Canadian Inventor: Pyramids Were Rocked Into Place

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."

Re:Summary of Article.

[greenhide]

During a Passover seder (how apropos!) I discussed the building of the pyramids with a professor who specialized in ancient civilizations of the middle east. He said that it's very obvious that they built ramps out of a kind of clay/sand mixture. There's even a name for this kind of mixture, although it escapes my mind. He said that it was scattered all around the pyramids and was easy to find.

As far as he was concerned, case closed.

This guy, at best, has explained how the rocks might have been brought to the pyramid's base.

What if it Was Simpler Than That?

[sipy]

Every theory for decades concerning the building of the pyramids assumes that there was enough wood available at the time to build structures, ramps, cranes (of sorts), and - now, rocking devices - to support/move/position/sculpt massive-ton rocks.

Why not apply Ockham's razor to the problem? Why couldn't the Egyptians just have created the world's first "concrete mix"?

How hard would it have been? Pound a few rocks to get powder, shlep the powder in simple baskets/bowls to the site, add water, and - viola. You got your bajillion-ton "rocks" up hundreds of feet without any "high-tech" (for the time) tools?

How come nobody every posits that theory...

Hello?

[RevDigger]

Gee,

This is retarded. What is worse, that a geek blog picked up something this dumb, or a "real" news site? This idea is old, and long discredited.

The greeks started using the technique described, but not for many years after the Pyramids were built.

It is worth noting that there are pictures surviving from the period that show large teams of men, pulling big stone bocks or statues, on sledges. Maybe you can dream up some other way to do it, but if there's real evidence that they did it differently, you are just daydreaming.

Re:The Reason for the Mystery

[Tablizer]

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.

The people who did Apollo are all dying off. If we ever had to go back to the moon or even head toward Mars, a lot of re-learning is going to have to take place.

I heard NASA had trouble finding the blueprints for the Apollo capsule design as they were looking at cheaper personnel-moving alternatives to the shuttle recently.

Another Mystery

[fm6]

Yeah, I've always found it more satisfying to believe that the pyramids were put up by human ingenuity, rather than by the whimsy of some God from Space [mus.pa.us].

But here's another disturbing thought. John Anthony West [jawest.com] argues that water erosion on the Sphynx indicates that the thing was built before Egypt was an arid country. That's about 10,000 years ago. Of course this runs totally against accepted archaeological thought -- but you still have to wonder if Egyptian civilization isn't a tad older than currently accepted.

The mystery of the great pyramid

[little1973]

That is the title of a book written by a hungarian writer. It raises quite a few question about the great pyramid and tries to give some answers. Interestingly, I have not read the same conclusions in other books.

Ever wonder about the chamber with the 'well' under the pyramid? I think the official theory is that it was supposed to be where the pharaoh would be buried originally. However, a more plausible theory is that it was used to test whether the ground above could support the weight of the pyramid. A pendulum was used to test this, one end was attached to the ceiling and the other was lowered into the well.

Another mystery is the great gallery. In this book the writer assumes it was used as some kind of elevator. There are some interesting markings on either side of the gallery along the walls which a cogwheel can hang on to. Considering the Egyptians did not know the wheel it is quite a bold assumption.

Do not forget that there are some blocks in the pyramid which weigh 70 tons or so. And there is the king's sarcophagus in the king's chamber. It carved from one block of gratine, one of the hardest material on Earth.

Also, there is absolutly no evidence about that a pharaoh was ever buried in the pyramid. Considering all the mysteries, is it really surprising I am more inclined to believe the pyramid was not build by Egyptians?

Re:What if it Was Simpler Than That?

[poptones]

t's a lovely theory that's only slightly spoiled by the fact that even a casual observer can tell a limestone block from concrete.

Ummm... wrong. [geopolymer.org]

I think this is really the only theory anyone has put forth that actually makes sense.

google is your friend [google.com]

Mystery

[FluffyG]

The only mystery i see is how many people did they have working on these pyramids? I have read up and people have calculated that a rock needed to be placed every 2 or so minutes. While this might seem impossible but maybe there were say 10 groups of people moving an individual rock into place at the same time. so say it took 20 minutes to move the rock into place, if you have 10 groups doing that at the same pace then it could seem doable. Also since the pyramids were so huge perhaps they had 100 groups of workers moving individual rocks. That means if it took 200 minutes to put a rock in place, with 100 groups it would still be doable. The way i first pictured it was having one group moving one rock at a time every 2 minutes, but if you split it up into more than one groups then it gets more feasable.

Re:The Reason for the Mystery

[FreezerJam]

Like you, I'm surprised that this is news. A similar solution was posed some time ago, because archeologists were trying to figure out the use of the "cradles" they occasionally found.

This article - http://www.atse.org.au/publications/focus/focus-pa rry.htm [atse.org.au] - provides a picture of a cradle found in Egypt, and shows tests, both model and full scale. The full scale tests included raising a 2.5 tonne stone up a 1 in 4 ramp slope. Rampe slope is a critical factor - a 1:4 ramp uses a lot less material than a 1:10 ramp.

This theory is given further backing here - http://www-personal.umich.edu/~imladjov/pyramids.d oc [umich.edu] - by the finding that a number of blocks apparently had "this side up" inscribed on them. This supposedly only makes sense if blocks will be rolled in such a way that one could lose track of which side should be up.