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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."
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; }
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.
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!"
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.
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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.
Or how about the possibility that the pyramids are not gargantuan but are merely very close up?
How come nobody every posits that theory indeed.
demi
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.
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
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.
Considering that a major component of the Egyptian army was 'chariots' - that is quite a bold statement.
Heh. He must have been thinking of the Incas. The Incas, though, DID know the wheel (Inca children's toys found with wheels)-- they just didn't have much use for it in the Andes.
What's really funny about his "Egyptians did not know the wheel" comment is that they used a wheel to measure out the planned base of the pyramids, i.e. their pyramid is 100 units high and the base is 100 rotations of a 1-unit-in-diameter wheel in length. This is the source of all the rabid mis-theories about the pyramids having pi encoded into their dimensions even though the ancient Egyptians didn't use mathematics complex enough to calculate pi. It's not mystical crap-- they just used a wheel to measure! Wheels have pi built in!
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.