Ancient Pyramid Building

[RogueScholar]

Occasionally this comes up in conversations with some people pointing to magical thinking or "alien" intervention. While a complete understanding has been lacking, it looks as though one now exists, and said answer is quite simple. Turns out, we have been staring at a big clue but experts misinterpreted the clue as a purification ritual and apparently did not consider more practical concepts.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/02/the-surprisingly-simple-way-egyptians-moved-massive-pyramid-stones-without-modern-technology/?tid=pm_pop

[TheRedneckProfessor]

The sands of time.

[TrueFreedom]

Have you seen this proposal?

 

[Ravenstar]

I want to see the math.

[RogueScholar]

I want to see the math.

I have not looked at the actual paper but you could setup a really basic friction equation:

f = μs N

 

f = the force of friction, μs = the static coefficient if friction

 

N = the normal force (we can probably substitute the gravitational acceleration 9.8 m/s/s and the mass of the object for N as a decent approximation [N = m*g])

 

You can make up some mass for the block that you want to move then look up friction coefficients for situations that roughly approximate sand/stone interface with wet versus dry sand. You may want to use several degrees if "wetness."

 

That's a basic start anyway. You can also onto the original paper and look at the author's methods to see exactly what they did. I'll look for a link.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

The wet sand could help explain the dragging, but we still don't know much about how they got the stones on top of each other. I suppose dragging them up ramps are a possibility. Pity they didn't document the processes more thoroughly.

[RogueScholar]

Correction above: sand/wood interface.

 

Link to the paper:

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.175502

 

Unfortunately, it's a "pay per view" journal.

[Ravenstar]

"It is believed the pyramid was built as a tomb for Fourth Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh Khufu and was constructed over a 20-year period. Khufu's vizier,Hemon, or Hemiunu, is believed by some to be the architect of the Great Pyramid.^[4] It is thought that, at construction, the Great Pyramid was originally 280 Egyptian cubits tall, 146.5 metres (480.6 ft) but with erosion and absence of its pyramidion, its present height is 138.8 metres (455.4 ft). Each base side was 440 cubits, 230.4 metres (755.9 ft) long. The mass of the pyramid is estimated at 5.9 million tonnes. The volume, including an internal hillock, is roughly 2,500,000 cubic metres (88,000,000 cu ft).^[5] Based on these estimates, building this in 20 years would involve installing approximately 800 tonnes of stone every day. Similarly, since it consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks, completing the building in 20 years would involve moving an average of more than 12 of the blocks into place each hour, day and night. The first precision measurements of the pyramid were made byEgyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie in 1880–82 and published as The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh.^[6] Almost all reports are based on his measurements. Many of the casing stones and inner chamber blocks of the Great Pyramid were fit together with extremely high precision. Based on measurements taken on the north eastern casing stones, the mean opening of the joints is only 0.5 millimetres wide (1/50th of an inch).^[7]"

 

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza}

 

Really? 12 blocks every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 20 years?... That would include cutting, dressing, moving and setting… feeding the (massive) crew, housing, what about holidays? Feast days? They had like a kazillion gods and festivals. And that doesn't include the architectural and engineering planning.

 

How did they work at night without electricity, by torch?  hahahahahaha…. no. So double it…. 24 blocks per hour,  one block every 2 minutes…12 hours a day, 365 days per year, for 20 years.

 

The Great Pyramid consists of an estimated 2.3 million limestone blocks which most believe to have been transported from nearby quarries. The Tura limestone used for the casing was quarried across the river. The largest granite stones in the pyramid, found in the "King's" chamber, weigh 25 to 80tonnes and were transported from Aswan, more than 800 km (500 mi) away. Traditionally, ancient Egyptians cut stone blocks by hammering wooden wedges into the stone which were then soaked with water. As the water was absorbed, the wedges expanded, causing the rock to crack. Once they were cut, they were carried by boat either up or down the Nile River to the pyramid.^[17] It is estimated that 5.5 million tonnes of limestone, 8,000 tonnes of granite (imported from Aswan), and 500,000 tonnes of mortar were used in the construction of the Great Pyramid.^[18]

 

The accuracy of the pyramid's workmanship is such that the four sides of the base have an average error of only 58 millimetres in length.^[9]

 

How much rope would that require? Logs? Wet sand? How did they move the water required?… how long would a ramp have to be to work? You wouldn't want a very steep incline. How many workers? 

 

The average stone in the Great Pyramid weighs about 2.5 tons. TONS. They had copper tools… not iron.

 

​idk… and I don't think they do either. Not yet.

[skepticalme]

The wet sand could help explain the dragging, but we still don't know much about how they got the stones on top of each other. I suppose dragging them up ramps are a possibility. Pity they didn't document the processes more thoroughly.

What if, instead of dragging them across sand, they layed wooden pylons like railroad tracks on top of the sand and rolled them with logges atop of those.  You would need teams to reset the logges and pylons and you would have a primative conyeour belt.  You could have weights and bindings anchored in the sand that let the logs roll back downhill after a block had past to reset for the next block. 

[Ravenstar]

Still… the elevation for some of the stones is enormous… I'm not sure if the Egyptians had the block and tackle yet.

 

I'm not versed enough in physics to work out the forces.

[TrueFreedom]

Are none of you willing to even entertain the possibility that they floated the stones along water canals and up water shafts?  It's a much simpler hypothesis.

[Ravenstar]

I'm willing to entertain any physically competent theory. I just want to see the physics. I can see them using water to get them to the site, but I can't see them doing it to raise the pyramids. There pretty damn big… about 50 stories for the Great Pyramid. That's a lot of gravity to overcome for 2.5 ton stones.  Just stabilizing them on water would be quite a feat.

 

It's something that fascinates and puzzles me. I watched a documentary where grad students tried to build a 10 foot replica without modern machinery… they failed.

[TrueFreedom]

I'm willing to entertain any physically competent theory. I just want to see the physics. I can see them using water to get them to the site, but I can't see them doing it to raise the pyramids. There pretty damn big… about 50 stories for the Great Pyramid. That's a lot of gravity to overcome for 2.5 ton stones.  Just stabilizing them on water would be quite a feat.

 

It's something that fascinates and puzzles me. I watched a documentary where grad students tried to build a 10 foot replica without modern machinery… they failed.

 

This guy built out an extremely small-scale model and demonstrated how it could work.  He shared a brief demonstration here: 

 

His channel has additional explanations for various challenges.

[Ravenstar]

Thanks.. I will check it out!  

[christophercomplex]

Occasionally this comes up in conversations with some people pointing to magical thinking or "alien" intervention. While a complete understanding has been lacking, it looks as though one now exists, and said answer is quite simple. Turns out, we have been staring at a big clue but experts misinterpreted the clue as a purification ritual and apparently did not consider more practical concepts.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/02/the-surprisingly-simple-way-egyptians-moved-massive-pyramid-stones-without-modern-technology/?tid=pm_pop

I know how they built the pyramids, they had whips, massive whips.

[bornagainathiest]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rCRkM3b7YVc/UDZqv6LMrZI/AAAAAAAAA6w/s7J7OP-kIbc/s1600/SPC2.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

[Ravenstar]

LOL

[Thought2Much]

TrueFreedom, wasn't there some article recently that suggested that the pyramids might not be made entirely of stone blocks, but that they might be stone blocks sitting on great piles of dirt? Even if there's only mostly dirt for the first 10 or 20 percent of the height, that's a massive, massive savings in cutting and moving big stone blocks.

[Fernweh]

It's interesting to ponder how these ancient civilizations pulled off these engineering feats. However, I don't believe they were as primitive as we think and they obviously had the ability to stay on task for decades. These people didn't sit in traffic while commuting to the office. They didn't spend any time worrying about growth in their 401K. They were humans just like us with a completely different goal...to build monuments; and that's what they spent their time and capital doing. They excelled at this and no doubt they used every bit of ingenuity, gut, guile, and sweat to make it happen. This is what they wanted to do and they did it. How they did it is definitely interesting but I do not believe they were any less crafty than us and perhaps more so since their lives and even civilization were dedicated to this task. A few centuries from now I'm confident the future civilization of the time will wonder how primitive man of 1969 landed on the moon. Even today there isn't any way to use the same equipment to go back. I can see the debates now; did they use liquid or solid propellants, how did they survive the transit. Today there's a significant percentage of the population who think the whole thing was made up. No doubt future civilizations will debate the myth of our Moon landing. 

[Guest]

TrueFreedom, wasn't there some article recently that suggested that the pyramids might not be made entirely of stone blocks, but that they might be stone blocks sitting on great piles of dirt? Even if there's only mostly dirt for the first 10 or 20 percent of the height, that's a massive, massive savings in cutting and moving big stone blocks.

 

Shouldn't this be rather easy to determine with all this space age gear we have?  I don't know much about it, but wouldn't a radar or sonar scan be able to determine the inner make up of the pyramids?  Im thinking of ground penetrating radar turned sideways?  Kind of?  :-)

 

I have also heard the stone blocks may be a primitive form of poured concrete, but I have also heard there are crustacean fossils in these stone blocks too, and we also know where they quarried and even have blocks that were abandoned due to structural cracks, etc, so I don't really buy the concrete idea...

[Geezer]

The pyramids are but one of numerous amazing feats of engineering found in ancient cultures around the world. And some of those structures are far more amazing than the pyramids. The ancients lacked technology but they obviously were not ignorant.

 

Lots of theories about how the ancients built these structures, but I think the theory of ancient astronauts is as good as any of them.......yeah, they were definitely built by aliens. Wet sand, huh, yeah, ah...no I don't think so. They may have, and probably did use wet sand to transport their building materials but that doesn't answer all the engineering problems involved in building such structures.

 

The answer, when or if it's found, may be quite simple and one that makes present day engineers say, ...well, duh! But until we find that answer I'm going with the theory of aliens...or Jesus. Yeah, that's it, Jesus did it.  Not a problem for a guy that can walk on water.

[Joshpantera]

 

I'm willing to entertain any physically competent theory. I just want to see the physics. I can see them using water to get them to the site, but I can't see them doing it to raise the pyramids. There pretty damn big… about 50 stories for the Great Pyramid. That's a lot of gravity to overcome for 2.5 ton stones.  Just stabilizing them on water would be quite a feat.

 

It's something that fascinates and puzzles me. I watched a documentary where grad students tried to build a 10 foot replica without modern machinery… they failed.

 

This guy built out an extremely small-scale model and demonstrated how it could work.  He shared a brief demonstration here: 

 

His channel has additional explanations for various challenges.

 

I like this theory. One of the better one's out there because it has the simplicity that would expected of the right answer. 

 

But I wonder if the ancients figured this exact water channel technique out? 

 

My great grandfather lived just down the road from Coral Castle in Homestead Florida. Ed Leedskalnin claimed to know the secrets of the pyramid builders and to prove it he cut coral stones and built a megalithic structure completely alone with no help. After that he moved the entire castle structure block by block to a new location, by truck. He would tell the driver to go away and when the driver returned the blocks were already stacked on the truck bed. He wouldn't let any one see him move the stones. Some kids claimed that they snuck up and saw Ed floating stones in the air like hot air balloons. That's about the only supposed eye witness account that I've found where some one claimed to have seen what he was doing. 

 

The main theory is that he was able to use electromagnetic and / or sound waves to affect the weight of the stones to where he could move them around all by himself. Because the tools he left behind were things like a primitive generator, and copper wire, and radio transmitter and so on. I have copies of his writings from the gift shop and they are largely concerned with his personal eccentric ideas about magnetic poles (north and south pole magnets). But it's all very cryptic and no one has officially figured out exactly how he did it. 

 

He may have done whatever, but one thing he certainly did not do was create an elaborate, but simple water canal system as described in the above video. He might have been lying about knowing how they built the pyramids and used his own technique to try and accomplish something similar, but he was sitting on some highly secretive knowledge and chances are it was exactly something that has passed down through ages and learned by Ed in an initiated setting. He took his secret to the grave so I assume he was under an initiate's oath not to disclose the technique and that it could well have been something passed down over the ages through a masonic source or something similar.

 

I really like the water canal idea but we've seen some one in the last century accomplish feats the Egyptians did and without any canal system. He also had no UFO's assisting of course. So that takes out canals and aliens right away in Ed's case. We're left with only what obscure writings he left behind where "How to raise your daughters" seems a metaphor for raising stones by way of manipulating the negative ( - ) south pole or magnetic property that he believed exists in all matter. 

[Ravenstar]

Fascinating

[RogueScholar]

I've read some of the stuff put out by Ed. Here are a few samples:

 

http://www.leedskalnin.com

 

It's clear that he had no real understanding of the concept of an electron and his explanation regarding the proton being stationary is completely ill informed. We do make an approximation where we sometimes model the nucleus of an atom as being stationary in what is known as the Born-Oppenheimer approximation to make life a little easier when it comes to certain approximation techniques, but everybody knows that's not what's really going on. Likewise, he seems to misunderstand the relationship between charge and electrical current. It's actually rather arbitrary that we say the electron has negative charge and the proton has positive charge. The magnitude of the charge is the same in both particles, but the +\- sign is a placeholder that reminds us "like" charges repel and "unlike" charges attract. Additionally, I'm not tracking on this positive and negative electricity concept he talks about. Again, I believe it stemmed from his misunderstanding if the concepts of charge and electrical current. I could go on but I'm not sure how much stock I could put into his ideas. I will refrain from talking about magnetism as it quickly leads to concepts like spin that are very difficult to explain and very easy to misunderstand.

 

He was an interesting character however.

[Joshpantera]

Well that's the thing RS, Ed was ignorant in a lot of ways. He was disagreeing in a strawman type of way as you point out - sort of trying to knock down a false caricature of accepted physics in favor of promoting his own model. So I wonder if the meat of the matter, his ideas of north and south pole magnets is something that still eludes modern physics. He had a bad understanding of an atom as you point out, however his eccentric ideas about magnetism were presumably used to build two different megalithic type stone structures with absolutely no help from any one. He loaded and unloaded pyramid sized stones on and off of a truck by himself while the driver hung out just out of site around the corner. That's a speedy process. 

 

I'll post a video of his life story for those who are unaware of the details. Here's the old school classic "In Search Of" episode: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-b609_uaBg

 

This guy was really weird. But he pulled off something that no one else has been able to duplicate. And that's really the challenge for those claiming to know the secret. He claimed to know how the Egyptians did it and then proceeded to prove it by building his castle's. Others have now claimed to know what Ed was doing but with one exception - no one has been able to duplicate his castle's let alone what the Egyptians did. 

 

Whether the Egyptians had an understanding of Ed's north and south pole magnet ideas or figured how to use water canals and chambers seems equally mysterious though. I wonder if there was ever exact writings that disclosed how the pyramids were built? Maybe lost to Christianity's destruction in Alexandria? Who knows? 

 

But I suppose that people accomplishing something similar now can never really prove what exactly the Egyptians did back then. Ed just seems the most likely link to it if in fact a link still exists...