Egypt pyramids: Scientists may have solved mystery behind construction
bbc.com
Believe it or not, no aliens were likely involved! Just some very smart humans and a massive amount of labor.
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Believe it or not, no aliens were likely involved! Just some very smart humans and a massive amount of labor.
Scientists may have solved the mystery behind transporting some of the materials to the pyramid site: a dried-up a river
Fixed the title for you.
The construction of the Giza pyramids is still baffling. Some of the stones are purported to weigh 80 tons. That's four or five times more weight than what modern trucks can pull on paved roads.
It's not so farfetched to presume that this ancient civilization employed technology that is lost to time. I'm not talking about aliens and laser beams, but good ol' fashioned mathematics. They could have exploited a principle of leverage and incline that we simply don't understand or recognize. Or perhaps something entirely different from our six simple machines...
The problem with this theory, of course, is that we like to believe that humanity is always progressing and that we are superior to our forebears by default. That is ultimately a subjective opinion.
You'd have a point if the Egyptians didn't already tell us how they moved giant, heavy things over land.
Lots of human labor.
(Relief from the tomb of Djehutihotep in el-Bersheh)
Yes. I'm familiar with this image. Some scientists claim that when just the right amount of water is poured over sand it reduces the friction by about 30%.
Some also claim that there were not hundreds of thousands of laborers at the Giza pyramids, based on evidence discovered in the work camps near the site.
I'm 38 years old and I think I've read about a new theory every year of my life...
Who are these "some scientists?" Names please.
I'd suggest arguing against what they literally showed us they did is an uphill battle.
"The study was done by Christian Wagner and colleagues at Saarland University in Germany, along with researchers in the Netherlands, Iran and France. The team was inspired by an ancient Egyptian wall painting showing a huge statue being hauled across the sand on a sledge in about 1800 BC. The painting has a detail that has long puzzled Egyptologists: a worker who appears to be pouring water onto the sand in front of the sledge while others appear to be carrying water to replenish his supply."
https://physicsworld.com/a/did-slippery-sand-help-egyptians-build-the-pyramids/
There are hundreds of articles about this theory. It was all the rage a few years ago.
I notice you don't post the names of any of the scientists who believe only a small workforce built the pyramids. Why is that? That's really the one I was curious about.
Because, again, it's kind of hard to argue against what they literally carved into a rock.
Not arguing with you here, cuz I have no dog in this fight, but you're seemingly ignoring the possibility of the emperor bragging about
crowd sizethe number of slaves workers utilized?I mean, he could lie about it, but is there really any doubt a pharaoh could conscript a few hundred guys?
It's just an easy, obvious solution, and probably the one they used because they weren't dumb. We also have a lot of surviving paperwork from the organisation of pyramid building, including things like worker's comp.
So you're saying that they used some unknown means of pulling big stones over rocks, but rather bragged about one they didn't use even though it would have worked?
I'm not saying they didn't have a lot of slaves, just thinking that they might be exaggerating slave count (as a metric of how powerful they were) while using something like this river (something innocuous that they wouldn't need to brag about) to augment the bodies in use.
You are making the mistake that slaves built Egyptian religious monuments. They did not. Egyptians did it, not their slaves. They did it out of religious obligation.
Which makes sense. You don't want slaves building your sacred places when slaves can sabotage things.
Again, there are hundreds of articles about the adjacent work camps. Please look at the publications of Zahi Hawass, chief archeologist of Egypt, and Amihai Mazar, a professor of archeology in Jerusalem.
Most claim that there could have been up to ten thousand workers. Some claim that the number of workers was as low as 1600.
I'm not sure why you think 1600 workers mean they couldn't just drag large stones over land on sledges using a significant number of those 1600 workers. I'm not even sure why you think ten thousand workers would have been necessary. Can you explain please?
I never suggested that they couldn't.
Personally, I don't think that the "brute force" argument is the best. I think it's arguing from ignorance.
I mean, it's probably both. They would have used a bunch of guys, and maybe oxen, because that was their source of mechanical energy for nearly everything. To make is easier, they would add the cleverest engineering you can do with no formal science and bronze age materials.
How is it arguing from ignorance when, yet again, they showed us that they did just that.
Are you saying the carving is a lie? Why would it be?
They also depict gods with the heads of jackals and birds, beings from other planets, their conception of the afterlife, pornography, and obviously exaggerated claims about the power and influence of the Pharoahs.
I'm saying that we should be skeptical. dubitante omnibus, as Descartes would say...
Not that one, no.
But why would the carving be a lie? What would the benefit be about lying about a lot of people dragging huge pieces of stone on a sledge when a lot of people dragging huge pieces of stone on a sledge would work?
I don't know, my friend. I'm not an archeologist or Egyptologist. I'm just an enthusiast who has read a dozen conflicting theories.
You're caught up in the argument and not paying attention to what the other person is saying.
Think of it this way, that carving might be totally accurate snd still not represent the whole story. It doesn't even really show that many people, I've worked jobs where for a few days there are hundreds of people it's very impressive and the photos always end up somewhere. This could just be intended to capture one key stage or big event, if it could be combining lots of things into one image to show 'there was a huge workforce' it's not a lie or deception but it's also not the whole story.
Brute force was part of how they did it but it certainly wasn't all of it, and most people who've never pulled a big rope don't really think about how hard it is - plus we take it for granted now but having rope that a hundred men can pull on is a feat of engineering in itself.
We know they used boats to transport them most the way, we know they used complex pullies and levers to get them into position, we know they used work teams and various other methods but none of those really solve all the questions which is why it's such an interesting subject to think about.
And yes I know people get silly and talk about aliens or magic acoustic whistles or whatever but that's not what the person you were talking to was doing, things like wet sand and forgotten infrastructure are realistic and logical ideas.
Can't go doing that m8, that'd suggest they might have known what they were talking about, and they talked about a lot of stuff that's very unpopular these days
You grease up a sled and drag it down a track carved into some rocks.
Even with the wrong amount of water, sticktion is just proportional to weight. With enough force you can overcome any amount of it.
How many horsepower is that? Also, what is a horse? (bronze age Egypt joke)
For the record we do understand how they built it.
They used log rollers, ropes and lots and lots of people hauling. They brute forced it… which, the reason our trucks can’t haul that much has far more to do with the weight on the suspension and fuel efficiency. They said fuck-all to efficiency and literally threw bodies at it.
That said, We do sometimes need much heavier loads
It’s a fairly common solution- the Moai heads on Rapa Nui (easter island) and stone henge also come to mind. In the case of Egypt, they used a sled (or sled and rollers.)
For getting it up the face, they used packed earth ramps that they later removed. Actually, we still use this technique in construction today. (Specifically to get vehicle access up otherwise too-steep slopes)(and again, threw bodies at it. Lots and lots of bodies.)
There’s really only a few things that are impressive about the pyramids. The first is the sheer ego it took to order it built. Then there is the celestial alignment between all of them. And finally the sheer scale of the project and vast amounts of human labor that went into it.
What they determined is that the river allowed the blocks to be floated much closer than previously thought (even today barges are superior to trains, never mind trucking.)
I lot of people look at this and say its just too much material for it to have happened.
But we know of projects that have used more man power. The London to Birmingham railway line took 5 years to build and moved more material than the great pyramid and we know exactly how that was done. The size of individual pieces does add complication, but the absolute quantity and manpower is not unexplainable.
Yeah, it's a failure of imagination, probably combined with wanting to believe.
I wonder if there’s a bit of not wanting to believe what people can accomplish if a massive number of us all teamed up to do something.
Because then they’d feel guilty for not getting up out of their armchair and going to support whatever cause they claim they’re supporting from the comfort of home.
Armchair activism is indeed a scourge.
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We do sometimes need much heavier loads
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There's a new theory that the ramps were actually internal. I like it because it means they don't need to bring a lot of extra material and manpower to the site just for the ramps since they're built into the structure of the same material.
I've also heard of this. It seems to me that this theory should be easy to confirm with some sort x-ray or radar or lidar or something, so that we can see the shape of the structure beneath the superficial layers...
Well, given that they didn't have trucks, that's a little unfair. Animals or people with ropes was the most efficient solution.
I swear that I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I have a lot of doubts.
What kind of ropes and wooden sleds, manufactured in 4000 BC, can move 80 ton stones? There are tensile limits...
So, each rope only needs to be too strong for the individual worker to snap. Obviously, that's pretty easy, even with the worst natural fiber cordage - fibers are strong. Then they meet in some way, and ultimately attach to the wooden sled. The exact math for that is not straightforward, and we don't really know how they tied it off, but it's not an unusual amount of load for a large wooden structure. Assuming the sled measured 100 meters^2^ (80 tons was a special block worthy of an oversize sled), that works out to less than a ton per square meter, and a tree with 1m^2^ cross section at the trunk can weigh several tons without even considering the wind load on the foliage, which will be larger yet for most species.
80 tons is a lot, but it's not a lot a lot. Thousands of tons are pretty common if you're talking about ships, for example. Even the wooden ones; honestly wood is an underrated material.
I don't know any specifics, but a bunch of ropes divides the force on each one. A bunch of ropes, plus people pushing from behind, would probably be enough force to overcome static friction without exceeding tensile limits on any one rope.
Yeah people really forget how recent an invention good rope is, It's not like they could just order a few hundred meters on ebay. Making all that rope would probably be more effort and expense than a lot of the stuff that people write of as too complex for them to have considered, like temporary canals or raise and drop sledding.
Rope braiding is pretty fast. Especially if you're an ancient Egyptian woman who's done it full time for decades. They had hemp, which is the same stuff that rigged up the giant sailing ships of later on in history.
You’re right, I s’pose.
But it gets back to… was it really worth doing? It’s a monument to a single man’s ego.
Well, what else are you supposed to do when you're overlord of the only empire in the known world? Something for the peasants? /s
Yeah, sorry, that was just a nitpick. All the rest I agree with.
This guy shows how to move large, heavy objects using pivot points and physics.
It sounds silly until you see him single handedly move a barn(!)
https://youtu.be/E5pZ7uR6v8c
Yeah, I remember this guy. He claimed that Stonehenge in England could have been built like this. The pyramids of Giza are much more complex, of course. Still, I think it's entirely possible that the pyramids were built using very clever engineering principles that were forgotten and that we don't need because we have cranes and power tools and hydraulics, etc.
That was very cool, thanks for sharing.
I would argue seeing the barn makes it even sillier, but in a good way.
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Isn't this old news? I heard this when Assassin Creed Origins came out and thought it was somewhat historically accurate.
So it's not just me. Maybe the discovery here was just the exact and complete layout, and the BBC misunderstood it the way journalists usually do with science stories?
Ah yes, the ancient Egyptian seven simple machines: lever, wheel, pulley, incline, wedge, screw and Agrav engine.
It’s impressive is year 2024, we sent robots to other planets and so many other technological achievements … and still dont know exactly how the the Giza piramids have been done .
We know several ways it could have been done, and we could do it ourselves for a sliver of the cost. It's a matter of historical preservation that we're not sure which they chose.
The uncertain of this specific case and a few others against other thousand of history remains is what makes wonder
We know more about pyramid construction than pretty much everything else that was going on in 2500BC.