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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.
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
Well, this method comes from physicists. So one can assume that whatever they used, it was perfectly spherical.
Problem solved.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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!
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?
Yeah, I guess I should've just shut up and waited for others to comment.
For most blocks, they just strapped four quarter-circle cradles around the stone and rolled them up earthen ramps using ropes. The remains of the ramps still exist around some pyramids, and some original cradles are on display in the Cairo museum. Pretty much considered solved by the archeologists; it's just armchair physicists who want to invent problems and propose new solutions.
Assume a pyramid worker is cow with a perfectly spherical body.....
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.
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:
You were expecting medium.com to know the difference between a polygon and a polyhedron?
And for the plebs who still don't know what we're talking about:
Dodecagon Dodecahederon
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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?
How about the edges of the stone blocks that would have rotated about 500 times on their way to the pyramid? There should be systematic chipping on the edges of all of the blocks if this was used. Also, this method of movement looks suspiciously like a wheel, which Egypt did not get until many centuries after the great pyramids were constructed. In a pre-wheel culture this mode of transport might not be at all evident.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Earliest Egyptian pyramid 2630 BCE. Earliest verified vehicular use of wheel is Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE and Egypt developed the spoked wheel around 2000 BCE. These are just records, it's rather obvious the wheel goes back much further. So yes, the Egyptians had the wheel when the pyramids were built. Did they use them for that? Probably not, due to weight. We *know* they used sledges, so why come up with more complicated methods based solely on supposition?