i watched some show on History recently where they were talking about some wall built at some fortress in the holy land about 4000 or so years ago.. in one of the walls, there is a block of solid rock that is something like 30 feet long by 6 feet high by 6 feet deep that got moved over a mile..
they were saying how hard it would be to move that block today- it weighs a couple of hundred tons- let alone 4000 years ago. but they showed some possible ways they could have done it then using only the raw materials on hand and a LOT of man power.

and that pyramid that they used dynamite to find the entrance to was the great Pyramid at Giza. yes- they found a bunch of ruble. but they also did use high explosives to find the door, so having a bunch of rubble afterwards isn't really so amazing. if the pyramids of Egypt had been made out of just piles of rubble under a pretty facade, they wouldn't still be as geometrically perfect as they are today- the gaps in many of the exposed stones are tight enough that a credit card won't fit between them.

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
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Actually, I have seen such claims -- granted, that's really off on woowoo scale. But the fact that similar works are not done today at all implies (if you do not think things through) that it is very very difficult even with cranes and trucks -- and by extension, impossible without them.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

I wonder why they wanted big pieces instead of more numerous little ones... less wasted stuff? More feeling of accomplishment and impressiveness? More stability and precision due to there being fewer junctions/joints?

In fact, as time went on they did use smaller blocks for the later structures.

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily avaiable to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

I know you are a person who takes his physics seriously, but isn't it said that most great discoveries aren't discovered with "Eureka!" but with, "Hmmm, that's funny." Big Don

This guy?

Basically works by careful balancing and patience, no wheels, no rollers, no ropes, no hoist or no power equipment.

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Perhaps any of those. Or maybe it was just fashion. Or possibly, skilled labor that could cut stone with precision was in much shorter supply than unskilled labor that could move big pieces of stone. ISTM that if you have one guy that was good at stone-cutting and 1000 guys that could move the stone, it's more efficient to have the one guy make really big pieces.

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

The main pyramid has about 1 million blocks, stacked and aligned for the internal chambers perfectly, how long would it take us now to reconstruct using the old methods ?

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Thank God for magnetism.

Aligned perfectly for interior chambers?
No...

In fact a Lot of afterwork in chiseling out the chambers and hallways (if they can be called such) etc cost many lives.

The old methods?
We aren't sure what methods they used.
We are so accustomed to using machinery that we seem to have forgotten some of the old ingenuity.
See my post above about a man claiming to have possibly discovered how the druids planted the stones upright for stonehenge.
It's pretty simple- yet impressive. He can upright a massive concrete block singlehandedly.

From Wikipedia:

Archaeologists believe that the Great Pyramid was built by tens of thousands of skilled workers who camped near the pyramids and worked for a salary or as a form of paying taxes until the construction was completed. The worker's cemeteries were discovered in 1990 by archaeologists Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner. Verner posited that the labor was organized into a hierarchy, consisting of two gangs of 100,000 men, divided into five zaa or phyle of 20,000 men each, which may have been further divided according to the skills of the workers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

Note the bold: stuff is still being learned.

Lack of knowledge is not proof of the extraordinary.

Note the underline: that's a lot of people.

1,000,000 blocks by 20 years by 6 days a week is 321 blocks per day.

If half the workers did the moving, that's 311 people per block - and that's if they move just one block per day.

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Measure once. Cut twice. Power tools are fun.

The druids didn't. Stonehenge existed long before they did.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

You're talking about Baalbek (my spelling may be off) in Lebanon. It's got one carved block which is I think estimated to be 900 tons. There is also a partially excavated block in the quarry that is something like 1200 tons. I think the 900-ton one is the largest block of stone ever excavated. The Romans built on top of the original structure, with smaller stones.

I often wonder also about why people used such huge stones. The obvious advantage is that they last longer. Maybe they were really trying to make something that would last 5,000 years or longer.

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As above, so below

or maybe they built big things using big pieces just because they could- and it is definitely more impressive to any outsider that happens to see it. it might have been a way to show their greatness to the next kingdom over to keep them from trying to invade and take them over- almost like saying "if we can move these huge pieces of precision cut stone over a great distance and lay them in a precise place- one on top of the other- just imagine what we will do to you if you get out of line".
all of these things were built at the dawn of civilization- and people were trying to figure out just what the limits of what people were capable of. so they just built big things out of heavy parts.
we don't build things like pyramids any more because we have materials that are cheaper and easier to work with than stone- do you think the great pyramid of Giza would have been built if they had a bunch of 12" steel I beams laying around?

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
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Great link thanks.

Still would like to see how Egyptians manage such feats of engineering, truly amazing.

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Thank God for magnetism.

What makes you say that?
Although there is a bit of uncertainty about WHO built stonehenge- it is the druids who are often attributed with it.
They are both about as old.

pzkpfw, I think is the one you ar thanking.

I can't find the link of the guy I'm talking about but will try later and throw it on as an edit.

Give or take 2000 years

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

There is an excevation going on at Stonehenge at the moment to try and get more information on the oldest of the stones using the latest techniques to try and establish a date for their erection.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

For epic feats of construction without the benefit of modern machines look at the Canal system in the UK, dug by hand by mainly Irish Navvies. Most of the railway system was built by them as well.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

Pfft. What's 2000 years among friends?

Just because the druids get the attribution doesn't mean that they should.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"