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Comment by zorkw4rg | Hacker News Reader

The number of 20 years is often repeated for the great giza pyramid, however its constructed using 2.3 million stones (~2.5 ton each) meaning they would have to place a stone every 5 minutes, for 20 years to make any sense. Traditional theories of egyptology fiercely defended by argument of authority are utterly useless.

In reality nobody has any idea how, when or even by whom (I would despute the cartouche as solid evidence) the great pyramid was actually built and egyptology certainly won't figure it out (at least not with its current systemic issues).

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The 100k workers over 20 years figures aren't a theory of modern researchers. Those estimates are from Herodotus, who was reporting on what Egyptians of his day (2,500 ybp) thought. That's why it's repeated so often. It could be that they/he was wrong.

I think it sounds plausible in terms of the amount of work. 1 man year per stone.

YBB YBP?

This is some pretty incredible jargon is this widely used, I've never seen it before and needed to look it up.

Is it really that hard to say 2,500 years ago?

I had to look it up, too. I’m still used to BC and AD, and at least BCE and CE are familiar enough to me because of political correctness.

It starts to get cumbersome when you use it multiple times in a paragraph. The problem is really the BC/AD (starting the clock 2018 years ago) is clunky.

It's pretty widely used in the context of history these days, mostly because it's common to look at long stretches of time. It's really the easiest system once you know the acronym.

Here...

Herodotus is a 5th century BC historian, a favourite among the 13th century European historians that founded the modern discipline. He was relaying information that may have been invented sometime in the 2nd millennia BC, as many primary records were lost during the 19th century BC dark period. The Pyramid itself was constructed in the 24th century BC.

This is a little more confusing to me than ybp.

BTW, I'm still not really sure what AD stands for.

AD = Anno Domini, "year of the lord". It refers to when the Medieval church in western Europe thought Christ was born.

While you may think BC/AD is clunky, having a static reference point in the past obviously has its advantages. 200BC will forever correctly and uniquely reference the same year, 2218 YBP not so much, as it depends on year of writing (which is fine for a live interaction, but less handy for written and archived content).

Yup. I can live with 2 systems.

I like the holocene calendar idea, personally. I can live with AD, but kind of dislike the non-universalism of using a specific church's calendar.

> 2218 YBP not so much, as it depends on year of writing

As I understand it, the "present" in YBP refers to 68 years ago, 1950. This is related to the advent of carbon dating, and the way widescale nuclear tests altered the proportion of carbon isotopes found in nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present

Insofar as 68 years is a rounding error when discussing the Great Pyramids, YBP is a lot less clumsy. But 500 years from now it will probably begin seem just as clumsy as BC/AD. At least this time there is a pragmatic reason for the delineation (carbon 14 levels being altered.) Of course in 1,000 years you'll probably have people on hyper-reddit very smugly pointing out that nuclear testing actually started in 1945 not in 1950, just as today they point out Christ was not born in 0AD. ;)

Five minutes per stone actually seems rather slow IMO.

2.5 tons sounds really heavy, but just 25 people could lift and move that much weight. 50 people could move reasonably quickly and 100 people could carry that at a normal walking pace all day long.

PS: They also used larger stones on the bottom and smaller stones at the top.

>2.5 tons sounds really heavy, but just 25 people could lift and move that much weight. 50 people could move reasonably quickly and 100 people could carry that at a normal walking pace all day long.

In which planet's gravity?

And carrying them from which remote location, on which nicely paved roads to make this easy?

The normal combat load in the US army is 60 to 100 pounds including body armor and batteries. People are expected to travel long distances over rough terain by foot, and run short distances. The average pyramid builder may have been somewhat shorter on average, but they would have been extremely fit.

People building these things where not stupid. These stones where not being lifted over boulders or anything just reasonably flat level ground.

PS: You will note the pyramid happens to be near a very nice river flowing in the correct direction. So, they don't exactly need to build hundreds of miles of roads, just enough to minimize effort.

>The normal combat load in the US army is 60 to 100 pounds including body armor and batteries. People are expected to travel long distances over rough terain.

Wearing specially mounted load, in specially designed clothing, hooks and suck, and nicely distributed among various body parts.

And even the higher end of that range (100 pounds) is still 1/55 the weight of the huge, monolithic, piece of rock.

>People building these things where not stupid. These stones where not being lifted over boulders or anything just flat level ground.

They didn't have to be stupid to have to lift them over non-flat ground. They just had to not have a source of such rocks in a straight line over flat ground to the pyramids.

Plus, when they got them there, they had to raise them appropriately.

Not to mention the cutting of those stones at the quarry itself.

Wearing specially mounted load, in specially designed clothing, hooks and suck, and nicely distributed among various body parts.

They are also expected to be able to move someone else with most of that gear attached to the both of them.

Really, carrying 50 pounds most of the day or lifting 200 pounds off the ground and moving to is reasonable for most physically fit people.

>Really, carrying 50 pounds most of the day or lifting 200 pounds off the ground and moving to is reasonable for most physically fit people.

What I try to get across is that this is not some army backpack and paraphernalia.

We're talking going in extreme heat (Egypt!), with sandals on your feet, and with 20+ people coordinating to pull a 2.5 ton rock (with some larger rocks going up to 6 tons). And then somehow pull it up, up to 400+ feet.

And even for the army, most of them having to carry 200 pounds for any extended period will end up royally fucked up after a few hours of this, much less entire years of working on such projects for hours every day...

Ok, I am not saying people are applying 200 lb of force for long distances. Rather, if doing so for ~6 inches makes the rest of the process simplified it is a viable option. Especially if you are selecting the strongest groups from ~40,000+ workers.

For a direct comparison you can look at how many people moved litters over long distances. There are a few natural poisons to carry a litter especially if you can group people by height. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_(vehicle) People would get swapped in an out for long trips allowing for faster speeds, but up to ~100lb per person via logs was not uncommon.

> What I try to get across is that this is not some army backpack and paraphernalia.

Actually, do you know that for certain? These were decades long efforts, at least, so some specialized harnesses and paraphernalia probably were invented along the way.

Is one stone every five minutes supposed to sound implausible? Because it seems perfectly reasonable to me. The work would be massively parallelized.

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