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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.
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
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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.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Dude, they didn't have cameras back then :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
here's a link to support yer argument ;)
:)
And here's the "Official" site:
Coral Castle
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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.
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satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
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.
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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.
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.
Did nobody at this event bother to photograph it? Anyone have a link with pictures?
WHY is it so hard to believe that ancient Egyptians used their brains and muscle to build these things.
It's not. But why is it so hard to believe that they used their brains more than they used their muscles?
Beyond that, you make the same mistake as about 99% of the Slashdot posters here. You ASSume that they tied a rock to a kite, flew the kite, then skillfully positioned the kite to drop the rock where they wanted it. That's not what the article described. It only touched on the concept, but they built a tower where they wanted the obelisk. They ran a rope through the tower (via a network of pulleys) down to the obelisk. The kite was at the top of the tower (where there was more wind) and was presumably launched from there. 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. This will pull the ropes, thus lifting the stone (or the obelisk). Stacking stones in this case is even simpler because the tower will allow the stones to be lifted to nearly the exact same location on the horizontal plane.
Why is it that nobody ever reads the articles anymore before shooting off their mouth? It plainly talks about pulleys and scaffolds.
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.