Who built the pyramids?

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You call it simple architecture, when it is nothing of the sort. Simple in principle perhaps, but not simple in execution.
As I have nothing better to do, I can run through a simple rough draft.
These pyramids conform to one overall site design, so I am of the opinion that all three of these monuments at Giza were planned to the last detail before the first stone was quarried.
( This deviates from the official BS, so there is no need to point that out. )
So my question to a potential engineering or architectural draftsman out there is: How many hours would it take to create detail and assembly drawings of over five million multi-ton blocks, assembled into these phenomenally accurate colossal structures? There are significant internal passageways found in the Great Pyramid, and it is a fair assumption that similar passages remain to be found in the other two Giza monuments, but leaving that aside, the Great Pyramid's passages had to be stress relieved to prevent internal collapse. They have millions of tons bearing down on them every day for thousands of years.
These passages are all granite lined and are so accurate that they are watertight.
So perfectly have these been set, that to this day not one single crack can be found in any of them and they were all layed without mortar. This requires an accuracy that can only be matched by state of the art machines today.
The outer casing stones when initially set were sealed with mortar so strong it is still almost invisible, and sealed the outside of the monuments to essentially watertight.
But then the entire construction is so precise as to be essentially without error.
In engineering, and in the construction of car engines for example, there is a thing called 'tolerance stack-up'. All components of a project must be cut within tolerances. Usually expressed as plus or minus some fraction of an inch, usually in thousandths.
So if we were to attempt these constructions, knowing there are 203 courses from base to summit, a margin of error of one tenth of an inch per core block potentially stacks up to over a foot and a half by the top.
So you cant just stack the pre-cut blocks, you would have to level off every course as you went.
This thing has a footprint of over 13 acres. That is just the first course, you have to do the same thing over two hundred more times.
Every single stone had to be lifted twice, once out of the quarry, and once up to the level of construction, and some of these weigh 16 tons each and get lifted over a hundred feet in the air.
With crews of coordinated workers cutting, lifting, shaping, transporting, lifting, placing, leveling, checking, rejecting incorrect blocks or reworking them in position, surveying passages, matching and fitting everything to astronomical accuracy.
And the sheer scale of the thing makes the mind reel at every step.
But that is just in theory.
Any time a construction is built there occurs the unexpected, and the time taken to rectify oversights accidents and mistakes can run up to half the project time in all.
I haven't made a dint on it and already I know I am not up to the task.
But then you call it 'simple architecture'.

The management of the project rivals, if not exceeds, the Apollo Project. And it was done without computers (electronic or electro-mechanical). Just papyrus, parchment, pen and ink. The managers, engineers and architects were first rate by ANY standard. Once the logistics and supply regimens were laid out, the hauling of the stones was relatively straightforward. The basic machine were, .... well basic. Levers, wedges and ramps. Aliens and their technology need not apply.

ruveyn

Now, as i have your attention...
...take a look at what I wrote at the first page of this thread, compare it with what you have asked about lately, and then tell me what is wrong with these assumptions compared with the assumptions made in The Pyramide Code, and please tell me where I or any of my sources are wrong...
...or come up with some new questions

And stop saying "aliens are not needed" until someone on this thread makes that claim.

It has been explained. Several times. There have also been links to videos demonstrating those techniques in use.

The fact that you will not be satisfied by any explanation that doesn't involve mysterious lost technologies that would have enabled the Egyptians to have founded a planet-wide empire in 2300 BC is immaterial. Occam's Razor applies here - when there is one explanation that involves nothing more than people being patient and creative, and another that involves strange advanced technologies that are theoretically impossible today being wielded by ancient civilizations, we go with the parsimonious explanation.

There was no Lost Golden Age when people were wiser and better than they are now. The story of civilization is the story of a long slog upward from the mires of ignorance and superstition, into a world of learning and wonders. We're still on the climb.

The march of civilization does has its stumbling points. Alexandria, the ancient city founded by Alexander the Great was Brain City. It was an amazing center of creativity and just plain smarts. However it fell on bad times. The famous Library was destroyed several times and many of the books were lost. It took another 1400 years for Europe to reach and then surpass the intellectual doings of the Alexandrians.

How many cities do you know of where they made a condition of landing ships there, that any books aboard the ships be submitted for copying. Some city/states fought for glory, some for gold, some for brutal power. Alexandria strived, at least for a while, for intellectual excellence. When Alexandria when dark, it took nearly 1.5 millenia to come back and surpass her.

ruveyn

! !! !

Last edited by ripped on 31 Jan 2013, 5:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Its a good solid theory, backed up by evidence and I find nothing wrong with it.
except...
Why did the builders choose blocks of two and a half tons in weight?
The NOVA team could only manage blocks just over half this size, and used 12 men to move them, and that wasn't up an inclined plane.
Twice the size and uphill would call for perhaps 30 laborers per stone.
The hand tools shown would convincingly provide the finish and accuracy evident, however quarrying every stone with gangs of workers gradually eroding each block on all five sides as in the obelisk featured would have been a painstaking process.
So I wonder how long it would take one worker to liberate one sandstone block.
The blocks at the base start off from about 7 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet. To dig this out you need a trench of at least 18 inches around five or four sides. Grinding this out with smaller rocks for just one stone would take me about 16 hours at a guess.
Finishing a core block to size involves sawing off the outer inch or so to give a flat plane. To saw this area of material off without mishap using the tools provided, I would offer one hour per four foot side ( two men working one saw for 1/2 hour )
and double that for the remaining four sides. So that would be ten hours, give or take to finish one block.
They then have to be lifted and moved, stacked and hauled to the base, with the tools said to be available this could take a guess of two to four hours per block complete manhandling, but using gangs of 30. ( 30 times 3 say, 90 hours for one block )
Before a block is lifted to place, this estimates 16 man hours quarrying, ten man hours finishing and 90 man hours in logistics.
Working off averages, this gives a fair guess of 116 man hours per block prior to building.
To keep it simple, I multiply this by 2,000,000 for the amount of core blocks for the Great Pyramid alone, and I get the figure of two hundred and thirty two million man hours, prior to construction.
With workers working 8 hours per day and six days per week, fifty weeks per year, this would take 97,000 workers one year to do. So split over twenty years means 5000 skilled and semi skilled workers, just to make the core blocks, prior to construction.
Double that for the building and the casing stones and internals, and it looks like 10,000. All things considered the official story of 20,000 over twenty years fits comfortably inside the upper limits of this theory
Ladies and gentlemen, I stand corrected.
Now, why did they build it?

VERY well said, Sir!! !
Thank you!

what exactly IS the theory presented in the 'pyramid code'?

Can you state it succinctly?

Its claiming that the ancients at some vague unspecified time in the past had some vague unspecified thing called "high technology" - but that this "high technology" is not the same thing as the high technology we have created now since the industrial revolution that we have now. But we dont know what it was.

You have to admit that theough the film doesnt mention aliens it implies space aliens as a possibility for why the ancients had technological prowess that werent supposed to have. And if it aint aliens it something of equal paranormality.

So folks responding to this vague 'theory' use the term "aliens" as a catch-all to label it. Why not?

But since you object to the term 'aliens' so much- what would you have folks call it?

I have agreed with the theory put forth by Exploronaut.
Please read my post before this one.
I am satisfied with the explanations given as to how the pyramids were built.
My question now is: What were they were built for?

My archeology professor actually agreed with one point made by that Egyptian gentleman in the film: that the pyramids were built by "free labor, and not by slaves".

Not only that but that the reason they were built was as a make-work project to employ the still often seasonally idle Egyptian farmer and to buy his loyality to the pharoah (kinda like the new deal meets the space program) and to unify the nation into a sacred common goal.

Like the space program the relatively brief two century long Pyramid building fad at the start of Pharonic Egypt's almost 3000 year long history taught the egyptians about science-especially about masonry and engineering- and often via some hard knocks (atleast one early pyramid collapsed).

Egyptian pyramids evolved over the two centuries before the pyramid phase reached its climax and end with the big three at giza.

In 2800 BC upper egypt conqured lower egypt and the pharoahs had to figure out how to weld egypt into the world's first nation-state: a unified nation state several hundred miles long with millions of people (the only other civilization at that time was Sumer- in southern Iraq- a land the size of connecticut that was subdivided into several independant city states. Employing folks in public works projects was part of the state creating process.


Once the giza big three were finnished -both the egyptian state- and the arts and sciences of masonry and engineering- were firmly in place. So for the next 2600 years the pharoahs continued to build massive monumental stone structures- but never pyramids. They went on to more sophisticated structures with columns and horizontal beams that enclose more space and that are actually harder to build than pyramids (harder pound for pound of stone used).

Civilizations seem to go through phases in which they build massive artificial mountains of masonry.

The Sumerians, and Babylonians, built huge brick Ziggurats as temples in the hearts of their cities during roughly the same era (the third millenium bc) that the Egyptians were building pyramids out on the plain of Giza.

Then much later the american indians in mesoamerica began to form states - and the Olmec and the Maya also began to build "pyramids". These stone pyramids looked much like early style egyptian stepped pyramids, but functioned more like babylonian ziggurats- they were built in the middle of cities and were used to stage events.

So when humans start to form states- they like to build big artificial mountains to help aid and abett the state forming process. Early Pharonic Egypt was actually rather typical.

for the U.S. it was skyscrapers and massive dams. Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee are prime examples. Also the flood control channels on the Mississippi

Our last mega mega mega was the Apollo Program. It was pyramid building of the first magnitude.

ruveyn

It has been found spells written on the walls inside the pyramids, that has the function of helping souls on the way to the next world. In the pyramid of Khufu(the biggest of the pyramids of Giza) it hasn't been found any spells, but his name has been written there, and it is a sarcophagus there.
Which leads to the following conclusion:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IKRMZhl3-c[/youtube]
Pyramid of Unas
Pyramid text
The Pyramid of Khufu

Which is to say the Giza pyramids were not tombs.

Why do you suppose they were built.

Some say, the the Great Pyramid of Kufu was a 25 year long make work project to keep the farmer, artisans and construction jacks happy during the off seasons. No only that it pumped millions of whatever currency into the Egyptian economy. It also proved how mighty Egypt was. It was a put down of the Babylonians with their second rate zaggarats. You might say it was the Apollo Project of Ancient Times.

ruveyn