There are a lot more choices than rollers, maybe wheels, and dragging big blocks across sand. For example, you can make an A frame and basically lever the blocks forward. Then move the A frame and repeat, essentially “walking” the stones across the ground.
Edward Leedskalnin was a bit secretive about his exact methods, but we know that he built Coral Castle using things like A frames and block and tackle systems because we have a handful of photos that show such devices. I don’t know if the Egyptians had block and tackle systems (I believe the earliest evidence of pulleys comes from slightly after the pyramids) but they definitely had levers, which can accomplish the same thing in a lot of cases.
The Egyptians had a definite lack of modern knowledge. They didn’t even know how to make arches yet (which pretty much proves aliens didn’t build the pyramids, anyone with a more sophisticated understanding of construction wouldn’t have been limited to just stacking blocks). But the Egyptians weren’t stupid. If you can’t brute force things with modern heavy machinery, then you need to rely more on human creativity. I seriously doubt that they just stupidly dragged huge stone blocks across the sand. They were a lot smarter than that.
Of course, if you really REALLY want to know how the pyramids were built, search the SDMB for the word “mustta”. Be sure to block off a weekend or two to read the thread…
One thing that gets lost is that, even though it was 2.3 million blocks of stone, the vast majority of them were in the lower third. Once they got past about half way up, the number of blocks that had to be stacked dropped rapidly. And the structural part (chambers) is in the bottom half of the pyramid, so dragging those last blocks up was merely a matter of getting them up there and moving them around. The higher they went, the fewer the blocks.
The casing is the part we know the least about, it seems.
Yes, geyser guy. Who had also come up with his own translation of hieroglyphics, that made so much more sense than the rubbish that the Egyptologists had come up with (if you assumed the pyramids were built using geysers, that is).
There is, or at least was, a fellow in Michigan named Wally Wallington who’s been single-handedly, using only his own muscle power, building a full-sized replica of Stonehenge in his back yard, using techniques that could plausibly have been known to the ancients. His own site on the project seems to be gone now, but IIRC, he calculated that, using his methods, a team of 1000 workers could have built the Great Pyramid in 30 years.