this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Believe it or not, no aliens were likely involved! Just some very smart humans and a massive amount of labor.

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[–] Haagel@lemmings.world 77 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (67 children)

Scientists may have solved the mystery behind transporting some of the materials to the pyramid site: a dried-up a river

Fixed the title for you.

The construction of the Giza pyramids is still baffling. Some of the stones are purported to weigh 80 tons. That's four or five times more weight than what modern trucks can pull on paved roads.

It's not so farfetched to presume that this ancient civilization employed technology that is lost to time. I'm not talking about aliens and laser beams, but good ol' fashioned mathematics. They could have exploited a principle of leverage and incline that we simply don't understand or recognize. Or perhaps something entirely different from our six simple machines...

The problem with this theory, of course, is that we like to believe that humanity is always progressing and that we are superior to our forebears by default. That is ultimately a subjective opinion.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

For the record we do understand how they built it.

They used log rollers, ropes and lots and lots of people hauling. They brute forced it… which, the reason our trucks can’t haul that much has far more to do with the weight on the suspension and fuel efficiency. They said fuck-all to efficiency and literally threw bodies at it.

That said, We do sometimes need much heavier loads

It’s a fairly common solution- the Moai heads on Rapa Nui (easter island) and stone henge also come to mind. In the case of Egypt, they used a sled (or sled and rollers.)

For getting it up the face, they used packed earth ramps that they later removed. Actually, we still use this technique in construction today. (Specifically to get vehicle access up otherwise too-steep slopes)(and again, threw bodies at it. Lots and lots of bodies.)

There’s really only a few things that are impressive about the pyramids. The first is the sheer ego it took to order it built. Then there is the celestial alignment between all of them. And finally the sheer scale of the project and vast amounts of human labor that went into it.

What they determined is that the river allowed the blocks to be floated much closer than previously thought (even today barges are superior to trains, never mind trucking.)

[–] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's a new theory that the ramps were actually internal. I like it because it means they don't need to bring a lot of extra material and manpower to the site just for the ramps since they're built into the structure of the same material.

[–] Haagel@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago

I've also heard of this. It seems to me that this theory should be easy to confirm with some sort x-ray or radar or lidar or something, so that we can see the shape of the structure beneath the superficial layers...

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