this post was submitted on 18 May 2024

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175

Egypt pyramids: Scientists may have solved mystery behind construction (www.bbc.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

103 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Believe it or not, no aliens were likely involved! Just some very smart humans and a massive amount of labor.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Who are these "some scientists?" Names please.

I'd suggest arguing against what they literally showed us they did is an uphill battle.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (31 children)

"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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

You grease up a sled and drag it down a track carved into some rocks.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (12 children)

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.)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, it's a failure of imagination, probably combined with wanting to believe.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

We do sometimes need much heavier loads

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

That was very cool, thanks for sharing.

I would argue seeing the barn makes it even sillier, but in a good way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/E5pZ7uR6v8c

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Isn't this old news? I heard this when Assassin Creed Origins came out and thought it was somewhat historically accurate.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Ah yes, the ancient Egyptian seven simple machines: lever, wheel, pulley, incline, wedge, screw and Agrav engine.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Unrelated, but it would be a very cool project to restore the pyramids to the white gold tipped triangles that they used to be.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Egypt will never allow it. They want their cashcow to be in status quo forever so they can milk them dry. They're not even allowing research into other, currently unknown chambers (which were found to be there, just never opened)

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

They tried to restore the Pyramid of Menkaure by adding granite stones to the exterior, but they stopped because of social media pushback.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/controversial-egypt-pyramid-renovation-rolled-back/story?id=106892273

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

They'd be better off building a brand new one anyway. With an observation deck, but you have to climb like 5 thousand stairs to get to it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah, an upgraded cash cow is still a cash cow, so that's not the problem.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Source? I'm not doubting you. I'm just surprised that the government would limit research, probably for political reasons.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They banned destrucive research for new rooms, because some researcher decade ago, enthusiastically drilled a bunch of holes to nowhere in order to do find them.

They still allowed the non destructive muon imaging a few year ago that heavily hinted to an unfound room.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I guess we'll just have to build new ones!

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I didn’t think it was so much a question of how it was done vs how it was done so fast. Iirc, 20 years to build the Great Pyramid?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

20 - 30, since they needed to be done for a specific person during their lifetime, and people died young then. The biggest one even has a backup chamber that was to be used if the pharaoh kicked the bucket too early and they couldn't finish it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The Great Pyramid isn’t a tomb, though. It has none of the hallmarks of a tomb. Even the Pharoah’s name is suspected to be 18th Century graffiti, and it was in a hidden room on the ceiling in the back where they kept the cleaning supplies or something.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Do you have a source for this?

Last time I checked almost every historian agreed they were almost all tombs.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I'm really curious when and how quickly the route changed.

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