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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 size~~ the number of slaves workers utilized?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You grease up a sled and drag it down a track carved into some rocks.
How many horsepower is that? Also, what is a horse? (bronze age Egypt joke)
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.
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.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/E5pZ7uR6v8c
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Ah yes, the ancient Egyptian seven simple machines: lever, wheel, pulley, incline, wedge, screw and Agrav engine.
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?
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.