Great pyramid of Giza -- Could we rebuild it?

Nathyn

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I was arguing with a creationist, and they claimed that humanity is becoming less advanced as an argument against evolution. They cited the well-known linguistics study a while back in which asserted that human language overall is becoming less complex.

I rebutted this claim by citing some of the recent modern advances: a photo of the Manhattan skyline, the ITER reactor, a defense robot by the Pentagon, and a chart of Moore's law.

He responded by claiming that we couldn't rebuild the Great Pyramid of Giza, because we couldn't cut and arrange stones with their same amount of precision.

Now, I've looked and I can't find any exact information on this... I have found some sources claiming that their sculpting and arranging of stones was more advanced than modern technology.

Is this true?

Three things to consider:

#1. Similar claims have been made about the stone spheres of Costa Rica, the Nazca lines, and crop circles, but this has been conclusively proven wrong by people making duplicates (often miniatures) of the originals... I'm thinking this is just another case.

#2. Would thousands of years of erosion (mostly from sandstorms) cause the stones to fit together more tightly?

#3. Couldn't they achieve almost a perfect fit by shoving rock that's too large against the hole you're trying to fill, scraping the corners repeatedly, until it fits?

And while we're on the subject: Anybody have any theories as to how they moved the stones used to construct the Moai and Stonehenge?
 
We can make bricks so they are all the same. The only reason we cannot build such things as the Pyramids now is that there is no need. In those days they had access to lots of cheap labour.

To move large blocks of stone you can use straight pieces of logs for wheels plus lots of cheap labour. Another method is to use water as lubricant, plus lots of cheap labour.
 
I would agree we can and have the technological means to do so but why would we? A pyramid takes up too much space. It might be more aerodynamic, if it is, but the land required would be better served to build three smaller structures than one large.

That said one large may serve a multitude of purposes that might be as beneficial.
 
This is one of the silly claims made by verious brands of believers: We couldn't build the pyramids today, so this means that humans are degrading/aliens built them/there were great lost technologies/they were made by magic/etc.

Of course we could build the pyramids today, especially if we were allowed to use modern technology (recruiting the necessary manpower to build them the old way might prove an insurmountable obstacle). It is a huge but fairly simple engineering task. If anybody doubts this, I have an offer for you: If you provide the funding, I'll build you a pyramid (manage the building project).

... And herein lies the trouble: It is virtually impossible to build a pyramid (in the scale of the Giza pyramids) today, because nobody will foot a multiple billion $ bill for something as uniquely useless as a pyramid.

Hans
 
Big pyramids look very impressive but they are in terms of technology required to build them and architecturally very simple structures. All they are is a shaped, pretty much solid, mound of stones.

ETA - and yes at one time we didn't have a very good idea how (for example) the Egyptian pyramids were built but today there really isn't much controversy.
 
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Hans is right. This is hooey.

Technology changes because new methods supercede old ones. This may be because the new method is superior technically or better economically.
How did the Egyptians build pyramids? By using large numbers of skilled stonemasons and lots of cheap labour.
If we built one today, we would use glass , steel , cranes and helicopters.

There's nothing exceptional about the quality of the stonework in the pyramids. The tolerances are far cruder than in Victorian buildings- and greatly inferior to the work in some mediaeval cathedrals.




This website http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/Page1.htm may impress your friend. It shows methods used by a retired American carpenter to show how megalithic builders could have moved large stones without power tools. His methods may not be the ones used, but he clearly demonstrates that such methods exist.
 
Like this one:
61894166_d7066f4d49.jpg


(The local story is that to reduce costs they altered the design to make it a stepped pyramid.)
 
The thing is, though, is that they precisely cut and arranged rock in ways that were superior to what we know we can do with primitive tools... So, how'd they do it?

Wikipedia says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_Of_Giza#Construction_theories

The passages inside the pyramid are all extremely straight and precise, such that the longest of them, referred to as the descending passage, which is 350' 0.25" long deviates from being truly straight by less than 0.25 inches, while one of the shorter passages with a length of just over 150 feet deviates from being truly straight by a mere 0.020 inches. These and the above statistics prove the pyramid to be literally the most accurately constructed building on the face of the earth despite having been created several millennia ago. All theories which sufficiently allow for this level of accuracy assume a level of technology approximately equal to or exceeding current technology, at least in the area of tool making and construction.
Click to expand...
 
I wish I had video taped the documentary I saw a while back on pyramids. They mentioned some that collapsed during construction. They also mentioned another that is crooked because the foundations shifted during construction, so the architects change the angles of the walls so that it didn't collapse.

The most interesting part, though, was the claim that the pyramids only look cool on the outside, and around the rooms and hallways. The guys doing the documentary claimed that the largest part of the volume of the pyramids is just rubble - boulders and the scraps left from trimming the nice stones. They built the interior walls and the outside walls of properly dressed and set stones, and filled the space between with packed junk. They had a nifty animation about it, as well as some footage of a section of a collapsed pyramid wall that clearly showed the rubble filling inside the neat walls.

Regardless, if there were need to do so a pyramid could be built that could match any of the existing ones.

There's no real mystery as to how they were built - loads of hard work by very determined people. The exact methods aren't known, but as someone else has posted there are ways to move heavy loads by hand - and more than one way to accomplish almost any task.

If a pyramid were to be built today, I'd expect a combination of different heavy machines to be used in moving the stones rather than throwing thousands of laborers at the job.
 
*chuckle*

Well, in the OP, you didn't say 'today with their tools.' You said 'we couldn't cut and arrange the stones with the same amount of precison.' Well, actually, it would probably be difficult to build that sloppy what with laser levels and whatnot.

In other words, we could do a far, far better job than they did. As Hans said, fund me, and I will build it. I'll build a pyramid that's twice the size and far more precise in the middle of freaking Illinois.

Erm....but you fund it..:p
 
Nathyn said:
The thing is, though, is that they precisely cut and arranged rock in ways that were superior to what we know we can do with primitive tools... So, how'd they do it?

Wikipedia says:

The passages inside the pyramid are all extremely straight and precise, such that the longest of them, referred to as the descending passage, which is 350' 0.25" long deviates from being truly straight by less than 0.25 inches, while one of the shorter passages with a length of just over 150 feet deviates from being truly straight by a mere 0.020 inches. These and the above statistics prove the pyramid to be literally the most accurately constructed building on the face of the earth despite having been created several millennia ago. All theories which sufficiently allow for this level of accuracy assume a level of technology approximately equal to or exceeding current technology, at least in the area of tool making and construction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_Of_Giza#Construction_theories
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

I can think of a couple of ways to get that accuracy, using nothing but the tools they would have had to hand.

The most obvious is to set a slightly oversized stone intentionally with a slight overhang, then trim and dress it to fit perfectly.
 
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The Wiki quote:
The passages inside the pyramid are all extremely straight and precise, such that the longest of them, referred to as the descending passage, which is 350' 0.25" long deviates from being truly straight by less than 0.25 inches, while one of the shorter passages with a length of just over 150 feet deviates from being truly straight by a mere 0.020 inches. These and the above statistics prove the pyramid to be literally the most accurately constructed building on the face of the earth despite having been created several millennia ago. All theories which sufficiently allow for this level of accuracy assume a level of technology approximately equal to or exceeding current technology, at least in the area of tool making and construction.
Click to expand...

This is rubbish. The precision of modern bridges etc. is much higher, and we have tools that can provide precisions several orders of magnitude better, so that part is simply false. Also, I suspect the information is false, especially the .02 inch figure. Alone erosion by age would make for a poorer surface definition of sandstone than that. Nevertheless, it doesn't take advanced instruments to achieve such precision.

Hans
 
Darat said:
Like this one: [qimg]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/31/61894166_d7066f4d49.jpg?v=0[/qimg]

(The local story is that to reduce costs they altered the design to make it a stepped pyramid.)
Click to expand...

Heh, I was just about to post that, my mum works in that building.
 
MRC_Hans said:
The Wiki quote:


This is rubbish. The precision of modern bridges etc. is much higher, and we have tools that can provide precisions several orders of magnitude better, so that part is simply false. Also, I suspect the information is false, especially the .02 inch figure. Alone erosion by age would make for a poorer surface definition of sandstone than that. Nevertheless, it doesn't take advanced instruments to achieve such precision.

Hans
Click to expand...
The channel tunnel rail link was built wwith an accuracy of ±25 mm horizontally and ±20 mm vertically. If it was built with the accuracy of the decending passage descriped above it would have been up to 10 foot out.
 
I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that the great pyramid was a few feet longer along one base length than along the adjoining one.

Didn't Eric Von Danniken (sp?) make claims like these about the pyramids? (The man who counted artistic depictions of skeletons as proof that aliens visited us, because how could ancient humans know what a skeleton looked like before x-rays?)

At any rate, could the ancients build a laser printer? A ballpoint pen? Launch men into space, fer chrissakes?
 
Heard another story way back, it was probably that one that started me out on scepticis'm. One of my teachers told about this man who had calcluated the measurements of the great pyramid. He had discoveret that phi could be found in all numbers (sidelenght = nnn*phi) and i thought wow, these ancient egyptians knew about Phytagoras & Co long before they were born. But then it dawned. If you use a wheel to make your measurements and that would have been a logical tool for them then phi IS present in all measurements.
Ohh well natural explanations are SO boring..

Actually they didn't build them off course, The pyramids was buildt by some Gauls with the gelp of the magic potion made by the famous druid Getafix.
 

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