Many have tried, but, how were the pyramids constructed. All that stone, from where, how shaped, transported and built ?

__________________
Thank God for magnetism.

Some quarries have been found and matched.
They used granite to shape the limestone.

Yet, many questions lack satisfactory answers. Increasing the size of the workforce causes questions of logistical support that still need answering.

This is one of those things on my list of; If I had a time machine...

__________________
(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

There is some info here.


Also, this message board has some thoughts by someone who has actually moved some stone. Basically, most modern people tend to underestimate the amount and size of material that can be moved using brute force, so no exotic or crackpot theories requiring the use of tens of thousands of slaves or alien UFOs are needed to explain pyramid construction.

Nick

__________________
Nick Theodorakis

Very good links, see previous post by Nick. The stonecutter's comments are excellent.

The pyramids were built by humans, doing a lot of hard work. Do not diminish and denigrate human achievement by invoking aliens, magic, or other claptrap. Keep in mind that the Minoans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Carthaginians and the Romans did some great things, but along the way they exploited the Mediterranean area for all it was worth, and in the process did a lot of ecological damage. Haven't seen any European lions lately, have you?

Dr. Mendenhall, this is sort of the first "scattered" reply I've ever seen you post. Is everything all right?

and why shouldn't the European Lion be extinct? We wish that fate on the anopholes mosquito and for the same reason. They kill us.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

From your post, I make the following assumptions. You seem to hint that you do not except the Egyptians just built these things as history shows they did. Do some research and you will become aware of the infrastructure built around them during the decades of construction. There is no mystery here. Manpower and craftsmanship and the food to support such have been well documented.

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Bookman John is better. The name, that is.

Yes, definitely scattered. Pyramid nonsense sets me off. The Egyptians used stone as a building material, for massive projects, but crudely by later - and more sophisticated - standards. There are no round arches. Their pillar and beam construction is heavy, even by Greek standards. When they wanted to build something big, like the pyramids, they piled up stone. Cathedrals they're not, there's no lacey stonework. And in the doing of their civilization, which includes a lot other than the pyramids, they skimmed everything easy to use out of the Nile valley. If the floods didn't renew the soil every year, they'd have really ruined it. Took the Russians and the Aswan High Dam to screw that up.

Suspicion is that the Roman game's demand for lions drove the extinction.

Oh okay.

I thought the Romans used barbary lions for their games?

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Romans used whatever they could get.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Quite right. If it could be transported into a colosseum (there were quite a few in the Empire), they made someone or something fight it. Occasionally, they were disappointed by the results. (Giraffes, I believe.)

__________________
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!"

Oh now you've done it. All I can picture in my head now is Russell Crowe fighting giraffes.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Has anyone figured out, or proposed a theory about, how the knowledge of pyramid building got from Africa to America? To me it seems fairly obvious that any yo-yo who knew about the pyramids of Egypt could have trekked to America either by crossing the Atlantic or coming across the Bering Straight (did I spell that right?), and once in America could simply tell a story about what he heard about/saw/whatever and then the Myans, Aztecs, or Incas, whoever did it first, would be able to figure it out without much trouble. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come up with a pyramid shape, it's the engineering on those scales that is the hard part.

I once heard that the Egyptian pyramids were built looking like the American ones but had an extra layer of smaller stones applied to smooth them out. I suppose I could look all this up but I don't have the time or any serious interest, I'm just mildly curious. Does anyone know anything about this? No need to go into great detail, just a yea or nay would suffice.

And Big Don, what's the problem with mosquitoes? You do realize they keep people from running around naked don't you? Now, an impulsive mind would immediately say those things must be exterminated immediately so people can run around naked. But if you ask me, I'd rather settle for having things left to my imagination from time to time rather than be forced to view the general public baring it all. Hmm... well... actually that's a tough one. I'm starting to change my mind already... (I'd better quit before Spock shows up and zaps me with his phaser).

__________________
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

The Brain Science Podcast

Imagine having that one on your tombstone... cut down in the prime of life by Jeffrey the Giraffe.

__________________
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

The Brain Science Podcast

There isn't any evidence that that happened. In fact, I'm not certain that the Americans started making rock structures after the Egyptians (people keep finding older and older things in the Americas). But anyway, "trekking" to America across the Bering Straits would not have been an easy task. It's a looong way, and it gets veeery cold, and there are problems like getting enough food to survive along the way, etc.

__________________
As above, so below

Are you saying that because there aren't many grocery stores along the way and the American pyramids were built during the ice age?

__________________
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

The Brain Science Podcast

why is it so hard to believe that pyramids were independently developed half a world away from ancient Egypt?
think about it- the pyramid is nothing but a big pile of stones.. and how do you keep a big pile of stones stable enough to not fall over? simple- you build it with a wide base that narrows up to a point. make the outside pretty, and what you have is a fancy, well engineered pile of stones that won't fall over.
while the pyramids of Egypt were built out of carefully cut stones from the inside out, i believe the American pyramids were just rubble piles with fancy carved external stones. not exactly the same things, is it?

__________________
"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Not disputing how they got, but how. Modern technology struggles, seen many documentaries, it is inconceivable that this was just shear manpower !!!!

__________________
Thank God for magnetism.

Why do you think modern technology struggles to make a pyramid? I guess you haven't seen Las Vegas or Paris recently.

I recall one documentary where they had a team of about a dozen people, using tools that were of the same type as were available to ancient Egypt, cut a block of stone of the right size and move it a fair distance. They did that in a couple of days, IIRC. Ok, now multiply that about 1000 people and 20 or 30 years.... I don't see why that is so impossible to imagine.

Do you also stuggle to imagine that the great cathedrals of Europe were also built by, as you say "shear manpower". The technology of 1200 Europe was not radically different than that of ancient Egypt. Do have trouble conceiving that the people of ancient Chartres built their Cathedral in less than 100 years?

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009