Canadian Inventor: Pyramids Were Rocked Into Place 117
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."
The Reason for the Mystery (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The Reason for the Mystery (Score:3, Insightful)
Until you look under the rocks and find out that there is a human corpse under each and every one of them... They pyramids were just a fancified death machine.
Re:Summary of Article. (Score:4, Insightful)
I also think that many people (and judging by many of the responses on this forum so far) are too quick to dismiss the ideas that come from people not in academia. We all need to keep an open mind to ideas; after all, Einstein was once just a lowly patent clerk. And sometimes it takes a "hick" with a lifetime of rock moving experience to come up with a clever solution that a bunch of bookworms might otherwise never think of.
Re:Summary of Article. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyways, to clarify, I meant that rolling the stones up the ramp might be easier than dragging them up, or even moving them up over log rollers.
And being a 'bookworm' myself, I didn't mean it in a derogatory way. Just that sometimes there really are simple solutions that elude even the most knowledgeable thinkers.
Re:What if it Was Simpler Than That? (Score:2, Insightful)
But thank you for playing.
Re:pyramids built with slave labour? (Score:2, Insightful)
that and they were in the service of thier gods.
Confusing hypothesis with evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:The mystery of the great pyramid (Score:2, Insightful)
Everything you wrote was pretty good up until the last scentence. Who do you think built it then?
The people back then weren't stupid. In fact, they were as smart as we. Just because we can't figure out exactly how something was made, doesn't mean it couldn't be made.
Don't underestimate a firm comittment to do something, coupled with tens of thousands of people to do the hard work.
Re:Summary of Article. (Score:3, Insightful)
I can envision a system of gates, not unlike locks and dams, to catch a runaway stone. But I also think that those would probably work better on a square-edged stone.
As for Einstein, you're neglecting to mention that he was a patent clerk *with a Ph.D. in physics.* He wasn't some random guy who stumble across relativity, he was a well-trained scientist who had difficulty finding a job (or at least, one he liked) in academia.
Re:Summary of Article. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not hard. Imagine you have a few guys with ropes pulling the stone itself. You could then have a couple more guys with ropes connected to a wedge that sits behind the stone, constantly moving right behind it so that a stop for any reason would immediately rest on the wedge.
Re:Summary of Article. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's when an "inventor" announced this last time I heard it.
I recall it was an interesting article. He developed the technique to remove blocks from his quarry and thought "this is so easy someone else must have invented it first." So he did some research, then did some more research, and finally found wooden rockers just like the ones he built were discovered in the pyramid (they were labeled "cradles".)
He then duplicated these wooden rockers, quarried some blocks to replicate the size of the blocks used in the pyramids, and had a dozen middle-aged out-of-shape men hauling these several ton blocks up ramps from his quarry to prove his point.
That was 1980. It's quite possible that Mr. Raina dug up an ancient copy of that OMNI magazine, instead of pyramid artifacts. This isn't even archaeological news for nerds any more!
Re:Summary of Article. (Score:3, Insightful)
To your ramp theories, consider the pyramid construction in a spiral fashion. You wouldn't have a single 4800 foot ramp leading up the side, but you'd have 48 ramps each 50 feet long, raising the stones ten feet at a time (yes, this is a 20% grade, keep reading.)
The base would be laid square, with a ramp at a corner. Then the second course would be laid in the middle, leaving a working path around the edge. At the far end of this circumferential path around the top of the first level (at the end of the fourth side) you would erect another ramp leading inward up to the top of the second level. Repeat as needed till you get to the pinnacle.
Completing the pyramid would be a matter of filling in the top path, then destroying the ramp leading to it and filling in the next level. Repeat as needed until you're standing on the ground.
The only hard part is placing the very last block on each layer (the ones that need to go on top of where the ramps are. They require dead lifting. But now, you're only talking one or two stones per level, and you can muster additional help at these times.
This isn't the most efficient ramp system: every stone must travel all the way around the pyramid on every course. But it makes each ramp small and independent and therefore manageable. Ropes wearing thin on the 3rd level ramp? Replace them. The workers never have to haul a stone up more than one level at a time, and therefore they are fresh, and don't risk dropping one all the way down the length of the ramp.
It also scales: if you have more workers than space, you can double production speed by having two ramps on opposite corners. When completion time comes around, one of the ramps is closed and the level filled in with stones brought from the remaining ramp, and only a single corner is left to deadlift. They maybe even quadrupled production by having ramps on each of the four corners, although I haven't given enough thought to the space to figure out if that's even a possible arrangement of the ramps at the corners. I'm pretty sure it would work at the lower levels where there would have been lots of space available, but probably became less cost effective the nearer they got to the pinnacle.
See my earlier post [slashdot.org] for a description of how to easily raise one encircled block up one ramp at a time using a tethered rope and using the encircled block as a simple pulley. With this very simple method, raising a 2-ton (4000 pound) block up a 20% grade for 50 feet would take 400 pounds of pull on the rope over 100 feet. 400 pounds is not a lot for a small team of workers to pull. (Not that I'd want to do it as my day job, but it's certainly achievable.) And as each level approached completion, the ramps would be shortened and the inclines raised steeper. Now for that 40% grade you have to pull 800 pounds. Just double the number of workers and there you go. You even have extra rope for them to all hang on to because you shortened the ramp!