Ancient civilizations had fairly thin survive or starve margins. Civilizations that sit atop the best agricultural land and build vanity projects instead of armies and practical infrastructure don't tend to sit atop that land for long. While we don't have precise records nobody is perplexed about how they moved stones nor how they mobilized the population, we have many well understood examples of ancient civilizations doing these things. It's largely a question of what other special circumstances let them engage in these projects so prolifically when Baybylon and China built <checks notes> walls.
Plenty of people, including myself, are perplexed about how they moved stones. Specifically, how 60--80 ton stones were moved up.
That's it. That's all there is to it.
Nothing more.
It isn't complicated, it's leverage, ramps, muscles, and patience.
It is likely that the entire construction program was planned around the 10-20 years it took to move the 80-ton weight-relieving stones much like how today I plan engineering and manufacturing efforts around the components with the longest lead times.
There were very few 80t blocks and those only had to go halfway up. Most were 2.5t.
Sacsayhuamán in Peru has 100t+ stones that were quarried 35km from the fortress location and transported up a steep incline. It took 6,000 men to move the stones.
Inca (1438-1570), Wari (600-1100) or Tiwanaku (300-1100)? Or some previous civilization?
Some of the columns, obelisks and statues are very large and heavy. Moving them would be a serious challenge, but not impossible. Some weigh 100 tons, one or two are much heavier again. The unfinished obelisk in the Aswan quarry is 1,000 tons, which begins to stretch credulity.
Consider that many columns and obelisks were stolen by the Romans: most squares in Rome seem to have an Egyptian obelisk; the Pantheon has single-piece granite columns from Egypt (topped with Roman capitals). However, the Romans did have iron, capstans and pulleys.
But there are several unexplained aspects of ancient Egyptian artifacts:
- Lower casing stones, facing on nearby 'temples' and internal chambers (often below the actual pyramid or mastaba), are built of precise megalithic granite. The granite blocks often fit together with surprising precision, and have features such as 'turning the corner' which require extra, strictly unnecessary, work (interestingly, also seen in Andean megalithic building).
- Granite boxes in lower chambers are large, heavy and precisely machined to high tolerances (flatness, parallelism).
- Vases found in lower tunnels and chambers (esp. under Djoser's step pyramid at Saqqara) are very precisely machined granite (circles, curves, symmetry, thinness) often to a few 1/1000 inch. They usually have two handles, meaning they cannot be simply lathed - and dynastic Egyptians did not even have the lathe.
- There are many single-piece statues and columns made from granite, with precisely machined curved surfaces and remarkably accurate symmetry.
- There are no known tools from dynastic Egypt which can reproduce precise curved surfaces in granite. Copper chisels and sand-lubricated copper saws or tube drills can work cylindrical holes and planar cuts in granite - but they take a very long time, and consume huge quantities of valuable copper. They cannot cut precise curved surfaces, or hollow out vases. Tube drill cores from ancient Egypt show spiral grooves, which cannot be made by copper+sand tools. The dynastic Egyptians did not have the wheel, the lathe, the potter's wheel, pulleys, capstans or any iron tools.
- No lower-level granite chambers, granite boxes or granite vases, have any decoration or writing. No bodies or mummies have been found in pristine boxes, although one or two have been found in chambers known to be opened in later periods. There are no hieroglyphics. Some perfect granite statues do have hieroglyphics carved into them, but these are clearly later and lower quality than the original work (the hieroglyphics are usually just a royal cartouche 'claiming' the artifact).
- It is strange that the most perfect granite artifacts are presumed to be the oldest artifacts. Later dynastic Egyptian periods did not reproduce that level of technique and precision. They worked in softer limestone, and their jars are all soft alabaster. However the oldest artifacts were created, the skills to make them were somehow lost.
- There is no solid dating of the oldest chambers, boxes, vases, obelisks or statues. There is no organic material for carbon dating. The lower chambers are often subterranean, and could have existed before the pyramids. Most archaeological timelines assume that a rough scratched royal cartouche means the whole artifact or building was created by that pharaoh. There is no doubt that dynastic Egyptians used, repaired and extended older structures, but there's no evidence they originated all of them.
- Finally, I tentatively mention the most famous controversy: weathering on exposed limestone surfaces, esp. Sphinx enclosure, but also pyramid temple complexes; and astronomical alignments that make most sense for prehistoric configuration of the equinoxes.
* [Here the word 'granite' means usually red granite, but also quartz, dolerite, andesite, basalt or other very hard igneous rocks.]
** [There is one caveat about their copper, sourced from Sinai and Red Sea coast, which had high impurities of arsenic and nickel that may have made it harder than pure copper, but not as hard as later copper-tin bronze.]
The final 'modern mystery' is why simple questions about known sites are not answered by non-intrusive scanning and excavation. Two of many examples:
- Chambers under the Sphinx and tunnels under the causeway from the Sphinx. There are openings of shafts clearly visible. A drill was put down in front of the Sphinx, it hit red granite, but nothing was done to investigate.
- The labyrinth at Hawara, which has several Greek/Roman eyewitness accounts, and even an old GPR survey validating the story, but it has not been excavated.
The result is that recent surveys are attempted using satellite sensing or other remote techniques that do not require sanctioned presence on the sites themselves. The results are somewhere between fanciful and ridiculous, but a simple GPR/seismic survey would be an obvious corrective to any misinformation.
It's also not a question of money. Firstly, plenty of rich donors and crowd-sourcing would sponsor such work, and secondly, any uncovered sites and artifacts would generate tourist revenue.
The idea that it’s a mystery how the ancients built large projects like this and Easter island is simply modern chauvinism.
Or the chamber that was “theorized” by crackpots, included into Assassins Creed based on said “crackpots”, and then revealed to actually exist by sonography?
I think it’s far more sycophantic to insist that the ancient Egyptians were “primitive” rather than “advanced” when it was built, but hey, I’m against the grain and thus a crackpot.
You’re saying there’s evidence of structures miles below which pyramids? How were these structures detected? Who discovered them, using what methods?
Many people simply don't have any grasp of how complex technology is and how quickly and easily it is lost when unneeded and possibly but rarely redeveloped when needed again.
Heck I believe it was on this very website someone posted a study by a group of students who went to the actual quarry the stone was from, and actually carved out a stone using period techniques.
As far as I am concerned, pyramid denial is dead save a few absolute moronic hold outs who seem to believe copper tools cant cut stone.