interesting, yet controversial

Hi all, I just wanted to rehash this subject since we never really finished the discussion last month. I threw it in the anonmolies section because it is truly anomalous. I dare ANY Chemist, amateur or professional, to make the case for this process.

Here's a little something to "moisten your appetite": (this is Cut & pasted from the nutsite)

Quote:


Generations of school children the world over have been asked to imagine vast teams of Egyptian slaves carving the stones, hauling them to the site of the pyramid and hoisting them up until each one was placed in its exact position. But, how could this have been done?
The Great Pyramid of Kheops is comprised of about 2.5 million blocks, most weigh two tons and could have been hauled by no less than sixty men. But some weigh up to seventy tons and these are to be found, not at the base of the pyramid, but some forty meters high. Since the ancient Egyptians did not yet have the wheel, they would have needed more than two thousand men to haul each block.

How could this pyramid have been erected in the 20-year reign of Pharaoh Kheops? To accomplish the task, at least 400 blocks per day would have had to be put in position as from the first day of the pharaoh's accession to the throne.

Hundreds of thousands of slaves would have been working simultaneously - squeezed shoulder to shoulder in the space of a single block in a modern city. But this would not been feasible. In such conditions the men would not have been able to budge.

How could the Ancient Egyptians have cut these stones, which are extremely hard, with only the most primitive of tools?. At best they would have been able to use copper saws, and copper is a softish metal, incapable of hewing the hard limestone blocks from which the early pyramids are constructed.

How was it possible to transport the large stones when the wheel had not yet been invented and there were no pulleys to hoist them into the air?
If the stones were carved, as most people believe, where are the fragments of broken stone left over ? Limestone frequently splits on being cut. 5 million tons of limestone blocks must have produced millions of broken blocks and fragments. Yet, not a trace of them has ever been found.

How could a civilization without hard metals have carved the millions of blocks of the Great Pyramid to ten different and exactly-calculated lengths in order to set them in patterns throughout the whole structure to eliminate the formation of vertical joints?

How could these joints between adjacent blocks be achieved so perfectly? The joints between millions of blocks,vertically and horizontaly are not more that 2 mm wide. How were the blocks cut and leveled without motor-driven machinery or diamond drills?

The answer has at last been found, and it totally contradicts the stone-carving theories. The pyramids were cast in situ. Curiously enough, that explanation had been there always, waiting to be discovered by examining the mysterious stones from which the pyramids were built.



If you would like more information (and I'm sure you will) follow this link at your own risk
http://www.geopolymer.org/science_archaeol...rve_kheops.html

Damn you for starting off another Egypt argument!

I don't know if this is the case for Kheops, but many pyramids designed for a particular pharoah were not finished before their death. Construction would continue years after.

I'm not a chemist - I'm a physicist.... Damn it all to hell.... I wish I could jump on this one with both feet!

Rules, rules, rules.

sounds like "i'm a doctor not a brick layer"
Thank you mr scot
Sulu
warp factor one

Aye Cap'n - I'm givin her all I got!

I need to go lay some bricks. TTFN

fascinating!

i too would like to see an analysis of this stone-making approach.

p.s. i love the "as seen on tv" logos on the last page!

i know ur answer...
its...

You have the best avatars.... Makes me think of..... Oh never mind, I'm sure you get that all of the time.

As for Geopolymer Institue, think Sesame Street, but not quite as realistic.

Concrete pyramid block... Oi vey.

thanks. i never heard of this institute before (perhaps that is why, & why the "as seen on tv" logos are there! yup, it was on tv so it must be true.).

Yep.

+ = Pyramids

Why to cast concrete in relatively small blocks, while they could have made a huge concrete platform, with a much minor expense?

yeah got me thinking why would they do it like that
its got to be
because the aliens told them to
or
because they wanted to keep us guessing

True^^^^

or
they didn't do that because the pyramids are not made from concrete blocks
they didn't do that because the pyramids are not made from concrete blocks
I admit thats a real unlikely posibility and its a very far fetched idea but thought it worth mentioning twice

A very controversial theory marduk...

yeah
i shall get laughed at, at my next egyptoholics anonymous meeting

lol, I think I may have to join, all this pyramid talk is making me angry.

Generations of school children the world over have been asked to imagine vast teams of Egyptian slaves carving the stones, hauling them to the site of the pyramid and hoisting them up until each one was placed in its exact position.

That's pretty much what I was taught in school, but now we're learning much more about the pyramids.

Very interesting!

Thrice...

On the contrary, the blocks weren't cut, but split.

Step 1: Dig a niche into the middle of the line where you want to block to be split.
Step 2: Hit across the line with a hammer, causing small cracks down the line
Step 3: Use a wedge, pound it in through the niche, causing the rock to split near perfectly.

I've seen it done, and this is a method that was available to the egyptians.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egy.../quarrying.html

I saw a documentary about the Hoover Dam.. how they built that.

That had something to do with casting concrete into moulds as they went up the structure. It was not uncommon for workers to get buried in the concrete occasionally.

The Romans used to make wooden moulds too, and cast concrete into them, and drop them in the sea to cure them. Then they would knock off the wood, and you have an arch. In solid stone.

This is a basic building technique it would seem, but.. would the Egyptians have had this knowledge?

rest my case

HAHAHA Mr. ED hates egyptian posts haha.. but hell there is so much to theorize about them.. cmon Mr.Ed join the Train =) ... THE MOE TRAIN!!!

I will never join the train!

I actually liked the Egyptians untill this section was bombarded by Egpytian pyarmid talk! I am interested in their wars and social heirachy etc.

Who gave you the right to join the Moe Train? The Moe Train is reserved for a certain special few, and *checks the list*, I don't see your name on it.

Funny you said that haha... i just said i was thinking about saying welcome aboard.. but then i saw MOES new picture of the train... today actually and yeah... its a skeptic train haha ILL WALK =) ...

Yeah, I figured as much.
And it's not a "new" picture of the Train. I was the one who helped make the Moe Train a reality, and that was quite some time ago.

Hmmm I have never heard of this moe train before...

Believe it or not, but when cement was invented, the roman senate tried to prohibite its use for building, since it was believed a concrete building would have collapsed, not being as strong as a stone one. Probably, roman cement was even better than today's.

How can you say Roman cement was better than todays?

We want some concrete proof...

lol, thanks for that...

Obviously, I'm referring to ordinary concrete. not to reenforced concrete.
The Pantheon, in Rome, has the largest concrete dome in the world, with a 43,2 mt diameter (142 ft), even bigger than St Peter's dome. It was built in the I century AD, and survived earthquakes, fires and sieges. I seriously doubt a modern concrete structure could be any better than this.

If the aim was to create concrete that could last for a very long time, I am sure we could.

Not concrete, quaried stone hands down, but not Egyptian.

Ah ok, well the point is there anyway.

Not saying I support this whole concrete laying theory. But as to why they would have done blocks instead of a huge platform of concrete its kind of simple. When concrete "cures" it has to go through a certiain amount of chemical reactions, produces a lot of heat and so on and a concrete block is not cured until these reactions and heat dissipate until they do the block is susceptible to air bubbles and is extremely weak. And the person who mentioned the hoover dam, this is exactly why they poured it in stepped molds. If they had just made it from a single mold of concrete it would have taken literally thousands of years to cure. But anyway thats a reason they would have to use blocks instead of huge swaths of the stuff. Although I seriously doubt it was concrete anyway.

Cheers all !