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How the Ancient Egyptians (Should Have) Built the Pyramids
KentuckyFC writes The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is constructed from 2.4 million limestone blocks, most about 2.5 tonnes but some weighing in at up to 80 tonnes, mostly sourced from local limestone quarries. That raises a famous question. How did the ancient Egyptians move these huge blocks into place? There is no shortage of theories but now a team of physicists has come up with another that is remarkably simple--convert the square cross section of the blocks into dodecadrons making them easy to roll. The team has tested the idea on a 30 kg scaled block the shape of a square prism. They modified the square cross-section by strapping three wooden rods to each long face, creating a dodecahedral profile. Finally, they attached a rope to the top of the block and measured the force necessary to set it rolling. The team say a full-sized block could be modified with poles the size of ships masts and that a work crew of around 50 men could move a block with a mass of 2.5 tonnes at the speed of 0.5 metres per second. The result suggests that this kind of block modification is a serious contender for the method the Egyptians actually used to construct the pyramids, say the researchers.
While the science may not be settled, the "drag on sled while someone wets the sand" method is corroborated with available records:
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-...
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014...
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
This is very interesting, and maybe that's good enough. But isn't there some evidence of what method they might have used? Wood fragments? Tracks? Tools?
I'm asking this as a completely naive onlooker. I'm sure there is research on this spanning hundreds of years; anyone want to provide a quick summary?
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~jas...
using wooden 'cradles' shaped like circle segments, 'wrapped' around each end of the block making them a lot easier to roll than the proposition in this article.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Their 'rolling' method is going to damage the corners of the blocks, and the surface of the path it rolls on.
Now, it's possible that the blocks were finished on site, and so they could use this trick to move the blocks from the quary to the worksite ... but it shouldn't be used to move finished blocks into their final location.
(and then you've got to roll all of the logs back to the quary ... assuming they're strong enough to survive this process ... which probably isn't as much work as what's needed for moving the stones, but it cuts into your energy savings ... as does transporting larger stones so you can finish them once they're at the worksite)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Not so Nice:Whips and violence
Some of the confusion seems to come from an unwillingness to accept that humans can be very self absorbed and mean. While some form of simple machinery must have been used, the basic resource for the pyramids was an expendable supply of labor. People tend to accept harder or more dangerous work if that is the life they know. We saw that recently in coal mining disaster where many people died because the owners did not have a practice of clearing the mine between shift changes. It increases profits and make coal cheaper, but is a huge risk to the workers. Raising the pyramids was probably not different.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
They where moved by irrigation.
the flats around the pyramids are perfectly flat. And where flooded with water when the Nile was at a yearly peak.
The water was trapped inside. The fence to keep the water inside is still standing
A corridor in the middle towards the pyramid was build and had dams to move the ships upward
The signs of the dam plates are still there in the corridors
The pyramid itself was a water basin, with the outside walls keeping the water inside
That's why they are all perfectly level
The ships moved the bricks in and lowered them to fill the pyramid. as a result the water rises.
However, water evaporates, and the movement of the ships upwards needs a water displacement at least equal to the mass moved up
So the ancient egyptians left clues everywhere to explain how they did it: everywhere, in the tombs in the pyramids, and even in New Kingdom in the Valley of the Kings, they drew how they accomplished it: by carrying buckets of water on their head.
That's how they build the pyramids; by putting water in the top of the pyramid, till all the ships with the stones where there.
Now, was that so hard to figure out? Stupid archeologists!
+12 stonemasonry?
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.
Saw a television documentary where they showed some blocks that seemed to have been poured like concrete, complete with marks of wooden crating. See http://www.visual--media.com/w... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
The Egyptians did not move those blocks into place. They did like those companies we know and admire, they made plans and outsourced the backbreaking work to unscrupulous partners in countries where labor is cheap and workers safety is not a priority. And then pretended they were not aware of the abysmal work conditions in the pyramid factories.
I'm pretty sure that if someone was to raise the pyramid there would be a Made in China label at the bottom.
lucm, indeed.
Surely the physicists should have just made their grad students move them?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Isn't this suggestion for a design modification just a little late?
I haven't spent any time looking into it, but I wonder if the giant blocks are man-made bricks, and if they made the bricks in place. They'd just need to bring buckets of sand, water and whatever else is needed to form the brick, and then move onto the next one. By the time you work your way around, the other bricks may have dried enough to build a brick on top.
Instead of using men's force, the Egyptians *should* have invented the steam machine, then made railroads, steam powered convoys and steam powered cranes. That would be the way to do it all!
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
'nuff said.
So far I've heard "dodecadron", "dodecahedral", "dodecahedrons", et al.
The profile is a DODECAGON!
Anyone remember that guy who was moving Stonehenge size concrete blocks around his back yard and erecting them in place, single-handedly? To stand them upright he would fill the pit with loose sand and slope one side of the pit, then he kept dumping water in. The mud was soft enough to be compressed and ejected from the pit as the stone slowly sank into place.
If you counter-balance the blocks you can move them fairly easily with just a few people. Or put them on a sled and use logs to roll them. Or flood the basin using Nile flood water and float them into place.
It doesn't take super-geniuses or fancy technology, it just takes dedication and some manpower.
These dumb "How did the Egyptians do it?!?!?!" stories are highly annoying. They did it first and foremost by deciding they were going to do it, trying and failing several times, then perfecting their techniques. Same damn way we got to the moon. The hardest part is step 1.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
It seems to me that if they used a bigger log in the center the profile would have more sides, making it easier to roll. I still wouldn't want to be the guy who pushes it up the side of the pyramid though.
That raises a famous question.
No it bloody doesn't, it raises a...
Oh, wait. Carry on.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I see two possible flaws in this theory.
First, if the attached rods are wood, wouldn't there be a limit to how much the block could weigh before crushing the rods?
If the resulting dodecagon utilizes the block's original four edges among its vertices, wouldn't they suffer some damage while being rolled? If those edges are capped in some way to protect them, we inevitably return to #1 regarding the edge caps.
They are not "dodecadrons", nor are they dodecahedral. They have a cross-section which is a dodecagon.
Well, this method comes from physicists.
Clearly string theorists since, according to the summary, it creates a "dodecadron" cross-section. So having a cross-section somewhere between a 2D dodecagon and a 3D dodecahedron it clearly relies on converting the block into some multi-dimensional object with a strangely dimensioned cross-section.
Rolling the stones as huge cylinders would've been cool but they used water to wet the sand, which reduced friction. There's even some hieroglyphs that show it being done. Was big news back in the spring. See:
We should be using that on our roads instead of whatever stuff we are using now.
Instead of saying "raises the question", the editors should have substituted the more accepted form, "begs the question".
I was confused what the sentence meant at first until I realized what they were trying to say.
"The [Hydraulic Cranes] result suggests that this kind of [equipment] is a serious contender for the method the Egyptians actually used to construct the pyramids, say [any damned person with time on their hands and a pet theory]."
They could use more poles to create a full circle and avoid damaging the edges of the block so that it never touches the ground, but lifting the rocks up to the top of the pyramid seems like a lot of work too.
It is a lot of work no matter how you cut it. The question really is, why on Earth did they invest so much resources, time and effort to build these massive pyramids which appear to have no real utility or benefit beyond the narcissism of the kings.
Nice theory, but I don't see any Pyramids in Ferguson.
Interesting intellectual execise for these folks, but Occam's Razor suggests the sled/water bucket/rows of slaves on ropes behind whips is far more likely.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
The stones I saw in the Great Pyramids that looked like they came from the same area, were in the same orientation and I expect rolling them would leave about half of them upside down from their neighbours.
I think most archeologist have incorrectly lumped Engineers in with Scribes.
I think the great Pyramids were built on their North and West sides and I think the different chambers were in the center at different stages of construction. If also solves the problems that you don't know how long you have to build a pyramid if it needs to be that shape for your ritual and there needs to be a chamber in the middle and bigger is better.
Herodotus said they used wood devices to lift the stones. I've seen pressure points from logs under the edges of the casing stones on the Red Pyramid but the internal and casing stones were done differently than the core stones. Wood has been rare in that area for very long so anything that wasn't needed anymore was firewood.
The boat they found buried has deep cuts on the deck as if someone had loaded up many several ton stone blocks on its deck. The sizes of the stones seems to decrease at height and I'm not sure how the 2.5 ton average came from and while it is everywhere, I question it. I don't think the casing stones were ever finished because if they were, there would be plenty of buildings in Cairo that had angled cuts in their stone work and I don't think any have been found.
I still don't think they later ones were ever intended for burial but just part of the process resurrection so if they Pharaoh didn't walk out, he wasn't God they were looking for and they tried again with the next one
The other key aspect that I wonder about is the fact that the Coptic religion managed to spread through out Egypt with minimal major political problems or wars which means the new religion was so close to the old one that it didn't matter or is was so radically different it blind sided an entire population.
They just lifted them into place. The big ones might have taken two to four people. If you hadn't noticed that each generation has gotten weaker, lazier, and more morally depraved than the last, ask your parents and/or grandparents -- reserve the afternoon. Thus, by extension, back in ancient times, people had strength, stamina, and willpower that we attribute only to supernatural beings today.
If their method requires 50 people to move a 2.5 ton stone block at .5 meters per second, why not just use some poles and yokes and just have the 50 men pick up and carry the stone at twice that speed? That's 50 kilograms each. Heavy, sure, but not more than a worker can carry. Obviously the rarer, heavier stones would require other techniques anyway.
Could you demostate this with an 80 ton block? I think the vedio would go viral.
2.5 ton with 50 people means 50kg per person. Given proper poles/etc, they could as well carry this block... not neccesarily nice work, but make it 100 people, add few whips and you have something working in long run.
Show me what combo of wood, rope, rock, water, etc that can roll a riggin 180 ton stone. (screw Egypt)
All that website produces is clickbait. Once you click, mission accomplished. How those stones actually got moved? Maybe next time.
Yet another addition to the rationality of changing to a dozenal base. :sigh: not that it shall happen. (Why didn't those lovely French metricians standardise on base 12???
The Great Pyramid of Giza of built over 4000 years ago.
We have never built a Pyramid anywhere near that scale, yet, we can tell those people 4000 years ago how to do it better.
Next we'll be telling Noah, how to increase living space on his boat by using carbon fibre.
Wait a few thousand years and use giant cranes... duh!
Use lots of smaller poles and make it really roll like a cylinder.
Roll them on sleds on rollers greased with pig fat. It's been tested and the pig fat lubricates really well.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
So hypothetically if we didn't have all this modern machinery.....is something like this patentable?
Seems much easier then the other methods floating around. Its dead simple... and seems obvious after the fact... but there've been so many ideas floating around (sleds, digging, mud, etc etc) on how to do it so it isn't "obvious to a person skilled in the art".
Is something so simple patentable? It's one of those solutions that is simple when you know how it's done... like brain teasers.
They're reinventing the wheel. A better solution is to use an inverted hyperbolic cosine catenary curve.