So, Dig.....

[Digit]

Must learn to control these urges.
Note to self, speak to my shrink!

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Reminds me of a (BBC?) documentary about the Olmec's heads and other immense rock carvings. Riddle: how did the Olmecs schlepp 20 ton rocks well over a hundred miles into their swamp habitat (where there is no rock at all)? The documentary makers did a 'race'. One team tried overland, with a couple hundred labourers pulling a heavy wooden sledge, and the other team tried the water route: get the rock onto a raft, and thus float it to the coast.

Neither team got even out of the starting gate...

Gobleki Tepe, pharaonic pyramids, Olmecs, Stonehenge, Teotihuanaco, Carnac, Rapa Nui, etc. etc. We still don't have the slightest clue how those ancient civilizations moved these immense rocks/blocks of stone.
But they did!

[Digit]

Not disputing that RS, simply observing that to use multiple sources of supply would be extremely uneconomic of effort, assuming that Merlin wasn't involved of course.
Unless somebody can suggest a logical reason for using more than one source then the one source that would supply different stones was a glacier.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Reminds me of a (BBC?) documentary about the Olmec's heads and other immense rock carvings. Riddle: how did the Olmecs schlepp 20 ton rocks well over a hundred miles into their swamp habitat (where there is no rock at all)? The documentary makers did a 'race'. One team tried overland, with a couple hundred labourers pulling a heavy wooden sledge, and the other team tried the water route: get the rock onto a raft, and thus float it to the coast.

Neither team got even out of the starting gate...

Gobleki Tepe, pharaonic pyramids, Olmecs, Stonehenge, Teotihuanaco, Carnac, Rapa Nui, etc. etc. We still don't have the slightest clue how those ancient civilizations moved these immense rocks/blocks of stone.
But they did!

I think I saw that one, R/S. Was that the one where even though they scaled down the size of the stone they still got stuck in the mud?

Reminds of Egyptologist Mark Lehrner some time ago trying to show how the Egyptians quarried rocks out of limestone....then he gave them iron tools and a winch!

[Rokcet Scientist]

Yeah, that's the one, Min. The 'fil rouge' (red string) was that sculptor hacking away for days on end on that rock on the beach, and barely scratching the surface! That was funny!

It took – and takes (Sagrada Familia; Barcelona) – two to three centuries to build a cathedral. And Cheops' free, seasonal laborers would have built the Great Pyramid in a mere two decades? In their summer holidays?

BWAHAHAHA

My point: we haven't even begun to unravel our past yet.

[Digit]

Nobody seems to have cottoned on that Cheop's pyramid could possibly have been assembled in two decades, but that does not mean that it was built in two decades.
The US assembled 'Liberty ships' on an average of one every 42 days, they did not construct them in that time.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Not even with modern tools and machines, like skycranes, could Cheops'/Khufu's pyramid be built in 20 years! 2.3 million 2.5 ton blocks, one every 30 minutes. You do the math.

[Digit]

I have done so, and I agree, neither does it need aliens, ramps, magic nor vanished civilisations.
None of the 'problems' thrown up by 'experts' are insurmountable with the known technology of the day.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

We built over 2,500 Liberty ships. There are only two "great" pyramids ( Menkaure's is much smaller).

[Digit]

But you didn't need any aliens did you?

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Not a one.

[Rokcet Scientist]

You would need half a millenium at the very least, though.

[Digit]

That equates to about 12 stones a day!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

This is a post I made over at Atheistforums.org a few weeks ago which was itself extracted from a post I made at Koko's some years ago.









I draw your attention to these 3 photos which I used in a post on another board some time ago.

The first photo is from the Great Pyramid in Giza and the others are from the Red Pyramid in Dashur.

As the story goes, the Red Pyramid was the 3d pyramid built by Sneferu, father of Khufu. It is far shorter (345 ft versus 480 feet) than the Great Pyramid and also squatter being built at a shallower angle. Nonetheless the Red Pyramid has been determined to be the immediate precursor.

Now, look at the first picture and note the height of the blocks relative to the man in the photo. The blocks come to his shoulders. Next observe how many levels of stones are visible in relation to the people in those pictures at the Red Pyramid. The stones in the Red Pyramid are much smaller. Finally observe the quality of the stonework in the first picture as opposed to the others. Again there is no comparison even though both are made of limestone.

The Great Pyramid is a quantum leap over the Red Pyramid and the workmanship in the later pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure is equal to the GP in precision. Yet, here is a photo of what is left of the pyramid of Userkaf, founder of the 5th Dynasty.



Author Graham Hancock considered these facts ( built over the course of basically 1 century) and suggested essentially that the modern equivalent would be a society going from a horse and buggy to a Lamborghini and back to a Model T. I agree with him....but there is no evidence for "aliens" building it either. It is a mystery particularly if one binds oneself into the terms and conditions that the Egyptology club insists upon.

[Digit]

There are other parallels to a society reaching heights then dropping back Min.
Look how long it took European society to get back to building roads as good as the Roman ones.
There is, possibly, a way of determining certain parts of the time scale that the Egyptians took.
Let us say that removing a suitable stone block from the quarry face took X time using Y workers.
Then 10 x Y would equal 10 x X and pro rata. The limit to Y would be the size of the quarry face. If the face area is small then the time would be greater than if it is large, do we have any info on that?

Roy.