Archaeologica.org

They did it by mentaly manipulating the earth's magnetic fields.

Oddly, at both Giza and Nan Madol the folklore explanation is that the stones "flew through the air." Seems idiotic but, then again, so does dragging over the sand on sleds.

Hancock on his observations at Sachsayhuaman:

I craned my neck and looked up at a big granite boulder that my route now passed under. Twelve feet high, seven feet across, and weighing considerably more than 100 tons, it was a work of man, not nature. It had been cut and shaped into a symphonic harmony of angles, manipulated with apparent ease (as though it were made of wax or putty) and stood on its end in a wall of other huge and problematic blocks, some of them positioned above it, some below it, some to each side, and all in perfectly balanced and well-ordered juxtaposition.

Since one of these astonishing pieces of carefully hewn stone had a height of twenty-eight feet and was calculated to weigh 361 tons (roughly the equivalent of five hundred family sized automobiles) it seemed to me that a number of fundamental questions were crying out for answers.

How had the Incas, or their predecessors, been able to work stone on such a gargantuan scale? How had they cut and shaped these cyclopean boulders so precisely? How had they transported them tens of miles from distant quarries? By what means had they made walls of them, shuffling the individual blocks around and raising them high above the ground with such apparent ease? These people weren't even supposed to have had the wheel, let alone machinery capable of lifting and manipulating dozens of irregularly shaped 100-ton blocks, and sorting them into three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles.

Thursday night - and there is a re-run of the show "How the pyramids were built" on Discovery channel. I really am going to have to break down and read Hancocks books. It's not fair to agree or criticise him until I do.

What he says is very interesting though.

I'll watch it too and we can compare notes.

Later then.

Yeah, remember I'm on goddamn Arizona mountain "take your Daylight Savings and Screw Yourself" Time. It's coming on in 7 minutes.

My time is an hour later than Arizona I think. I also watched the show on the excavation of KV65.

The pyramid building show had nothing new really. Interestingly it showed the large stones being pulled up a ramp with palm fronds laid on the ramp to reduce friction. Sounds like a good idea if there were enough palm fronds around (fresh ones).

I'll be around.

So far, not impressed.

No, not too. I found Hancocks remarks at the beginning of the show interesting but they didn't have him back on.

The KV65 excavation was good. You may not get that in Arizona though.

First off, they said 17 years which simply multiplies the problem of the math. Second, they showed a ramp going up from the quarry at about a 30 degree angle which is simply ridiculous. It's hard enough to walk up a slope like that let alone pull a couple of tons of stone.

Near the end they hinted at one of the great problems of the Great Pyramid. The noted the inscriptions on the ceiling and walls of the Unas 5th Dynasty Pyramid and I seem to recall the interior of Djoser's Step Pyramid is decorated as well but the Great Pyramid has less decoration than a New York subway tunnel. If Khufu was as big an egomaniac as they seem to be suggesting that is a non sequitur.

Again, they also fell into the trap which Hart laid out. Just because you can (maybe) move a 2.5 ton stone using sleds does not mean you can move a 70 ton stone the same way. Yet, there they were, pulling this immense weight uphill on a sled with people pulling on ropes.

And it sure as hell did not look like they were placing a block every 4 minutes.

This thing was a triumph of the special effects department.

I don't think a TV show is going to go too far out on a limb here. As we've been saying, some brave soul needs to to do the demonstration. That is, show a 70 ton stone being pulled for at least a half mile. And using the same kind of rope the ancients must have.

But if they try it and fail they would have to go back to work and come up with a new theory.

Like arch....better to just hang on to what is familiar.

That's a fact Bob. But if they tried and failed it will have also succeeded in disproving this worn out junk.

Late here,

Buenos Tardes

This is interesting. The Red Pyramid mystery by R. Schoch.

http://www.robertschoch.net/Inside%20th ... 0Egypt.htm

I wonder what he thinks of the subterranian chamber under the Great Sphinx.