Re: Pyramidiocy (was Re: Strange Maths)
Ted Holden (medved@access5.digex.net)
26 Jul 1995 16:11:57 -0400
jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes:
>In article <3uh0r5$jpm@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
>harryr6047@aol.com (HarryR6047) writes:
>>
>>But someone builds this monument in the middle of the desert.
>They built it in the middle of a graveyard. That might be a clue.
>> And we
>>really can't figure out how they did it. (Remember a group of Japanese
>>engineers tried to duplicate the feat in scale a number of years back and
>>couldn't.)
>Speak for yourself. It is possible they were better at using the tools
>they had at hand than we are at reinventing those tools. What I recall
>is that some people have been able to duplicate the construction methods
>by paying attention to the information left by the ancient egyptians.
>They even went so far as to document it on "This Old Pyramid" for Nova.
100-ton blocks were being used for the pyramids. That's 200,000 lbs.
Assuming any one slave might could pull 50 lbs of that across sand,
that's 4000 guys, minimum, and with the inefficiencies of ropes and
everything else figured in, probably 6000 - 8000. That can't be done.
For starters, you couldn't get that many guys to pull in a reasonable
manner or organize such an effort at all. Any sort of saplings you tried
to put under such a block as rollers would be sawdust after the first 5".
Then there's the problem of pulling such a block across sand in the
desert; it'd be exactly like trying to pull a filing cabinet across a
carpet. Unless you could figure a way to have the ropes lift and pull at
the same time (200,000 geese instead of the 6000 guys...), you'd just
pull the nose of the block down into the sand and the process would stop.
And don't forget the problem of having 6000 guys pull in a straight line
on the higher levels of the pyramid; there'd be no room for it. Further,
trying to set up a pole and pull around the pole would lose too much force
from the pull, even assuming you could set up such a pole and have it
stay there which, in all likelihood, is not a good assumption.
The only two assumptions which help anything are 1. that the Etyptians
had advanced machinery at an early age, for which we've no evidence, or
2. That they did not experience gravity as we do. Believe it or not,
there is evidence for that possibility.
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