elegance.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
"It's never been done before: Nobody has ever lifted heavy objects like this before," he said about known research. "The power that we're getting out of a kite is tremendous."
:)
Except by the egyptians thousands of years ago supposedly.
This sig is worse than my last.
Graham Hancock is a nut. But not as much of a nut as the people who believe his loony theories.
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
I remember watching something about a team of egyptologists succeeding in raising a huge obelisk by means of sand displacement. The obelisk was laid down (not erect) on a large countainer of sand , then the people started digging the sand outfrom a door in the bottom of the container. The obelisk fell as they moved the sand out, and it fell as predicted at an angle right into a pre-made groove on the obelisk base. After the obelisk was secured in the groove, it was easy to just push it upright. ;-)
Grooves like that have been seen on the bases of obelisks, so evidence seems to point to this theory being correct.
It's a matter of scale. As the previous poster mentioned, if all the person needs to do is haul a bucket of concrete, use a small kite. A single person should be able to manage that easily enough.
The trick is not in the technology itself, but how you apply the technology. It's a universal idea, no?
My friend, Obelix, does this as a day job. When he was a baby, he fell in to a pot of magic potion created by our village druid that gave him permanent super strength. Although he is classified as a "menhir delivery man" by our village chief, he is essentially a obelisk installer. For all you ladies out there, he is available. His hobbies include eating wild boar and beating the snot out of those crazy Romans.
The article mentions a previous experiment that used nylon material to build the kite with. Since nylon wasn't created until the 20TH century, the ancients could NEVER have used it. This means that they had to use things like hemp, linen and wood to build kites. These materials are heavier and presumably there are limits to the flying structure you can builkd with them. Unless you contruct a kite with the materials the ancients used, you'll never know your kite's REAL capabilities.
Has anyone here EVER SEEN to how gliders and dirigibles fly??? They are subject to WHATEVER the wind wants to do. Dirigible ground crews used to get killed when updrafts blew the crafts into the air, taking those who did not let go into time for a little ride. Those who lost their grip before the craft could land ended up as street pizza. It's NOT just about lifting a huge stone, you have to CONTROL it. Without control, you have a BIG accident waiting to happen. Apparently the Cal-Tech team didn't try to stack one stone on top of another.
WHY is it so hard to believe that ancient Egyptians used their brains and muscle to build these things. The modern human brain evolved tens of thousands of years ago, so the same model that build the pyramids also builds or has built moon rockets, jet planes, skyscrapers, ocean liners and computers. The only thing that differs is the amount of information and tools available.
People today are just as intelligent as the people of thousands of years ago. Space aliens, magic and high-tech kites didn't create civilizations, humans did. And WE are their descendants.
"With the kite tethered in this manner, you don't need to control where the kite goes so long as it keeps going up or in a direction away from the tower. "
Wrong. You ALWAYS have to control where the kite goes. Too little power and you do no work. Too MUCH, and the kite carries away the rock. You can anchor the scaffold, but that doesn't stop the kite from lifting too much.
The advantage of using any tool lies in the ability of it to project a controlled amount of force along a certain direction. The wind is unstable at best; you can't control it and you can't predict it. That means it's force waxes and wanes. It also changes direction. This scafford not only holds the rock, it also holds the kite. The kite places a certain amount of force in a certain place on the scaffold as it lifts the rock. If that force changes, you stand a chance of demolishing your scaffold. All of this uncertainty makes it unworkable.
Human & animal muscle power combined with levers, pulleys, etc. is much easier to manage and predict.
Besides, just WHERE is it in the culture? If they actually used kites, where is the literature describing them? To the ancients, it would have seemed like the power of the gods (the wind) was helping them to raise their buildings. This theme would have been repeated in their literature and described by foreigners (ie Greek historians). There would have been wind and kite festivals (like in China). Little children of today would still be flying kites, like their ancestors. But none of this exists. There is NO ancient cultural tradition of kite flying in egypt - at least that I'm aware of. Show me EVIDENCE of such a tradition and I might believe it.
"You see an absence of concrete proof and automatically write it off as some crackpot idea that is impossible. I see a proof-of-concept experiment that demoinstrates the feasibility of an idea and think, "Hey, it's possible.""
But with that same reasoning you can also postulate that the ancient Egyptians also crossed the Atlantic since they were capable of building large boats. They certainly had the materials, the tools and the manpower to do it. You CAN demonstrate using materials in the region and establish a proof of concept. BUT THAT DOESN'T PROVE they went to the Americas. With hindsight, almost anything can be worked out. Lack of proof means just that. LACK OF PROOF. That's the scientific method.
You're using the proof of one concept to demonstrate proof of another. It may be possible to demonstrate the building a kite-powered lifting scaffold - and THAT may prove it was possible, but it doesn't mean the Egyptians actually did it. Historical proof is lacking.
The absence of proof doesn't make an idea automatically crackpot. It's the continued pushing of that idea in spite of an absence of proof that makes it crackpot.
"These are not the Egyptians of Cleopatra. They are the ancient ancestors of Cleopatra."
Actually, Cleopatra was a 7th generation incestual descendant of Ptolomy, a general of Alexander the Great's. She (probably) wasn't related to any of the people she ruled.
Did nobody at this event bother to photograph it? Anyone have a link with pictures?
Aliens via Stargate built the pyramids using Static Electricity generated from piezo devices embedded in their sandals to repell large kitelike balloons made of papyrus. The same devices were later used to make Jedi mindtrick suggestions to La Wacka and cronies at Caltech... "racecar spelled backward is ?"
Busy aligning my non-linear thoughts.
There are a variety of peculiar bits and pieces of construction mystery.
While the kite theory is exceptionally cool, it doesn't strike me as terribly likely.
Slaves. Hired help. Honored help. (All using Mud Ramps.) Doesn't look like it.
Aliens?
Weirdly enough, I don't think it was those creepy grey bastards either. I mean, the aliens accused of abducting people today helping pharos build pyramids yesterday? Explain them politics. (I say weirdly, because I think there's some weight to alien theory in other arenas; --that and people think I'm weird as a general rule.)
The idea I find most interesting states that the technology used to construct ancient Big Stone Monuments is in fact available today, but the powers that be keep it suppressed because its one of those 'cat out of the bag' techs which automatically come packaged with the keys to unifying theory, general enlightenment, free love and a complimentary desert topping in one of five fabulous flavors. -Based, some suggest, on a brand of harmonics and vibrational energy manipulation.
Far flung and hard to corroborate? Sure. -Especially with the garbage info we have fed to us through television and media. --Especially Televison. (Ah. . . The warm, safe voice of the scientist we were all weened on and now subconsciously trust with all our hearts ever since Mom first plunked us down in front of the T.V. "What Will They Think Of Next!")
But you can get some clues by watching the fear impulse reactions of the Evil Empire. -Look how the media is spending so much time and energy recently to ridicule, obfuscate and litter with B.S. 'Learning Channel' science/history propaganda the whole question of ancient origins and alternate histories, of which Big Lego Blocks in Egypt are an integral part. I mean, they're even pulling out the big guns; Disney just dumped a retarded Atlantis film into the waters just to muddy them up further. Gads! (I should probably watch that damned thing, just to see the exact mechanics of the mind-twist of public collective awareness, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to blow $11 on Hollywood. . .)
-Not that the media is knowingly applying the cover-up, mind you. But from all indicators and everything I've read, seen and done, it appears extremely easy for the powers that be to make people do and say pretty much anything without Jack getting wise.
Anyway, the whole question of what is and isn't depicted in Hieroglyphs is kind of pointless. They may not have hieroglyphs of tuning fork guys playing with kites on mud ramps, but neither did they have pictures of people doing a whole bunch of things which were surely common back then. I think it's important to remember that hieroglyphs are an icon based language. While I don't claim to be able to read 'Egyptian,' I suspect that any such written language with a finite alphabet can be made to communicate more complex ideas through icon combinations.
--Fantastic Lad -- For Entertainment Purposes Only! Enlightenment Optional.
The fact is that ancient South Americans had hot air balloons, with intercontinental sea routes, trading wheat, hemp and aloe with west africa and egypt, the anwser is that obviously kites were used to raise obelisks, dust crops and most importantly the unmanned nuclear bombing offensive of Atlanitis. duh.
subvert the elitist slashdot patriarchy! (where all the stupid women at up in here?)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
i don't understand why we still get so excited about bizarre explanations of how the egyptians built the pyramids. when you have tens of thousands of slaves and have no regard for whether they live or die, such a feat isn't so impossible (still incredible, but we don't need UFOs or kites to explain it).
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in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
check out Huge Kite Museum for sample of size that can be built from low tech material.
also see Chronological Table of Kite History- time wise it works
So all is possible...
My person favorite: Pharaoh's Pump Foundation -- the pyramids are gaint water pumps!!
Uh yeah, I'm a... uh... professional kite flier. I'd explain it, but it's... uh... pretty technical and stuff.
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
The Hebrews-built-the-pyramids is not just an Israeli theory. I remember being taught this theory in Southern Baptist Sunday School in the U.S. I wonder how widespread this idea is taught and believed in the fundamentalist Protestant religions?
Even with the best will in the world, I'm kind of curious how the Egyptians, with their technology, could have got a kite of that size to stay together in thirty mile an hour winds, let alone fly in any controlled fashion. And then have the strength to lift a several hundred ton obelisk?
As Willeke Wendrich, associate professor of Egyptian archeology at the University of California, Los Angeles said in the article, "The kite project seems like a lot of fun, but it doesn't prove the pyramids were built that way."
It is a really cool geek achievement and certainly a lot of fun, but you have to wonder how much would be possible without modern materials?
I guess I'll just go back to believing in the entirely more reasonable Silent Bob and his Jedi Mind Trick moving the stones. "Fly fat boy, fly."
actually when the pyramids line up with some of the stars in the Orion constellation (presumbably not all, I'm sure Orion wasn't one of THEIR constellations :P)
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"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
by the way, the orion's belt area is where osiris was supposed to have lived
by line up, i mean if you draw a map of the stars and the milkier part of the milky way, it overlaps the 3 pyramids including the great pyramid, plus a couple other pyramids to the north and south, and the milky way maps to the Nile
at least thats what the discovery channel told me =]
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"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Well, probably not kites - but the egyptions apparently did dig canals, and did have sail technology - so why not run a rope from a boat to a block and tackle? Deliver the block to a dock via boat, then as the boat sails back for another block, it powers the block up into place... Makes more sense than kites!
Except for the engines, the earliest aircraft were largely wood and linen. Materials aren't a good reason to conclude this wasn't done. However, the fact that nothing was recorded about it is a pretty good reason....
People often wonder how the Egyptians moved things of that weight with such precision.
:)
Here's how.
They had lots of expendable slaves, and huge whips
I think the alien theory is more interesting, - even though there is no evidence - than the ramp/slave/kite theories.
Like the monoliths from 2001 : Space Odyssey, the pyramids could be built during a period in time when some kind of alien technology/power helped the humans. The movie "Fifth Element" also has something in this line.
I know myself its not true, but its interesting to think of the pyramids as a monument to some kind of alien activity on earth.
actually when the pyramids line up with some of the stars in the Orion constellation (presumbably not all, I'm sure Orion wasn't one of THEIR constellations
Getting closer. The three main pyramids at Giza line up (once you wind back the sky to the time that the pyramids were built) almost perfectly with the three main stars in "Orion's belt." This is not only in geographical alignment but also in relative size, i.e., the size of the pyramid is proportional to the relative brightness of its corresponding star.
Then there are seveal other pyramids that were built far away from Giza that also match up to stars in the constellation of Orion. According to the Egyptologists, what we refer to as the constellation of Orion was referred to by the Egyptians as the constellation of Osiris, the Egyptian deity that governed death and rebirth. Since the pyramids were tombs and the Egyptians believed that death was a transition to another world, it only made sense that if you were to build pyramids that lined up with any stars you would choose the ones that were related to Osiris.
Another example of someone forgetting that if a simple explanation and a complicated explanation exist, then the simple one is almost always right. So when you have a situation where there's sand and a lot of people available, a solution that uses those elements makes more sense than kites, aliens, or cantilevered structures that take calculus to design.
:-)
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification of Occam's Razor. But what's more important is to remember that there were definitely engineers present. That is obvious from the math involved in the ratios of the pyramids sides and their alignment, etc. There really is a lot of complicated geometry and trigonometry in there. Take a look at the so-called "bent" pyramid, and you will see the learning process that the engineer went through once he determind that his original design wasn't done properly (or perhaps he predecessor's design).
At any rate, if engineers in ancient Egypt were anything at all like their modern brethren, then you can screw Occam's Razor. They would have done it the most efficient and clever way that they could devise, not by using the K.I.S.S. method. And then they would have bragged about it down at the pub afterwards.
But with that same reasoning you can also postulate that the ancient Egyptians also crossed the Atlantic since they were capable of building large boats. They certainly had the materials, the tools and the manpower to do it. You CAN demonstrate using materials in the region and establish a proof of concept. BUT THAT DOESN'T PROVE they went to the Americas.
You may find it interesting to note that there are some cultural similarities between ancient Egyptians and Ancient South Americans, not to mention that there is evidence of having been cocao plants, the source of choclate and cocaine, in ancient Egypt. Please note that these plants are indigenous to South America, not Africa. So there does appear to be some evidence to indicate that the Egyptians, or somebody that the Egyptians traded with, did in fact travel to and from South America.
Lack of proof means just that. LACK OF PROOF. That's the scientific method.
I almost agree with you, with one exception. The scientific method allows that what is currently accepted as truth or fact may in fact be incorrect. The scientific method is a method by which we can challenge accepted theory and hopefully prove new theories. It is not a method by which we can just sit back and say, "we already know everything about this topic and future postulation is therefore useless."
You're using the proof of one concept to demonstrate proof of another. It may be possible to demonstrate the building a kite-powered lifting scaffold - and THAT may prove it was possible, but it doesn't mean the Egyptians actually did it.
That's exactly what I've been saying. It doesn't prove that it *DID* happen, it merely proves that it was possible. Since we don't have any concrete evidence to the contrary nor do we have any concrete documentation as to how they were built, any reasonable speculation is perfectly acceptable. What I deem reasonable speculation is that which is a) proven to be technically feasible and b) that which isn't plainly proven by some sort of evidence to be untrue. The kite theory certainly fits that profile.
The absence of proof doesn't make an idea automatically crackpot. It's the continued pushing of that idea in spite of an absence of proof that makes it crackpot.
This is incorrect in principle and as it applies to this discussion. As it applies to this discussion, I am not "pushing" this theory. I am merely pointing out that it would be wrong to eliminate it from possibility just because it is unconventional. In principle, it's the wrong approach because it eliminates a lot of basic thinking that goes into research. When a scientist sees unexplained phenomena, he tries to make theories to explain the phenomena based on other knowledge that he has of similar situations. Then he tests his theories. If he waited until he had hard facts or evidence that explained the phenomena, there would be no such thing as theory. Theory is based on speculation, the same kind of speculation that the kite-flyers have offered here.
Actually, Cleopatra was a 7th generation incestual descendant of Ptolomy, a general of Alexander the Great's. She (probably) wasn't related to any of the people she ruled.
Good for her, but I think that it was obvious to anybody who read the post that I wasn't speaking in a strictly genetic since but in a cultural sense. Though she "probably" wasn't genetically Egyptian, she is considered by most to be Egyptian and for my purposes of comparing generations of Egyptians and Greeks made a good reference point. And since you're such the historian, shame on you for not knowing that the pyramid-builders were not contemporaries with Greek historians.
The advantage of using any tool lies in the ability of it to project a controlled amount of force along a certain direction. The wind is unstable at best; you can't control it and you can't predict it. That means it's force waxes and wanes. It also changes direction. This scafford not only holds the rock, it also holds the kite. The kite places a certain amount of force in a certain place on the scaffold as it lifts the rock. If that force changes, you stand a chance of demolishing your scaffold. All of this uncertainty makes it unworkable.
It certainly doesn't appear to be all that unworkable, especially seeing as someone has already done it. If you'll recall, that was the point of the article.
Besides, just WHERE is it in the culture? If they actually used kites, where is the literature describing them? To the ancients, it would have seemed like the power of the gods (the wind) was helping them to raise their buildings. This theme would have been repeated in their literature and described by foreigners (ie Greek historians). There would have been wind and kite festivals (like in China). Little children of today would still be flying kites, like their ancestors. But none of this exists. There is NO ancient cultural tradition of kite flying in egypt - at least that I'm aware of. Show me EVIDENCE of such a tradition and I might believe it.
I'm not saying that the Egyptians built it this way. I merely pointing out that it is certainly quite feasible. You see an absence of concrete proof and automatically write it off as some crackpot idea that is impossible. I see a proof-of-concept experiment that demoinstrates the feasibility of an idea and think, "Hey, it's possible."
Just because there is no evidence that Egyptians flew kites 6000 years ago doesn't mean that they didn't fly kites. There are very large portions of the historical record that did not survive until the present day intact. If we did have all of the historical records, we would know for a fact how it was done. Remember that when we speak of the pyramid builders we aren't talking about a people who were contemporaries with Greek historians (or any other historians from whom we have writings). We are talking about a civilization that predates the Greeks by several thousand years. These are not the Egyptians of Cleopatra. They are the ancient ancestors of Cleopatra.
I know no one on /. believes in God - but I've seen somethings that said a higher being could've built the pyramids.
The egyptian pyramids line up with Leo, but 15,000 years ago (or BC -can't remember). In S.America there ziggarauts line up with... damn can't remember. And in Ankor - they line up with Draco. All from way before they were built, and really no one to document the positions in the sky.
Some say that a diety of some sort either built them for the people or commanded them to build them.
I do know that there are pieces of stone that were carved that would take years today with modern cutting tools.
You decide.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I completely agree with ( him ? her ? What's a Willeke ? .) Both in the "lot of fun" and in the "proves nothing" part of it.
"Willeke" is a Dutch female name.
And I would like to add that I agree with a previous post by nick_davison about the materials: the article states that the first 400 pound lifting kite was made out of nylon and nothing is mentioned about the materials of the newest one; I assume that it is again made out of modern materials. Could you also construct such a kite completely out of would/linen/cotton/iron and whatever was available, able to withstand the big forces?
The typical New-Ager can raise several levels of consciousness and will still be well behind where I am now. Hell, they can drink Arizona Iced Tea Memory Brain Enhance mix, complete with a picture of Einstein on the label, and I can have a hemispherectomy with 30 seconds to recover, complete with a fifth of vodka, and they'd still lose.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
I bet they did it with a beowulf cluster of kites...
Another example of someone forgetting that if a simple explanation and a complicated explanation exist, then the simple one is almost always right. So when you have a situation where there's sand and a lot of people available, a solution that uses those elements makes more sense than kites, aliens, or cantilevered structures that take calculus to design.
(In the Nova presentation of raising an obelisk, an engineer came up with this arcane concept that took math that hadn't been invented in Egyptian times to create. And even then, it didn't work.}
---Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.---
I saw the woman that orchestrated this whole event interviewed on the evening news. She said she originally conceived the idea when she realized that there are pictures of wings etched into the top of each of the pyramids.
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silence is poetry.
I completely agree with ( him ? her ? What's a Willeke ? .) Both in the "lot of fun" and in the "proves nothing" part of it.
That said, I consider this kind of research as very thought-provoking (it has provoked at least two thoughts in myself, close to a record), and worthwhile in itself. Well done!
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
(Remember that the pyramid builders didn't even have wheels!) -- Above post
Funny, I would have sworn that the Egyptians were the ones to come up with the first Chariots. Not to mention the theory that they used a wheel as a mesuring device for designing the pyramids. (A theory which seems plasable.)
For the curious, the wheel theory was something I saw in one of those Discover/PBS style documentaries. The evidence to suggest it was that, for the Great Pyramid, if you took the length of the base, and divided it by the height, you came up with pi, or a factor there of. Its a strange quirk of math that has often been used to point at aliens or the wisdom of the ancients, but the wheel mesurement theory seems more plasable. Something like: Height=10 Rods, Length = 10 rolls of a 1 Rod Diameter wheel.
therefore L = 10 X 1 Rod X pi
L/H = (10 Rods X pi)/(10 Rods) = pi
They picked a height, and rolled the wheel that many times for the base length. And Viola! dimensions that take into account a wonderfully complex and important number, without even knowing it.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Has anyone read his book, "Nothing in this book is true, but it's exactly how things are"? A very interesting, thought provoking book which describes, among other things, the ways that aliens built the pyramids. Very new-age, with discussions about the next level of human consciousness (46&2) and other exploits of those pesky aliens. Definitely worth a read, and a must-read for any fan of those sultans of free thought, Tool.
-- MarkusQ
1) I thought that one of the marvels of the pyramids was the fact that they are held together without mortar or any other kind of sealant. I realize that this theory doesn't really address this at all, but has anyone addressed this? Am I mistaken?
2) More importantly, I understand the desire to try to replicate the Egyptians' feats using technology to which they had access? My real question is, do we necessarily have the creativity to come up with the methods that they used? As I understand it, this is just one theory. They MAY have done this. We don't know. We, as a society, are more reliant on "technology" than the Egyptians were. As such, I'm inclined to believe that they were more creative in their problem-solving techniques.
I'm not trying to belittle what the CalTech team has done (even though I went to a rival school). Does anyone else think that we just lack the creativity to replicate their construction techniques?
Of course it was! Remeber the "classic" theories that all of the slaves / peasants / laborers had to work building pyramids while the Nile was in flood? The timing is perfect. Now to unify the theories. The Egyptians had sails? Maybe. But the TV special referred to above showed heiroglyphs in which the obelisks were rolled into boats. The boats went downriver. Who knows how high the flood waters went? Could they have been diverted to make temporary canals? Certainly. Good thought.
unfortunately, we'll never know if that's how they did it. It' like the hanging gardens of Babylon, no one we'll actually know for absolutely sure if the Gardens ever existed or, if they did, how did they get the water up that hill to the plants.
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Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
Every able person worked on the pyramids and temples for the Gods for a few weeks of the year and then, went home and did their own thing. The illiteracy rate in ancient was ridiculously low and so, more people are likely to believe in the Gods and to make sure not to anger them(they were keeping the Nile flooded and fertilized, thus, keeping them alive.) This was one way of keeping the gods happy, working on the projects for the Pharaoh and temples in honor of a local god.
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Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
We know what happened in the Industrial Revolution and so, we are not amazed by it. We have surpassed it so far that we can just throw the idea over our shoulders. 5000 years ago seem more interesting because they propose new questions like, can we use kites to lift large blocks of stones. Problems like this can be easily solved with a modern Engineering but, what if we didnt' live in the modern age and had limited resources, how would we do this. It is a more interesting question because we know how they did it in the Industrial Revolution but we are unsure about Ancient Egypt.
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Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
Consider the materials necessary for flight alone.
For a kite that size to sustain it's structural integrity under even light-moderate winds requires very strong materials in the wing itself (like nylon) and the assembly that shapes the kite (more than likely tubing from an aluminium alloy). The moments produced around assembled components would be surprisingly high, especially near the center if the wing.
Although the Egyptians were known for managing huge loads, it seems to me they wouldn't have anything strong or light enough to support these kinds of forces. (My point being, if they did construct a wing, the freakin' Kite would most likely weigh several hundred pounds itself)
this is my sig, be amazed.
It's quite funny how long it could've takent to build each pyramid, and there are many of them. Yet there was no attempt at bringing down the words as to how they built it. So why doesn't each younger pyramid look crappier than its predecessor? There must be some record as to how each got built, kinda like instructions. But no, a civilisation such as Egypt would take it's time painting pictures rather than save the details as to how to build monstrous beasts.
That's probably why their nation died from power. Lack of knowledge throughout the ages... kinda funny, I've always thought you build upon knowledge - not lose it.
I don't really care how they built the damn things. Since no facts are available, everything will remain a theory. Unless told otherwise by Aliens :-)
Well done, BTW. This is why I browse at -1...
DoC
Obviously they had a quKite!
Add to that the fact that flying things, especially in the ancient world, would tend to cause a lot of commotion. The "Wondrous Flying Rocks of Egypt" would have become an international sensation. We certainly would have read about it from Herodotus, the Greek "Father of History" whose book details Egyptian culture fairly well.
Finally, the Egyptians did not have access to most fabrics. If they used kites, they were made of linen. In order to even suggest that kites built the pyramids, it would first be necessary to lift rocks using linen kites, not space-age materials.
I don't want to knock this demonstration; lifting a several-ton rock with a kite is damn cool regardless of historical significance. But proof of concept is only a small part of historical research, and these people seem to be basing their argument on evidence as ephemeral as the wind.
terradot - growing awareness
terradot - growing awareness.
The idea of using kites for heavy lifting and construction isn't new--Chinese legends talk about lifting huge blocks to the top of cliffs to build castles (a brief search turned up this site)--but I doubt the Egyptians did it. The origin of the kite is generally thought to have been in China and Malaysia circa 200 BCE, long after the bulk of Egytian construction. Still a cool idea!