It’s fair to imagine the challenges a building team would face 2k plus years ago.
Like in this example, building levers that are strong enough to lift the load. I bet they broke a bunch of stuff.
But eventually they figured it out, via trial and error. Levers, ramps, etc. They probably couldn’t describe why those things were inherently the best way, but more approached from the “we tried 9 other ways and they suck. This is the best way.”
Next, the phrase “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is relevant here, but in a backwards way.
Since we struggle to imagine what it would take for an ancient society to master the techniques to build these things, we therefore begin to grasp for unrealistic conclusions (magic…read…aliens).
Same goes for Europeans building cathedrals and stuff, the trick is the history, the methods and the results were more documented and understood.
There are some racism concerns that I think go beyond and around what I’ve discussed, which is more abstract. I’m not discounting the other topics, just not covering them here.
Egyptians didn’t just decide “hey, let’s build a pyramid”. Mastabas were first, the shape of a Pyramid evolved later.
Not to mention that there’s a few faulty pyramids (e.g. Bent Pyramid which were finished quickly or all together abandoned before completion.
Merer forgot to mention aliens in his diary too.
But hey, aliens did it. They couldn’t just land on Earth. Their ships were designed to land on a Pyramid because that’s how intelligent race would build their spaceships. Don’t question it, just trust the specialists (who wrote books!).
Anyway, for anyone interested in Ancient Egypt, the best thing out there (I think) are Bob Briers lectures also available on Audible.
Don’t know why you replied this to me, but cool links.
I never suggested there’s any validity in the alien-pyramid thing, only described how it could have entered the discussion in the first place.
(“We don’t know what they did, seems hard even for us, must have been magic”. Pathway)
Not advocating anything, not arguing anything, no tinfoil on my frog’s heads, they live naturally.
Pretty sure they were just agreeing with you. It’s like an argument you imagine in the shower, but co-op mode.
Just covering my ass, cause Lemmy
The bent pyramid may not have been faulty, but instead had a different internal layout because of it’s use in cult worship rather than only burial.
Great video from History for Granite archeologist on the subject.
I like the theories about them being ancient power stations or radio devices, using the water channels and gold cap stone to create enough pd to be useful in occult practices. It doesn’t have to be aliens that helped make them but I think there’s something the really resonates with the idea of aliens coming down and teaching ancient people how to make super complex and beautiful machines to synthesize small amounts of potent narcotics. Like none of the other reasons aliens would come make much sense but a tiktokable prank like that really does.
Imagine how fascinating it would be if we find loads of old alien stuff on Mars with like little model pyramids and pictures of them with the pharaoh. Or if when we meet aliens and have first contact they got us up with galactic tiktok and people are reposting all the old videos of pranks aliens have pulled on earth over the years.
Yeah they were probably just the biggest coolest looking thing that knew how to make so everyone wanted one, yeah they were probably just dragging rocks up sandy inclones and using water filled counter weights… but we don’t know aliens weren’t there so I’m going to enjoy being open to that possibility.
One thing is for sure: you can’t leverage those stones with a primed FJ 1x6 from Lowe’s. I’ll bet they went through quite a few of those!
Lowe’s definitely made lots of USD getting the pharaohs to think the pyramids were a good idea
Now what were you thinking about a backsplash here?
But imagine the size of the lever. And how would they haul it on top of the pyramid? Wouldn’t we have found traces of a 500m long lever ?
you mean like they lifted the rock from the ground , all the way up in one trip?
sounds good enough for me. I bet they didn’t, they had the aliens lower it with antigravity technology
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The constant barrage of Joe Rogan clips of idiots claming it was impossible to move these huge stones over those distances with the tech at the time was what drove me to disable YouTube shorts.
The creation of the feature is what made me disable shorts. If I wanted vine then I’d go back to 2013.
Hey take that back. Vine and 2013 were marvellous times
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I think they started at the top and then built down
they were just trying to find the upper block limit after hitting bedrock
Nobody has so far given you a serious answer, so:
Cutting - They only had IIRC bronze, which is not enough on its own to cut through the granite. However using sand to add friction makes it cut significant faster/easier.
Moving miles - Boats are incredibly capable of carrying heavy loads with minimal energy expenditure to move said boat. Using logs and levers also goes far.
Getting to the too of the pyramid, that’s a little more of a mystery. But there is evidence they included ramps within the structure as they built the bigger ones as they went. And IIRC the smaller ones had pulley systems going through the center.
It doesn’t require fancy tech, just of patience and application of basic physics.
Here is a guy using some of the basic movement techniques in his backyard with multi ton stones:
If you take the heaviest stone and divide it by a reasonable weight to walk long distances- say 20lbs, you find you need a few thousand people to carry one stone. You need several thousand ropes for each worker, but again each rope only needs to lift 20 lbs of the whole.
Modern estimates put the number of workers at 10,000. So they just had to carry them.
It’s no wonder they didn’t document it. Lift stone and walk. What’s the big deal?
Slavery: It get shits done.
Moving material gets done via cart, or rolling on top of logs. I had heard various theories for how they got the big bricks up, from rolling up a dirt pile (put into place by, you guessed it.) to building a waterproof chute with the bricks in it on a raft, and just filling the chute with water to make the raft go up.
The pyramids were not built by slaves.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/great-pyramid-tombs-slaves-egypt
The masonry had to have been done by professionals. The blocks fit together with such precision. Even today it would be an architectural feat to be able to cut and place 15+ ton blocks with millimeters-thick tolerances.
Also, ramps.
Also, boats!
Were block and tackles a thing in that time too?
The Greek historian Herodotus instead depicts Khufu as a heretic and cruel tyrant. In his literary work Historiae, Book II, chapter 124–126, he writes: "As long as Rhámpsinîtos was king, as they told me, there was nothing but orderly rule in Egypt, and the land prospered greatly. But after him Khéops became king over them and brought them to every kind of suffering: He closed all the temples; after this he kept the priests from sacrificing there and then he forced all the Egyptians to work for him. So some were ordered to draw stones from the stone quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, and others he forced to receive the stones after they had been carried over the river in boats, and to draw them to those called the Libyan mountains. And they worked by 100,000 men at a time, for each three months continually. Of this oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not much less, as it appears to me, than the pyramid. For the length of it is 5 furlongs and the breadth 10 fathoms and the height, where it is highest, 8 fathoms, and it is made of polished stone and has figures carved upon it. For this, they said, 10 years were spent, and for the underground chambers on the hill upon which the pyramids stand, which he caused to be made as sepulchral chambers for himself in an island, having conducted thither a channel from the Nile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khufu
Among the items recently found were hundreds of fragments of papyri. Some of these were inked with records that were the logbooks of a group of some 40 workers who were crew on a boat during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu. They record the transport of limestone blocks along the Nile River and then through a series of water-filled basins, using terms such as “Khufu’s Lake”. At the base of the pyramids, workers unloaded the rock to cover the outer layer of the Great Pyramid, then, the boat crew would head back to a quarry for another load of rock.
https://roseannechambers.com/ancient-boats-and-enormous-blocks/
I am not sure they found any boats other than the funerary ones, but they seem pretty comparable.
This is very interesting but he is asking about pulley systems. A block and tackle is a pulley system that gives a mechanical advantage in lifting something.
“Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world,”
But we all know the lever was invented by Jayzus Christ in America when Washington and Lincoln were reading the Bible and praying together!
Amen.
There’s a whole chapter on levers called Leviticus
A couple years ago my chemistry teacher told my class that the Egyptians had really advanced technology (technology even more advanced than our own) thousands of years ago but it all got lost because they started a nuclear war
Edit: she told us that the evidence was that there were smartphone paintings
Sounds like he was sneaking sniffs in the flammable cabinet a little too often.
I do really enjoy the theory that the great pyramids are actually industrial reactant chambers.
Pfff I’m sorry but no, it was the cats.
You see cats have powers similar to Telekinesis. Why do you think they choose rivers surrounded by deserts to start the first civilizations. Sandboxes everywhere they please.
But one dark day the Faraó Ramses forgot to refil the food pile because and I quote “but it still had food from yesterday”.
This one mistake doomed humanity to the eternal silence treatment.
(and that’s why his tomb sucked, his was the first that humans actually had to build)
She must go to some good parties.
Actually I was listening to a podcast that explains this. They didn’t have levers yet. They did have other devices but no lever.
But others have levers
“Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world. ”
- Archimedes
Friendly reminder the Mayans had a highway
I know how they’re built because I watch Witual. Internal ramp theory babeeee!
Ancient alien theory is extremely racist and I am shocked people don’t reject it on those grounds alone.
Top text, they built it
Bottom text, aliens built it
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Fig. 1
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Egyptians were aliens
Slave aliens built the pyramids, noted
Nope
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Now find sticks or stick assembly strong enough to lift a few tones of stone without breaking at the rotation center
Stick assembly is the key thing.
You’re not going to find a thread strong enough to pull a few tonnes of stone, but you can easily pull it with a large number of ropes pulled by a few hundred people.
Similarly, a single 8x8 beam as a lever arm would just snap, but a dozen 8x8 beams as lever arms for a dozen levers probably wouldn’t.
I’m not saying those are the exact techniques that were used to build the pyramids, but they demonstrate that massive stones can be easily lifted and accurately placed using only “primitive” resources and leverage.
There is no guarantee that the lever would break in any position as particular as the pivot point.
