Funny, I never wondered where the historical rubble got to.
▶ How the pyramids were built in Egypt - YouTube
Excerpt from the associated article:
▶ How the pyramids were built in Egypt - YouTube
Excerpt from the associated article:
Are Pyramids Made Out of Concrete? (1) – Geopolymer Institute
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Generations of school children the world over have been asked to imagine vast teams of Egyptian workers 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 men 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 horizontally 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.
Since the early eighties, Prof. Joseph Davidovits is proposing that the pyramids and temples of Old Kingdom Egypt were constructed using agglomerated limestone, rather than quarried and hoisted blocks of natural limestone. This type of fossil-shell limestone concrete would have been cast or packed into molds. Egyptian workmen went to outcrops of relatively soft limestone, disaggregated it with water, then mixed the muddy limestone (including the fossil-shells) with lime and tecto-alumino-silicate-forming materials (geosynthesis) such as kaolin clay, silt, and the Egyptian salt natron (sodium carbonate). The limestone mud was carried up by the bucketful and then poured, packed or rammed into molds (made of wood, stone, clay or brick) placed on the pyramid sides. This re-agglomerated limestone, bonded by geochemical reaction (called geopolymer cement), thus hardened into resistant blocks. In 1979, at the second International Congress of Egyptologists, Grenoble, France, he presented two conferences. One set forth the hypothesis that the pyramid blocks were cast as concrete, instead of carved. Such a theory was greatly disruptive to the orthodox theory with its hundreds of thousand of workers taking part in this gigantic endeavor. The second conference stressed that ancient stone vases manufactured 5000 years ago by Egyptians artists were made of cast synthetic (man made) hard stone.
J. Davidovits’ research was fiercely opposed by some experts (geologists and egyptologists) who did not refrain from publicizing the usual brickbats. The theory was finally published in a popular book, in 1989, entitled: “The Pyramids: an enigma solved”, Hippocrene Books, New York (4 printings) and later by Dorset, New York. In 1998, Prof. Davidovits resumed his work and he has presented updated and new results at Geopolymer Congresses. (See details in Archaeology applications in Geopolymer Proceedings ). Also, revised editions of the book has been published since 2003, see They built the Pyramids and also the books published in different languages at J. Davidovits website.
The carving and hoisting theory indeed raises questions that have been insufficiently answered. Using stone and copper tools, how did workers manage to make the pyramid faces absolutely flat? How did they make the faces meet at a perfect point at the summit? How did they make the tiers so level? How could the required amount of workers maneuver on the building site? How did they make the blocks so uniform? How were some of the heaviest blocks in the pyramid placed at great heights? How were twenty-two acres of casing blocks all made to fit to a hair’s breadth and closer? How was all of the work done in about twenty years? Experts can only guess. And Egyptologists must admit that the problems have not been resolved.
Theories of construction are many and continue to be invented. All are based on carving and hoisting natural stone, and none solves the irreconcilable problems. The casting and packing agglomerated stone theory instantly dissolves the majority of the logistical and other problems.
...
www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/pyramids/are-pyramids-made-out-of-concrete-1
...
Generations of school children the world over have been asked to imagine vast teams of Egyptian workers 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 men 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 horizontally 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.
Since the early eighties, Prof. Joseph Davidovits is proposing that the pyramids and temples of Old Kingdom Egypt were constructed using agglomerated limestone, rather than quarried and hoisted blocks of natural limestone. This type of fossil-shell limestone concrete would have been cast or packed into molds. Egyptian workmen went to outcrops of relatively soft limestone, disaggregated it with water, then mixed the muddy limestone (including the fossil-shells) with lime and tecto-alumino-silicate-forming materials (geosynthesis) such as kaolin clay, silt, and the Egyptian salt natron (sodium carbonate). The limestone mud was carried up by the bucketful and then poured, packed or rammed into molds (made of wood, stone, clay or brick) placed on the pyramid sides. This re-agglomerated limestone, bonded by geochemical reaction (called geopolymer cement), thus hardened into resistant blocks. In 1979, at the second International Congress of Egyptologists, Grenoble, France, he presented two conferences. One set forth the hypothesis that the pyramid blocks were cast as concrete, instead of carved. Such a theory was greatly disruptive to the orthodox theory with its hundreds of thousand of workers taking part in this gigantic endeavor. The second conference stressed that ancient stone vases manufactured 5000 years ago by Egyptians artists were made of cast synthetic (man made) hard stone.
J. Davidovits’ research was fiercely opposed by some experts (geologists and egyptologists) who did not refrain from publicizing the usual brickbats. The theory was finally published in a popular book, in 1989, entitled: “The Pyramids: an enigma solved”, Hippocrene Books, New York (4 printings) and later by Dorset, New York. In 1998, Prof. Davidovits resumed his work and he has presented updated and new results at Geopolymer Congresses. (See details in Archaeology applications in Geopolymer Proceedings ). Also, revised editions of the book has been published since 2003, see They built the Pyramids and also the books published in different languages at J. Davidovits website.
The carving and hoisting theory indeed raises questions that have been insufficiently answered. Using stone and copper tools, how did workers manage to make the pyramid faces absolutely flat? How did they make the faces meet at a perfect point at the summit? How did they make the tiers so level? How could the required amount of workers maneuver on the building site? How did they make the blocks so uniform? How were some of the heaviest blocks in the pyramid placed at great heights? How were twenty-two acres of casing blocks all made to fit to a hair’s breadth and closer? How was all of the work done in about twenty years? Experts can only guess. And Egyptologists must admit that the problems have not been resolved.
Theories of construction are many and continue to be invented. All are based on carving and hoisting natural stone, and none solves the irreconcilable problems. The casting and packing agglomerated stone theory instantly dissolves the majority of the logistical and other problems.
...
www.geopolymer.org/archaeology/pyramids/are-pyramids-made-out-of-concrete-1
