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Canadian Inventor: Pyramids Were Rocked Into Place
seafortn writes "A Canadian man is claiming he has solved the mystery of the construction of the pyramids - the ancient Egyptians attached curved boards to the building blocks and rolled them into place."
Uhm, doesn't slashdot have editors to fix that kinda thing? Guess not... It's stuff like this that keeps me from subscribing.
....why the Slashdot editors couldn't spellcheck HEADLINES!
-psy
Let me be the first of many to say: Jesus God, would you get a spelling checker?
--
$tar -xvf
Guy can move rocks from A to B by rocking and/or rolling.
Guy doesn't really know how the rocks were lifted 60ft into the air, but suggests 'shimmying' may have been part of it.
Next week - Guy explains that he can fly to the moon using only pogo sticks. "See, how bouncy they are," he says, "now just bounce a little higher and I'm there."
What a pointless, informationless article that was.
/* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
...where the term "rock'n'roll" was coined....it was attributed to the sound the rocks made as they were rolled into place!
-psy
Talk about reinventing the wheel!
There is no place like ~!
The reason this is such a mystery is that the great pyramid is made of over two million blocks, each weighing two and a half tons. Our best estimates for construction time are that it took around 20 years to build. Assuming a 10 to 12 hour work day and no holidays (365 days a year) that means the ancient Egyptians placed a block every 20 to 30 seconds.
Today, even with modern equipment, we could not make that happen. Maybe we could place a block every 5 minutes or every 10 minutes, but I can't imagine we could do it under a minute continuously. It's just an amazing feet. You can see why people are so impressed.
There are so many examples of humans achieving such greatness, and accomplishing such feats, that later generations do not comprehend. I suppose our generation has the Apollo moon landings, and maybe a couple of other things. It really stands as a testament to our potential. So, when we start murdering each other wholesale I like to think about these achievements because it gives me hope that we can rise above our destructive nature.
"canadiasn" ... close to "orgasn" .... neither, in the end, are really what we want it to be.
Don't put salt in your eyes.
Sheesh, one after another, trying to solve how th epyramids were built... Geesh, when will these people figure it out that these theories are all bogus, that the pyramids were built completely by natural erosion?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Sheesh, one after another, trying to post a single story without a typo... Geesh, when will these editors get a clue?
Those damn Canadiasns....
I know a man (who is, coincedentally, native egyptian) who firmly believes that the ancients harnessed mind powers. Which would kinda be cool. I mean, *the force* is real!
Just my two cents.
(oh, and I mispeled coincedentally. So flame me)
"The most looniest, zaniest, spontaneous, sporadic Impulsive thinker, compulsive drinker, addict"
As I recall, the main focus of it was the rolling logs for long distance transport (pretty well documented, not only by the tracks left, but discarded and broken logs etc., but also historical pictorial records) and also on leverage multipliers.
With the rollers, the key was sustaining momentum wherever possible (moving friction less than initial friction). No need to re-invent the wheel here (bad pun I know).
The materials analysis of the lever and pulley materials was the most interesting part I though. They demonstrated the feasability of several different methods of lifting/propelling the blocks (all dreamed up by a variety of egyptologists, engineers and wackos like Mr Raina) using only materials available at the time.
In contrast to the mental stimulation provided by that documentary, this article was a complete waste of time.
Mr. Raina has never been to Egypt nor have any scientists travelled to his humble home for a demonstration.
Well surprise, surprise...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Every theory for decades concerning the building of the pyramids assumes that there was enough wood available at the time to build structures, ramps, cranes (of sorts), and - now, rocking devices - to support/move/position/sculpt massive-ton rocks.
Why not apply Ockham's razor to the problem? Why couldn't the Egyptians just have created the world's first "concrete mix"?
How hard would it have been? Pound a few rocks to get powder, shlep the powder in simple baskets/bowls to the site, add water, and - viola. You got your bajillion-ton "rocks" up hundreds of feet without any "high-tech" (for the time) tools?
How come nobody every posits that theory...
Yes, that is what we were taught in school -- that the pyramids were built with slave labour, with brutal working conditions. But there have been a number of documentaries about archeological investigations into the dormitories where the workers lived. IIRC the archeological evidence points to the workers not being slaves. IIRC the archeological evidence points to the workers working and living under reasonable circumstances.
Unforunately, he's confusing hypothesis with evidence. He's given some good anecdotal evidence that it could have been done that way, but no evidence that it was done that way. Produce some tangible evidence and he may be on to something.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
I've seen this hypotheses along with pictures quite a while ago (a couple of years at least). Either this guy reinvented the wheel again or this is an old story.
Gee,
This is retarded. What is worse, that a geek blog picked up something this dumb, or a "real" news site? This idea is old, and long discredited.
The greeks started using the technique described, but not for many years after the Pyramids were built.
It is worth noting that there are pictures surviving from the period that show large teams of men, pulling big stone bocks or statues, on sledges. Maybe you can dream up some other way to do it, but if there's real evidence that they did it differently, you are just daydreaming.
Moving the rocks, to build a pyramid, with very precise mathematical calculations of trapped energy, angles of sunshine(where the sun shines in to the big pyramid through a trap door once a year), with the very complex tunnels in the pyramid that with all the exploration technology we have in this millennium cannot discover.. and he thinks he is a pharaoh cause he can move a rock.... go get your self a life.
The lunatic is in my head
But here's another disturbing thought. John Anthony West argues that water erosion on the Sphynx indicates that the thing was built before Egypt was an arid country. That's about 10,000 years ago. Of course this runs totally against accepted archaeological thought -- but you still have to wonder if Egyptian civilization isn't a tad older than currently accepted.
That is the title of a book written by a hungarian writer. It raises quite a few question about the great pyramid and tries to give some answers. Interestingly, I have not read the same conclusions in other books.
Ever wonder about the chamber with the 'well' under the pyramid? I think the official theory is that it was supposed to be where the pharaoh would be buried originally. However, a more plausible theory is that it was used to test whether the ground above could support the weight of the pyramid. A pendulum was used to test this, one end was attached to the ceiling and the other was lowered into the well.
Another mystery is the great gallery. In this book the writer assumes it was used as some kind of elevator. There are some interesting markings on either side of the gallery along the walls which a cogwheel can hang on to. Considering the Egyptians did not know the wheel it is quite a bold assumption.
Do not forget that there are some blocks in the pyramid which weigh 70 tons or so. And there is the king's sarcophagus in the king's chamber. It carved from one block of gratine, one of the hardest material on Earth.
Also, there is absolutly no evidence about that a pharaoh was ever buried in the pyramid. Considering all the mysteries, is it really surprising I am more inclined to believe the pyramid was not build by Egyptians?
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
When I first read the headline, I thought it said Canadian Inventor: Pyramids Were Rocketted Into Place. I had an image of an eccentric old man attaching explosive devices to 10 ton bricks, and flying them onto the top of a pyramid structure. What a let down.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Always consider the source and agenda of such claims. It's been my experience that some "experts" latch on to one or two details of a many-faceted civilization and extrapolate it to make the case for a liberal, enlightened, politically-correct utopia.
As they say, the good old days weren't always good. That goes triply so for ancient cultures.
Understand, it's not that things couldn't be done this way, it's just that there isn't any need to invoke curved planks, floats, anti-gravity devices, etc., and there's no evidence of any of these. Building megalithic structures is not as hard as people think it is. Yes, it takes a lot of muscle power, but if you have that (and ancient people did), it's not that big a deal. This is not idle theorizing, either; there are people who actually go out there and try out their theories by building dolmens, giant statues, and the like (something Mr. Raina does not seem to have done). Everybody seems to have this desire to put one over on the establishment, but it's a lot easier to assume that the archaeological establishment is just a big bunch of meanies who put down your theory because it makes them look bad than it is to actually do the research yourself. And somehow these amazing new theories always seem to involve "lost knowledge", which conveniently overlooks the fact that the Egyptians wrote down and otherwise documented a ton of stuff - recipes, spells, contracts - so to assume that a major construction method was completely overlooked seems disingenuous.
The only mystery i see is how many people did they have working on these pyramids? I have read up and people have calculated that a rock needed to be placed every 2 or so minutes. While this might seem impossible but maybe there were say 10 groups of people moving an individual rock into place at the same time. so say it took 20 minutes to move the rock into place, if you have 10 groups doing that at the same pace then it could seem doable. Also since the pyramids were so huge perhaps they had 100 groups of workers moving individual rocks. That means if it took 200 minutes to put a rock in place, with 100 groups it would still be doable. The way i first pictured it was having one group moving one rock at a time every 2 minutes, but if you split it up into more than one groups then it gets more feasable.
C'mon, we all know the Pyramids were built by aliens.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I'm a bit tried of Egyptology and the general fuss about how they made the pyramids. I know it's very impressive that they managed to get the blocks up the river blah blah. Now some deranged old dick comes up with a 'new'theory - that they used "wheels" and it all kicks off again. Really - this time, who cares?
The reason we could not do this today with modern equipment is that we have not designed modern equipment to build large stone pyramids.
It's logical to assume the people who built the pyramids designed tools specifically for this purpose. If we decided to do the same thing today, we'd be able to come up with machines that could build structures which would surpass the size of the current pyramids, and in less time. Throw a few billion dollars at the problem, and it would be solved.
If McDonalds (or MicroSoft or Nike or the government) thought they could make money building these structures, it would happen.
And then someone else could pay him to figure it out.
After all, it's been proven time and time again by people here that all you need is an inking to patent something.
some pharaoh is rolling in his glass display box thinking "why didn't *i* think of that?!"
-barton
West is demonstrably an asshole (just read his web site) but that's neither here nor there. I can't get away from the fact that he has actual physical evidence. It's not a matter of nobody checking it out, it's a matter of the academic establishment not wanting to give up their painfully constructed theories and chronologies. I see lots of criticisms of West, but they all seem to be content just to state that he's just another pyramid crank (God knows there are enough of those) without coming to grips with his evidence.
I have to mention another archaeological asshole, Von Schleiman. Who managed to demonstrate that all established theories about Troy were BS and that it was a real place. Not before seriously damaging the site through inept excavation, alas.
I don't really know that much about archaeology, but I've never been happy with the accepted wisdom that there was nobody on the planet but hunter-gatherers until 10,000 years ago. And I know there are a few archaeologists, some of them with better credentials than West's, who agree.
The 20-30 second/block figure sounds impressive until you consider the potential for parallelization of the construction process. For much of the construction process, the stones could be rolled up a ramp and then distributed to multiple locations on the surface of the developing pyramid. Although each stone would be placed slowly and carefully, multiple teams could set multiple stones.
Perhaps the Egyptians should be credited with Amdahl's Law?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I think i saw a television program on the discovery channel or something a while back where some scientist postulated the same theory. I don't think this guy is on to anything new...
Slashdot's "Science" section -> "Crackpot Science"
A-Bomb
The way the pyramids were built was by pouring the stones. Yes, they mixed something like our concrete and poured it on site. Amazing, huh? They had rock-making technology!
editor's note: Moderators! Is this guy out of his mind?
Isn't there any prior art on this?
I think the point everyone here is forgetting that it takes massive, massive whips to motivate people to try to move the massive stones used to build the pyramids over logs or friction-reducing sand-clay ramps or whatever.
For the record, I know they were officially recorded in the work site records (which are likely better than some cheap-ass contractors around here) as "volunteers" and even allowed to strike when their chewing gum made of gum-arabic, beeswax and honey was not delivered on time.
Ok, so you need gum, and whips.
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Any points for spotting the Red Dwarf quote?
I heard somewhere that the pieces were moulded on the spot. Maybe it was hype, who knows.
I couldn't resist that ...
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