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Pyramid Stones Were Poured, Not Quarried
brian0918 writes "Times Online is reporting that French and American researchers have discovered that the stones on the higher levels of the great pyramids of Egypt were built with concrete. From the article: 'Until recently it was hard for geologists to distinguish between natural limestone and the kind that would have been made by reconstituting liquefied lime.' They found 'traces of a rapid chemical reaction which did not allow natural crystallization. The reaction would be inexplicable if the stones were quarried, but perfectly comprehensible if one accepts that they were cast like concrete.'"
"They found traces of a rapid chemical reaction which did not allow natural crystallization. "
That is what I call concrete evidence!
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
wouldn't the aliens have just created them out of random molecules in the air using some sort of crazy technology?
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How are we supposed to believe that an advanced alien race would still be using something so mundane as concrete?
My dad always used to tell me that when Alexandria was burned, all the publications holding the Roman recipe for concrete went with it. That, he claimed, was why all concrete poured was inferior to the Roman Aqueducts. And why it wasn't until 1948 that the right combination of limestone & other minerals was discovered to be able to resist water and hold that high a level of precision. Cement/concrete are by nature porous surfaces and so often sap water which causes structural problems. The fact that the some of the aqueducts still hold their accuracy within inches of their architectural specifications after 2000 years is nothing to overlook.
If Egyptians (for thousands of years prior to the Romans) had experimented with or refined this process and if an Aristotelean (such as Demetrius of Phaleron) had moved this information to Alexandria, that would explain how the structures like the aqueducts were constructed with such high quality mixtures.
I have one tiny problem with the summary as the article states: While summary uses the word cast: I would like to point out that this is known as forming concrete and not casting concrete. The difference is like the difference between pouring concrete for a foundation of a house and laying brick. Laying brick is casting while pouring concrete (like the article alludes to) is called 'forming.'
This might sound like a small matter but laying brick & forming concrete walls are two entirely different professions.
In all honesty, if you were to ask me to construct a pyramid today--knowing what I know, I would build the core of the pyramid out of laid brick. And then I would, starting from the bottom, form up the angled sides and fill in those areas. If you're wondering why I would take this route, try it with paper. Cut out blocks of paper from a notebook without making marks and try to make a perfect angled edge between them. Pretty difficult. Now try it in three dimensions with 2000 year old tools.
It makes sense that they would have both technologies (like the article states), one quarried for huge bricks and the other formed up ash, salt & lime. It would also explain a lot of technologies the Romans had.
My work here is dung.
Question 2: Is there evidence that the Egyptians used this technology elsewhere? I find it difficult to believe that they would've evolved this kind of technology (concrete) and used it exclusively for the task of pyramid-building.
The pyramids weren't built. They *landed*.
They told those history shows that they lugged those stones up ramps and whatnot!
-Those who know do not say, Those who say do not know
Dr Daniel Jackson knows the truth
In an era before the invention of the wheel, it wouldn't have been any easier to drag a 20-ton concrete mixer truck chassis up the pyramid than to just drag up a 20-ton block of stone.
They're just saying some>/i> of the stones were made this way. Not all of them.
The first time was when a researcher about 10 years ago (give or take 10) claimed they were poured because he found a human hair embedded in one.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Because blocks are the most practical solution?
It isnt really viable with bronze age technology to do large scale in-place casting.
So with blocks, they could be prepared nearby, and when cured be put in place.
The big advantage is not that they dont have to be lifted up, but that they dont have to be fetched from distant quarries.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
It explains all the pottery found around the pyramids. They formed long passing lines to send water to fill the concrete mixing troughs. And they built casts with lumber, also found around the pyramids...it all makes sense now.
Or, aliens from mars mixed the concrete on their spaceships and poured the casts while hovering over each apex...
There's no mention of aggregate, the sand and gravel that cement glues together to make concrete.
I can only imagine archeologist's reactions when our society is kaput.
"The Americans had slaves that carried concrete slabs to form long unending structures. We also have evidence that these were called "free-ways". We think these "free-ways" were in worship to some sort of God and the metal heaps on these "free-ways" offerings for this God."
Good question. The answer to that would be the lack of reinforced concrete. Concrete is a very durable material, but designed to only withstand compression. Because of it's makeup, it's not as durable as stone unless it's been reinforced by something that can handle the tension required to keep it together (like steel rods).
Think of bricks. Yes, you can build a brick out of mud or clay, and it will work find on it's own. But in order to use it to build structures that were strong, they needed to include a material that can handle tension. Hence the ancient world would use straw. The plant fibers would provide enough strength in tension to build brick buildings.
But what of other concrete structures you may ask? True, the Romans did build a number of concrete structures that were quite large (note the Pantheon), but they used varying types of concrete with different density levels. This allowed for better construction. But even then, the foundation needed to be stone.
If the Egyptians knew how to form and pour concrete, why on Earth would they drag huge blocks of limestone and granite around to build the rest of the structure? (Maybe Union rules negotiated by the Lower Nile chapter of the Amalgamated Pyramid Craftsmen?) Why not make the whole structure out of concrete? And where are the form marks -- the marks from the boards or whatever that were used to make the form for each block? Granted they'd probably be weathered off from the exposed surfaces, but they should still be there on protected surfaces.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I've heard this theory before but from what I know the mix they are talking about it isn't nearly as strong as regular limestone. The slower crytalization pattern of natural limestone gives it the strength. I question that artifical limestone would be strong enough for even the top layers of a structure that big. Pure limestone isn't concrete. They aren't talking about concrete, that would be obvious if used, they are talking about reclaimed limestone. There are a lot of problems with that theory. Not the least of which is how would the eygptians make that much lime for the stone? You have to heat the lime dust to a very high temperature to break the chemical bonds. It wouldn't be a small undertaking on it's own and would take huge amounts of energy, charcoal essentially. Wood was scarce. There is no other evidence that they made lime concrete so I have serious doubts.
For once I actually RTFA. The article claims that the rocks used at the top of the pyramids react differently than rocks used at the bottom of the pyramids when poked with some new fangled methodology. I'm actually surprised that it's possible to make limestone that is so similar to naturally formed rock that it took until 2006 for this to be figured out.
The majority of the pyramid material was still quarried.
Go look at a concrete highway sometime, and check whether the concrete is continuous (like asphalt*) or whether it has regular seams. There's a reason for the seams: namely, that concrete expands and contracts with temperature. If we poured roads as once continuous chunk they'd expand in the heat and buckle, or contract in the cold and crack. The seams are there to relieve the temperature-induced strain.
Now, consider the fact that the Egyptions lived in the middle of the desert. One particular feature of such a climate is that there are wide extremes of temperature: it gets really hot during the day, and really cold at night. Once you realize that the Egyptions probably had prior experience with the materials before trying to build the biggest structure in the world out of them, you might expect that they'd realize the same thing current civil engineers do, and put in releases to prevent cracking. In 3D, this would mean pouring the concrete in blocks.
(*note: asphalt can be laid in continuous strips because it's much less brittle than concrete, at least at normal service temperatures.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Have you ever noticed that sidewalks are divided into little squares? I'm no expert, so there may be lots of reasons for it I haven't thought of, and it may not be the same thing at all. However, it seems to me it might be easier to get concrete to dry in little blocks than in one huge pyramid a hundred feet tall. Also, with heat/moisture, these things swell and shrink, and it's good to have a division so they won't crack and fall apart.
I always thought that the mortar used was more amazing than the blocks themselves. I had this book named the great pyramid decoded which explained that there were blocks held together with sheets of mortar that were in some places as thin as a sheet of aluminum foil. I have read elsewhere on the web that the chemical composition of the mortar is known but that it can't be reproduced today. I may be easily fascinated by this stuff, and there may be an better mortar now, but I just think that is really cool.
Yes. It goes like this:
Bird's eye bird's eye, dancing guy, two chicks looking at each other, bird's eye, chicks again, that dog faced god looking to the heavens, some women throwing wheat into the air, guys picking ground, bird's eye, god of something, mound of cement.
There you go!
As a student at Drexel, I have had the privilege of hearing about this research firsthand - it is more than convincing. There is no doubt in my mind that he is 100% correct. For those of you in doubt - he is not claiming that all stones were "cast" or "molded" into places. Only the ones at the top and on the outside of most of the "newer" pyramids. The older pyramids do not use this technology. It is believed the egyptians discovered this technology as they were building and their pyramids became more sofisticated as a result. You can just look at the pictures:
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The Bent Pyramid (an older pyramid), its obvious blocks put into place from a quarry up until where it bends.
http://www.richard-seaman.com/Travel/Egypt/Dahshu
Now, look inside the Red Pyramid (a newer pyramid), tell me they carved 26 million bricks with such perfect precision. They carved Limestone, using copper tools (ahem, softer than limestone), so perfectly together that you can't even fit a playing card between them? I don't think so.
http://www.richard-seaman.com/Travel/Egypt/Dahshu
This article can also be found on the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/science/01pyram
In all honesty, if you were to ask me to construct a pyramid today--knowing what I know, I would build the core of the pyramid out of laid brick.
A lot of the later pyramids actually were built with a core of laid brick, and cased in stone. These didn't hold up as well as the older, all stone pyramids, like the Great Pyramid, because the bricks were made out of mud and eventually turned to dust. Today, a lot of the brick pyramids basically resemble mounds of dirt and rock, with the original pyramid shape just barely distinguishable.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
...the archaeologists were trying to cement their relationship with the aliens, who were stealing all the limelight.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A book I have - published back in 1988 proposed the same idea. It's a good read. Here's the Amazon link if anyone wants to try and pick up a copy:
The Pryamids
"Nothing is so important that you cannot make fun of it." -Clarke
is building his own Stonehege - BY HAND, ALONE.
http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/
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I have a lot of trouble believing these findings. It's well known that the ancient Egyptians were a very 'slow on the uptake' sort of people. This is reasonably apparent with their crazy style of writing. The Egyptians had some notion that rhyming appeased the gods or something to that effect. So naturally all their writings rhymed. Take this classic example: 'Man with a snake, boat on a lake. Bird in the sky, weird curly eye'. If you could say the Egyptians contributed ANYTHING to modern society that would have to be rhyming. Before the Egyptians came along no society had developed an actual working rhyming system. The ancient Greeks came closest. Homer's Odyssey was the closest the Greeks ever came to an actual rhyming system, though, in its native Latin the Odyssey will cause a sane man to go mad.
One might wonder what this has to do with the ancient Egyptians capacity to mix concrete. Well it has a LOT to do with it. You have to remember the ancient Egyptians were very keen on rhyming. The entire mummification process rhymed, as well as all the names of all the pharaohs. So it's only logical that all their building materials should rhyme as well. Concrete doesn't rhyme with anything. Therefore the ancient Egyptians didn't use it.
This if you will, is the cornerstone of Egyptology.
I don't own a snook, and if I did I wouldn't leave it cocked.
the stones on the higher levels of the great pyramids of Egypt were built with concrete
Whoa, that's heavy!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
The limestones they are talking about used to cover the pyramid to give it flat sides, and the only remains left at Giza can be seen at the very top of the middle pyramid in this photo. (FWIW, this is the pyramid of Khafre (Chepren) - next the the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops), which has had all of its limestone block cladding removed.)
The third large pyramid at Giza (Menkare/Mycerinus, foreground in the group photo) was intended to be covered in granite cladding. ed
Ding, Ding, Ding. Give that man a cigar.
You can't just pour something the size of the pyramids and expect to have it set in any reasonable time frame.
Ever see movies of the building of the Hoover dam? It was done in a lot of small blocks, and for a very good reason:
"The Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would have gotten so hot that it would have taken 125 years for the concrete to cool to ambient temperatures. The resulting stresses would have caused the dam to crack and crumble"
Also, the bronze technology of the time was more advanced than anything known to Victorian civilization - Burton writes about the bronze chisel (found inside a pyramid or temple, I forget) that was harder than wrought iron when he's discussing the switch from bronze weapons to iron weapons in The Book of the Sword.
We know that the ancient Egyptians had bronze tools hard enough to work limestone. We have at least one example.
To give credit, the name I believe to be first associated with this theory is Joseph Davidovits. He's been claiming poured ("geopolymerized") pyramids for a long time.
Sandy, dry soil, lower than the surface of the river, yet mysteriously above the water table. I'm not buying it.
"This is but one way to harness water power in the absence of natural elevation. There are others"
There are various ways to use water to store energy (by pumping it up a hill/tower), but without a difference in elevation, water doesn't have any energy. But if you're going to pump water up, why not just pull stone up, and skip the inefficiencies? I'm having a hard time envisioning anything simpler that a whole bunch of guys pulling ropes and pushing levers. And there's quite a bit of evidence that a huge number of guys were present, so I'm not feeling much need to look for exotic explanations whereby they were just watching some amazing mechanism do the work.
They killed an evil space-alien named Jesus who still threatens this planet.
That, and running water.
Man, you really need that seminar!
There's some more info here, about 15% down the page.
Davidovits referred to the concrete as "geopolymeric", which is surely what inspired the title to the editor. As far as I remember, his approach was still far from Von-Danikenesque and deserved serious consideration.
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If they used concrete, they wouldn't have needed all the slaves. The head guy would have given the contract to his brother-in-law, who then got 40 of his friends (who take turns taking breaks) to do all the concrete work. Budget for a "refresh" every 10 years or so due to cracks. See...couldn't have happened.
is building his own Cathedral - with RECYCLED materials and tools, ALONE
3 %ADnez
3 /Cathedral_of_Justo_Gallego.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2
exp(i*pi)+1=0
Concrete is not really THAT different from technology we knew they had: plastering.
The pyramids were originally covered in a limestone plaster veneer which would have given them smooth sides rather than the jaggies we know today. It can still be seen on small areas on some pyramids but most of that smooth plaster layer has been eroded over time by the sand and wind and rain. Or low-res game graphics. Take your pick.
The point is that the plaster was installed using the exact same set of ingredients, tools and technologies that could also have been used to produce the concrete. If they knew how to do one, they might know how to do the other.
Modern analogy: we know how to build Intel PCs. Using many of the same parts, you can build an AMD PC. That's sort of the difference between plaster and concrete. Kinda.
Either way, there's not a quantum jump from one to the other.
Kudos to the builders for coming up with a concrete mix that has managed to fool scientists for hundreds of years. To some future civilization, our modern freeway interchanges will look like water-eroded structures or something created by aliens.
Sig for hire.
OK, I give up my moderation rights to share with you a 2002 video (in French) about an experiment on the "egyptian" concrete casting.
Enjoy.
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