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Comment by givan | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

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.

> 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?

> 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.

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