# Did aliens build the pyramids, and if they did, so what? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 25, 2003, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812 "2003-09-25T18:46:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812/61 "2004-01-16T21:34:15Z")
> [@Hazel](#): > > As far as I’m concerned, any aliens advanced enough to visit us are WELCOME to annex us to their Galactic Empire! I think it’s a safe bet that, as members of the Galactic Empire, we’d be required to unite under an enlightened, democratic, secular, one world government. Poverty, illiteracy, and abridgements of civil rights would be things of the past. Bush & Co would be HISTORY! How do you know that the point of them annexing us into their galgatic empire isn’t so they can put down sweatshops to force us to work in, so they can make cheap products for their consumers at home? I’m not sure where it follows that a spacefaring race nessacary has to be benevolent or “enlightened” rather then simply intelligent and maybe a little creative. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812/62 "2004-01-16T21:45:04Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > I’m actually wondering though: if there are aliens, where are they? Where are their signals? > > I suppose its possible that they are simply using some strange form of communication that we cannot even notice, but I also find it unlikely. Radio signals are cheap and easy to use. Which sort of implies that alien life, should it exist at all, may not be intelligent. Else, presumably someone would ahve started sending out radio signals constantly billions of years ago. Radio Signals have the problem of degrading pretty fast though, unless directed(and even if directed, probably won’t last too long). So unless aliens were broadcasting powerful radio signals directly at us, it’s unlikely we’d actually be able to tell that it was anything out of the ordinary. Of course, we’d also have to be listening at the right patch of sky at the same time the signals were arriving, or we’d miss it. ---
**Author:** ![pinkus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@pinkus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkus)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812/63 "2004-01-17T03:27:30Z")
> [@Thea Logica](#): > > This is the second thread of mine that has died only to be resurrected months later that I can think of in recent months. > > The other one was my “It frightens me that people don’t know these things” in IMHO. > > I wonder if it means anything? > > **Pinkus**? It means I’m a newbie, searching old dead threads because I don’t know any better. How do I know their dead? They don’t smell or anything… ---
**Author:** ![Pedro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/919ad9/32.png) [@Pedro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pedro)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812/64 "2004-01-17T04:54:39Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Your post is very interesting…are you a civil engineer? Anyway, my question is this: in a recent PBS show about the pyramids, there was much debate about how the massibve stone blocks were moved (rollers or sleds, or possibly “shadoof”-style cranes.Why did the ancient builders choose such massive blocks-wouldit have been easier/fasterto build the pyramids out of mush smallerblocks-say the size of modern bricks? Likely because the structure is cohered (to last a very long time) because of the weight of the blocks. You can’t build a house (or even a pyramid) out of just bricks. Abe’s post was indeed excellent. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2004, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812/65 "2004-01-18T07:40:21Z")
> [@Abe](#): > > Atlantis couldn’t have had anything to do with the Egyptians, since Atlantis is an entirely fictional place mentioned once (or at most twice) by Plato to illustrate a philosophical point in the dialogues _Timaeus_ and _Critias_. Please, for goodness’ sake, stop it with the Atlantis new age silliness. Atlantis is not even a legend, or at least it was not: it was a didactic and, as far as we know, entirely fictitious tale. Then how do you explain the way that Playdough and Silly Putty just suddenly “appeared” after Edgar Cayce started talking about Atlantis? (Actually, I think Atlantis [did exist](http://www.culture.gr/2/21/211/21121a/e211ua08.html), just not the airships- a monumental blast that ended a highly advanced civilization (and most widespread Meditteranean literacy) in a matter of days, survivors who made it to points south and north, and a tale of a place with great beauty and knowledge that survived through oral legends until it was assigned moral and theological repercussions and, in this century, tales of crystals that controlled air traffic and could do intercontinental calls for $.03 per minute.) My worst fear about contact with alien life has never been that they’ll be malevolent or view us as so many amoebas but the fear that they’ll be really boring. Imagine an entire galaxy populated by creatures who look like [conch fish](http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/1999/nov/art1101/wbfig6.jpg) (only with blue hair and feathery eyes) but who have the personality of James Lipton. After a few days we as a species would all be going “Well, this interplanetary discourse and intercultural sharing has been great, but we’ve _really_ got to get going and… [oh crap, we’re home… speed up the manufacture of interstellar vehicles please, if this thing tells me the story of how his kid on Aldeberan XII won the tri-galaxy spelling bee again I’m gonna blow starchunks…”) ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2004, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812/66 "2004-01-19T01:49:34Z")
Well said, **Sampiro** ; I’ve been to Thera, and it certainly seems to fit the legend of Atlantis like a glove. Havng said that, your rant against boring aliens is unjustified. They have to be accustomed to boredom if they can sit in a spaceship for hundreds of years watching the stars move past imperceptibly. ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2004, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812/67 "2004-03-21T17:00:10Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Your post is very interesting…are you a civil engineer? Not even close! But I’ve had an interest in the pyramids since I was a very young boy. I visited the pyramid of Saqqara when I was a kid – my father bribed a few people and I was granted access to a deep shaft near the pyramid at the bottom of which I saw some incredible rooms covered with dusty hieroglyphs. I actually wandered in those underground chambers before most archaeologists even knew of their existence. At one point the hastily rigged lights snaked along the floor failed, and the weight of millennia and thousands of tons of rock descended on me, causing me to nearly freak out for a good fifteen minutes until I felt my way back to the well shaft by touch. Let’s just say the event made a lasting impression. > [@](#): > > Anyway, my question is this: in a recent PBS show about the pyramids, there was much debate about how the massibve stone blocks were moved (rollers or sleds, or possibly “shadoof”-style cranes.Why did the ancient builders choose such massive blocks-wouldit have been easier/fasterto build the pyramids out of mush smallerblocks-say the size of modern bricks? See Pedro’s response, right on the money. Consider that no ancient or modern structure is utterly immobile: there is always a degree of movement required, since a perfectly rigid structure is likely to snap from stress (whether induced by temperature changes or shifts in the structure itself, etc.). Modern buildings, especially skyscrapers, are actually built to sway in order to dissipate the kinetic energy that would otherwise fracture a rigid structure. Indeed, earthquake-resistant skyscrapers are being designed to sway even more than normal to conduct energy from the shockwaves travelling to the structure from the ground in the event of tremors. Of course, modern technology allows us to employ comparatively smaller bricks to build fairly structures, but to consider what the Egyptians had to deal with try this experiment: try to build a miniature pyramid four feet high out of, say, sugar cubes, and then try building one with proper sized bricks – which is easier? If you have a lot of little bricks like the sugar cubes, you have that much more movement and friction in the structure and the most likely result is an unstable erection that will collapse fairly quickly. If you have significantly larger blocks though, especially if you distribute as much stress as possible to a broad and sturdy base, you end up with far superior stability. So the choice to quarry huge blocks for the pyramids may seem like extravagance, but is in fact an architecturally sound approach in the long run – and the pyramids were definitely built for the long run. > [@](#): > > And, I belive that a French archaeologist put forward a quite beliveable thesis that the pryramid blocks were cast out of some kind of sandstone-based concrete-this wouldbe a much faster way of building such a structure-has anybody seriously persued this theory? I addressed this far-out hypothesis in a previous message. The pyramids are built of **quarried** sandstone and we even know where they quarried all that stone from. No magical concrete was involved. Indeed, the hypothetical postulation that the pyramids are built of some myesterious concrete that set like stone is unnecessary, inelegant, and unscientific. Most respectable scientists wouldn’t waste their time with unnecessary work like that when real (and more promising) ground awaits to be covered. Said that, I believe the hypothesis has been debunked (and resurrected) a number of times. **regarding Atlantis** : there are literally thousands of archaeological sites all over the world that involve catastrophic events that forced the evacuation (or death) of their populations while leaving behind remarkable evidence of their existence. If your primary criteria for identifying Atlantis are A) communication with the ancient Greeks and B) catastrophe, then Thera and many other sites fit the bill. But what’s the point? Atlantis is a **modern** misconception derived from a work that is clearly invented. You might as well seek Pellucidar, Lemuria, or Shangri-La in the ruins of civilizations that died thousands of years ago. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-aliens-build-the-pyramids-and-if-they-did-so-what/203812.md?page=3)