New discovery throws light on mystery of pyramids' construction | Hacker News Reader

New discovery throws light on mystery of pyramids' construction

theguardian.com

60 pointsHillaryBriss38 comments

I always like seeing discoveries about the pyramids, but I don't get the feeling this tells us as much as the article wants the reader to believe.

the job of hauling into place the huge blocks of stone used to build the monuments may have been completed more quickly than previously thought

There is no current timeline for how the great pyramid was built. The only frame of reference that we have is the assumption that the pyramid was built in Kufu's lifetime and all other estimates are derived from that.

We really have no idea how long it took the original builders to move those stones.

Each stone weighs an average of 2.5T (up to 10T) .. and the stones were quarried from hundreds of kilometers away..

With a total of 2.5 million giant stones coming from such extreme distances, I don't get the feeling we're much closer to coming up with an actual timeline for how long this took.

There are some suggestions that the stones were not quarried, but are ancient concrete. E.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/africa/23iht-pyrami...

This would make the transportation problem much easier to solve.

> With a total of 2.5 million giant stones coming from such extreme distances

Afaik most of the stones were quaried very near the pyramids. Most of the stones aren’t the “quality stones” and didn’t have to travel distances:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

“The Great Pyramid consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks which most believe to have been transported from nearby quarries.”

If we assume 40 years (350400) to build the pyramids they had to quarry, deliver and setup 6.5 blocks every hour of every day.

Seems doable, especially in a country with population probably below 1mln at that time. /s

distance to quarry would only affect stone latency, not stone throughput, anyway :D

Not really true. In networking throughput vs latency rely on two different things. When it comes to moving huge stone blocks they rely on the same limited resource (humans).

They would have used boats on the Nile to carry stones long ways. They probably only did that for the finish blocks (the polished limestone most of which is gone).

Only if we assume a large enough transportation labor force ;)

Not every day. Studies have shown that the pyramids were built by ordinary people (as opposed to slaves) who mainly worked on it during the parts of the year when they couldn't work in their fields.

I guess you've never seen: the quarries for the most of the stone blocks were effectively immediately by the pyramids:

https://www.cheops-pyramide.ch/image/map-Karte/pyramid-quarr...

I'm 90% sure I remember watching a documentary from 10+ years ago about a French egyptologist postulating the same mechanism and finding evidence for these ramps on site. I remember specifically how it solved a major puzzle pertaining to the transportation of such heavy blocks within the upper levels of the pyramid as it was being constructed.

I watched a Nova about it, where the did experiments. Had to be 5+ years ago.

I wasn't expecting a photo, so I wasn't disappointed.

here is a photo i came across while researching this more:

https://news.sky.com/story/great-pyramids-discovery-sheds-li...

I can’t tell if you’re joking. Is the second photo showing something important?

The second photo shows the ramp that they discovered.

Yes, but it’s not exactly an informative image.

Maybe you are looking for an illustration instead of an image?

The angle isn't great, yeah, but you can see a) steps, b) one post hole. That's what's described in TFA.

'Egyptologists stumble across ramp' given the incredible amount of research, mapping and unanswered questions about the 'mystery' this seems pretty flimsy stuff to me.

they didn't stumble across the ramp, they stumbled across the post holes in the ramp.

Interesting that they discuss pulling via human labor but not with bullocks, which the pharaonic Egyptians did have. Could it be there are no such pictures of animals pulling stones?

Nothing beats a human for long distance travel ability on land. Birds go farther, but they fly. Many animals can sprint faster, but on the timescale of a few days all land animals would drop dead trying to keep up with a human walking. Sure the pace is slow, and the amount a single human can do is less than other animals. However for long distances humans do better than any other animal.

The bullock might have been useful for hauling a short hard distance (out of the quarry for example). However if the quarry is a long ways away (this might or might not be true) humans are the best labor choice.

Can you give some references to back up that claim? What about horses, camels, elephants, to name just a few obvious examples? Thanks.

Most theories put it down to our heat dissipation, which is really good compared to other mammals. Here's an older reference, an article about the Born to Run book: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27well.html

Another useful google term is endurance hunting (theorized to be why humans are slow and weak, but have superior endurance)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

Persistence hunt in the Kalahari.

That's a very different workload than pulling a heavy weight for long distances though.

It is important to point out that heavy is relative. Heavy to a human is light to a bullock.

If I'm reading this correctly, they found post holes and a steeper ramp than expected, which leads them to believe that they both pushed the blocks up the slope and pulled them, through a "pulley system".

I'm not so sure. I remember from high school that the pulley was one of the five simple machines noted by Hero of Alexandria, but he lived over 2000 years after the Great Pyramid was built. I have no idea if the pulley was possessed by the ancient Egyptians - absent additional evidence, I would assume that they likely just wrapped ropes around the vertical posts. That wouldn't qualify as a pulley (which is by definition a wheel and axle) but would explain the holes and the steeper slope, but wouldn't require a drastic change in how we understand that the pyramids were built.

People have proposed a pulley that the Egyptians could have had. Not sure if there is any evidence that they did have it beyond what's mentioned in the article.

https://egyptianpulley.com

how about a drawing or two. 3d even better. Maybe my sinuses are making my head explode but reading about how...just not doing it.

But why do we insist to think that the the pyramids were built with such primitive tools?

It's not only the weight of the stone blocks and the distance but also the mathematical precision, the perfectly round holes drilled in some stones, the puzzle shaped carved stones to stand earthquakes and the perfectly chiseled pharaoh stone statues and all the amazing things there that it makes me wonder why do we insist they used chisels and ropes and all that things that we associate with primitives?

Why is so hard to admit that they had some kind of advanced technology that for some reason has been lost?

Is this so scary to admit for a culture that wants to think is the pinnacle of human history? The same thinking that we are the center of the universe type of mentality.

> Why is so hard to admit that they had some kind of advanced technology that for some reason has been lost?

Well, how advanced exactly are we talking about?

You write like they either used chisels or laser cutters.

>but also the mathematical precision

How precise exactly? What are you talking about exactly? You can do incredibly precise things without "advanced" tools.

> perfectly round holes

A perfectly round anything isn't even possible. What exactly do you mean? Round is one of the easier things to accomplish. A very precise square hole or ellipse would be more interesting!

Precision was easy. The great pyramid's east and west sides are very well aligned with the meridians they lie on. Impressive? Not really. They surveyed well and they used the two near-polar circumpolar start available to them at the time. The would wait until those two stars were aligned vertically to the horizon and then they laid down ropes/strings/markers along the sides and at the corners, then they built within those constraints and the north side necessarily came out shorter than the south side. They might not even have noticed that the north and south sides came out to be different lengths, who knows.

There were simple, primitive, and basic astronomic techniques trivially available to the ancient Egyptians for precise layout of large objects like the pyramids. This may seem surprising to us now, but if you think about it, it becomes obvious.

> advanced technology that for some reason has been lost?

Generally we need evidence for these kind of things, not throwing guesses into an evidence-free void. And given how heavily Egypt has been studied, it seems surprising that we've not found any evidence of such tools?

It couldn't have been that advanced. Anything too advanced would have proved so immensely useful beyond merely building pyramids that it wouldn't have been lost.

The most advanced technology I could believe they had is: a) primitive pulleys (as described in TFA), b) rollers (but not wheels; those came later), c) some sort of limestone cement they could use to pour blocks in situ (in molds) rather than pull/push them up ramps. Anything much more advanced than that is way too hard to believe.

The fact that wheels once invented were not lost is highly suggestive that any generally-useful advanced technology would not have been lost. Some construction techniques that were not needed for anything other than pyramid building could have been lost, yes, and that might include primitive pulleys, but not advanced pulleys as those would be useful in loading and unloading boats, and building all sorts of things besides pyramids.

Anything like alien tech is out because if it happened, they didn't leave enough evidence to believe it, so we might as well not.

Really, Occam's Razor applies here.

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