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Update on the Kite-Obelisk Project
pyramidiot writes: "A month or so ago a story from the LA Daily News about a group of people who are trying to prove that the Egyptians may have used kites to erect obelisks and build pyramids was posted on slashdot. Naturally, the article as a bit bland and left many questions unanswered, and some answered incorrectly. Well I'm the engineer of the project and I've been developing a website to answer everyone's questions. The URL is www.pyramidiots.com, and, although it is still under development, it may help to answer most of your questions."
Indeed.
The thing which I was least able to ignore, though, was the fact that they were pulling on a loop of rebar cast in the tip of the obelisk.
Uhm, yeah, right.
Other fun requirements:
All that said, its kinda cute, but it seems more like a confirmation of block-and-tackle theory than anything the Egyptians might have done.
Enthusiasm for raising obelisks in interesting ways is fine, but suggesting that they were originally raised by the same means is, well, stupid. Pulleys? Carts? Steel plates? Kites? There are more anachronisms in this scheme than can be counted, and many of them are essential to it. Other attempts to reproduce ancient engineering feats have at least made some kind of effort to restrict themselves to the technology of the day; even then, many have been far more elaborate than techniques that would actually have been used, sometimes relying on modern maths even when the devices used could conceivably have been built.
The real problem here is psychological (or maybe psychiatric). The Egyptians didn't have much trouble mobilizing labour and were not, generally, gadgeteers. The techniques they used were probably the simplest ones that could be used with the help of an army of peasants.
I understand that the site is only half-serious and that it may be hoping just to raise debate on the subject, but it's about as helpful as trying to open an argument on whether or not space aliens lent a hand.
Source Aish haTorah's Crash Course in Jewish History part 9: Moses
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I think it would make more sense to have the pulleys on the kite; the major advantage of a kite over a ton of people is that the kite can pull upward, whereas people tend to be on the ground. This should be useful for avoiding the need for a taller existing structure capable of supporting the weight of your stone.
A lot of the problems people have with the wind method wouldn't be different with people pulling: the rope does have to be sufficiently strong to lift the stone without being too heavy to be lifted itself; you need some sort of pulley system to convert the horizontal force into vertical; you need pulleys to lower the necessary force (because you can't actually put ten thousand people on a really long rope and have them pull it and get a useful effect).
Their page is obviously a cleverly designed porn attraction. You may not want to check it at work.
... I have one question. Will this make my obelisk larger? Not that I have a small obelisk.
Erect Your Own Obelisk!
"Wonder how it works?
Coming soon: interactive obelisk raising simulation!"
I can hardly wait for the MPEG
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lake effect weblog
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
- A big, modern nylon-kite
- A dozen or soo modern low-friction pulleys.
- A few hundred meters of pro low-friction super-strong syntetic rope. (locked like climbing-rope to me)
Then you can raise a small obelisk on it's end.Big surprise there. I completely fail to see how this even indicates that the old egyptians /could/ have done this. To demonstrate that possibility you'd have to repeat the experiment with the materials available to the old Egyptians. (this means no nylon, no syntetical fibers, only the kinds of cloth the Egyptians had, no ball-bearing low-friction pulleys.)
I wonder how much of a pull such a kite provides anyway. More than 8 people with an old-fashioned manual winch ? I doubt it. And much less manageable, since you need convenient wind.
As Snow Crash helpfully points out, most mundane Egyptian texts were written on papyrus, which doesn't last forever. Most all of what we have in writing from Egypt is what they wrote on walls, or what they kept in tombs. And this stuff is usually religious and rarely discusses day to day life. Or construction techniques. This is why we don't know for certain how the pyramids were built. All of their construction techniques would have been quite well documented, just not entombed.
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There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Umph. Maybe he was just amusing himself, like the way an 8 year old boy will torment ants.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Naw...you just climb the string, grab on to the kite, and steer it into a controlled glider-like descent.
You don't necessarily need an eyeloop embedded in the obelisk. The Egyptians had hemp and its known that they could make hemp rope. All you'd need is a well built harnass to wrap around the obelisk.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Most people talk about the large stones on the pyramids but the obelisks are the interesting problems. Some of them weigh about 65 tons while the pyramid stones are typically the weight of a large car. In my studies of the assembly of stuff in Egypt, the main problem with finding out how they did things was they didn't write it down (the had less interesting things to write about) and the second problem is that they used wood tools that were recycled into firewood just as soon as they broke.
There were theories that the boats pictured in the tombs could not be built and were just artistic drawings until they found the boat in the sand at Giza. That boat is about the same size as the Mayflower and it looked like it had hauled some heavy loads.
The oldest storeys about building the pyramids said it was built using machines made of planks. This has been discounted because the source is known to stretch the truth and no one has found a machine in the sand (because it would become firewood!)
While looking at the Red Pyramid, I found that some of the casing stones had rings on their bottoms as if they had been propped up with logs. The next time I go there, I intend to get a good tracing of the rings (I'm not sure how) and see if the age of the logs can be determined.
We do know they used piles of mud bricks and sand as scaffolding. Some of it is still in place at Karnak.
Remember that there is so much sand in Northern Africa that if you spread it all out, it would completely cover the Sarah Desert
Ah, those were the days! Not only did Kroyer save the Kuwaiti water supply, but he also saved the insurance lots of money. Nowadays, Disney would probably sue for a cut...
Say no to software patents.
... they sound like a spectacular construction method. One that would have been immortalized in art.
I'm skeptical of the kite theory simply because we haven't run across any paintings or etchings of people using them to raise the stones.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
a largely unharnessed power, as far as alternative sources go. all that is involved is a startup cost... there's little maintenance or upkeep to them. we need more windmills, damnit.
Raising ships with ping-pong balls
Solar sails for spacecraft
Laser-powered spacecraft
Supersonic speeds underwater
Fake breastesses
Sometimes it feels so good to be a human being :)
"Has sensational journalism gone too far? Find out at eleven!" - John Stewart
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
Basically the Egyptian government is worried that if someone somewhere can prove without a doubt that the Jews (slaves in Egypt waaaaaay back when) built the pyramids, then there's gonna be hell to pay when Israel wants to take back the pyramids that their blood built. In today's politically correct climate, they'd have a decent legal shot at it too. So they fund experiments like this to prove that their ancestors were much smarter and greater than we give them credit for.
Even though you and I know that the easiest way to build pyramids would be to use slaves, for all we know aliens could have erected them as landing points for giant starships.
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
This looks like a clever assortment of levers and pulleys to allow a small amount of force to move a heavy object. Such machines are nothing strange; my question is, and I was unable to find a reason, why do you need a kite? Why not some people (they had plenty of slaves, no?) pull on the rope instead?
Those who do not know the past are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.
I seem to remember at least one other explanation to this whole question.. The norwegian professor Thor Heyerdahl (the man behind the Kon-Tiki, Ra, Easter Island etc. expeditions and associated theories) came up with a mechanical device that proved able to lift/transport/put in place the huge blocks of stone (ofcourse with the required accuracy). He didn't present it as _the_ answer, but as one of many proofs that aliens weren't responsible for the pyramids..
Respect to anyone fighting those ideas, and to anyone in pursuit of the truth.
Love over Gold.
With all that hemp around, its suprising they ever did anything but raid the pantry.
One group is suggesting that they used water power for some of this stuff: The Pharaoh's Pump
Why does everyone think that everytime they come up with a creative way to move a large object that they have discovered the way the egyptians built the pyrimids and oblisks?
I saw a very interesting thingie on PBS about this, the archelogical evidence suggests that the egyptians did everything with three elements, human labor, wood, and sand. Wood was the only one which they didn't have abundant supply nearby, but pieces of a giant wooden barge, large enough to carry many stones or a few oblisks, have been found, and a replica made.
The Oblisks stand upon stone squares with what archaeologists call a turning groove. This turning groove they claim, kept the oblisk from sliding around as it was stood into place.
A theory which will be difficult to prove by archaelogical evidence about the erection of the oblisks is that they used the most simple machine they could, gravity. A large box was made around the base for the oblisk and filled with sand. Several sand vents were cut in the sides of this box, allowing sand to run out when opened. The oblisk was dragged on top of the sand and the vents opened. This technique has been demonstrated, it gets the oblisk within a few degrees of vertical, the remainder can be pulled by fewer than 200 men.
Why would they need to use kites when they could use sand and gravity?
BTW, at first I thought you were saying that they used JEW's to construct thier stuff. Big shock, its in the bible...
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
Human labor.
Why would Egyptian engineers bother developing such outlandish methods of construction when they could use the most available resource in any advanced society- human labor. Considering the influence of religion in their society and the intelligence levels of the common workers, when the Pharaoh (who was considered a God) gives the command for an oversized grave marker, people get to work.
The most promising explanation on how the Pyramids were built I've seen was by an archeologist who discovered some wooden models. These models were 2 flat pieces of wood, each shaped into a half circle, and then attached together by wooden pillars. He theorized that these were models of the equipment used to move the 6,900 lb. blocks of stone. By standing the rectangular stone on its shorter end, and then attaching these half circle units to each longer side with thick rope, the stone block was now the shape of a circle. This could easily be done with enough human hands.
Now, with enough human labor these mammoth blocks could now be rolled with relative ease to their position. To raise the blocks up to the top of the pyramid he suggested the ramp method which had been theorized by other scientists. This basically was a dirt ramp that was built around the sides of the pyramid as it got higher, which allowed the stones to be dragged in place, or in this case, rolled into place. Given enough slaves, every block could be moved into position in a timely manner- allowing the pyramid to be completed in the relatively short time of 20 years.
All of this could be done with some of the most readily available resources: willing human labor, wood, rope and dirt.
isn't it obvious? ... let them play.
This is a hobby. The only sad thing IMHO is that they try to raise money pretending to do serious research.
Their project sounds interesting first, but the team is only a bunch of technology freaks, say no historians in the team.
They are fancy of kites... they proved that they could lever that obelisk (with todays techniques)
.sigh
As strange as the theories that the pyramids were built by an advanced alien civilization.
I don't believe the egyptians knew how to fly. If they did the'd probably would have used this to get closer to the sun, after all, our star were a god to them, and this wold be registered in hyerogliphs on their temples and/or pyramids.
It's a known fact that maya civilization in tha andes had hot air baloons shaped as an iverted pyramid build with vegetable fiber, and a reproduction of this balloon flew 200 meters near lake titicaca. Detail, this ballon was registered in stone in a temple near the lake. The cientist who reproduced the machine copied the shape of it from this stone.
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What ? Me, worry ?
Good point. Another thing to consider: If they used this method to raise huge rocks into the air, why didn't they also use it for warfare? Remember that most new technology usually ends up as weapons. A legion of obelisk kite-flyers would be a powerful force against besieged cities, or against armies that had advantage of higher terrain.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
...it doesn't mean it *was* done with kites. This is a cool project, but I seriously question the claim to historical accuracy. There are no recorded instances of kites until around 200 BCE.
It's not like the materials to build a kite are particularly rare or hard to manufacture--in ancient Egypt, they could have used reeds and papyrus. So if the technology was known, why haven't kids been flying kites in Egypt since the days of the pyramids?
Ooo! I know; the priest cast must have kept this technology forbidden. And thus it was lost to the ages. The world's greatest mystery turns into the world's oldest conspiracy theory!
So, if the theory that the Egyptians used kites is flawed (and I think it is), then why bother doing this project specifically to raise obelisks, instead of some other kind of engineering feat? I think that Clemmons is trying to evoke the mystery and majesty of the pyramids to raise money for what is otherwise merely an interesting engineering trick, increasing her salary to boot. The whole thing relies on the donations that she or people working for her can drum up, and the merchandising of overpriced goods.
It's a Pyramid Scheme!