My batshit landlord again.
He was watching a video about the Egyptian pyramids that made a lot of sense for the first 2 1/2 hours or so, until we got into conspiracy theory territory.
I’ve found a decent place to start:
Did the ancient Egyptians travel all the way to South America and create the pyramids that the Incas were known for, and then the Easter Island statues, and then travel all the way to Australia? I think that’s a little crazy.
No. The fact that pyramids are found in different locations is because of the utility of that particular shape, not that one group built all of them.
And they’re not even the same shape. Show me a picture of any pyramid, and I could instantly tell you if it was an Egyptian or Mayan pyramid. Why would they make the shapes so different, if they were the same builders?
Of course not. Native Americans traveled to North Africa and built the “Egyptian” pyramids.
I’m pretty sure the Mesoamerican pyramids were built a few thousand years after the Egyptian pyramids were built. If ancient Egyptians built pyramids in South America, it sure as hell took them a long time to get there.
Yes, the giant pyramids of Egypt date to more than 4,000 years ago. Well before the time of King Tut (1300BC) they’d given up on pyramids, their tombs were long tunnels into the rocks.
The Mayan pyramids are from about 600AD, give or take a few centuries. Plus, the Mayan pyramids have stairways to heaven, so to speak, and a sacrificial temple on top. They were for religious ceremonies.
Egyptian pyramids were perfect pyramidal shapes - no stairs, no steps, perfectly smooth to a point that used to be made of gold plating. (The step look they have now is because much of the cladding stone was taken or fell off. You can see near the top of the middle Great Pyramid the remains of the smooth sides.) The Egyptian pyramids were only tombs, contianing (we think) the late pharoah and the treasures he’d need in the afterlife… There was a temple attached near one side to worship the dead “god” buried inside.
Thor Heyerdahl tried to show an Egyptian reed boat could make it across the Atlantic. The chief lesson of his book, The Ra Expedition was that the Atlantic was full of garbage (and that was 50 years ago). IIRC, the boat essentially sank just short of the first Caribbean islands.
The Maya lived in Central America, in modern day Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. They, and another Pyramid building culture, the Olmec, started building pyramids 1000 years after the Egyptians quit building pyramids. They were not in South America.
The Inca were in modern day Peru, 500 years after the last Maya stopped building pyramids. They are not known for pyramids, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they built some.
The civilization centered around Caral, also in Modern day Peru, was more contemporary to the Egyptian Old Kingdoms. It was possibly older. They built big damn Pyramids, but are very little understood.
This is wrong. It’s enormously batshit crazy.
There are literal libraries full of literature looking at every ancient artifact. All of them can be looked at meaningfully if and only if you study them in the context of their cultures. Cultures cannot be picked up and combined like Lego pieces.
Why do people treat archaeologists like epidemiologists?
Well, except for the earliest few. (There are over 100 of them.)
Thread Winner! 
Imhotep designed the first one - the step pyramid - which seems to have been his own invention, stacking successively smaller mastabas on top of each other. (Also, I believe, the answer to the trivia - Imhotep the first verifiable person named in history who was not a ruler)
Two possibly incomplete step pyramids, then one that was allegedly smooth sided but the outer part collapsed.
By the fourth one they appear to have settled on the smooth side concept, although it too was a learning experience. It’s the “bent pyramid” because they figured out halfway up when it started to shift that the sides were too steep. (This is why all pyramids look roughly the same - build them too steep, the sides eventually collapse. The 3 giant pramids of Giza are built on a limestone base, but still need to be at an angle to be solid. Plus, it simplified the building process - less likely to have the whole thing give way as they added more blocks.)
After that, it was pyramids all the way, but the old kingdom became too poor and disorganized to build the massive pyramids it first had - they began using bricks and rubble instead of large cut stone, or building a shell and filling the interior with rubble -which of course collapsed.
During the following chaotic centuries the tombs were looted, so they switched from giant pyramidal tombs to deep tunnels in the rock of Valley of the Kings. Those still got looted.
But Egyptian pyramids, unlike the Mayan or Aztec ones, were never built for hosting ceremonies on top. In fact, none really had a flat top set up for ceremonies. By the fourth one, they were big pointy-topped smooth-sided piles.
Whereas the Mayan pyramids, as I understand, had their own evolutionary history. According to the book 1491 they started as a 3-sided U-shaped platform surrounding a plaza, where religious ceremonies could be held in view of the masses. then the “bottom” of the U shape became taller and turned into the pyramid shape.
Occam’s razor. Obviously, one set of space aliens built the Egyptian pyramids, while a different set of space aliens built the New World pyramids.
The Valley of the Kings is beneath a large hill that has a very clear pyramidal shape. There is much to suggest it was chosen so that the kings were still buried under a pyramid. The adjacent Valley of the Queens or Valley of the Artisans don’t get to be under the pyramid hill.
Looting was much easier as all the robbers had to do was tunnel through limestone. It was a bit of a zero sum game. The usual suspects in tomb robbers were the next generation kings who were looking for easy to find riches for their own tombs.
I also think it’s insulting/bigoted towards Native Americans, Rapa Nui residents, and Australian Aborigines, implying they can’t come up with their own cultures/technologies. That sort of thing was used to justify conquest and genocide back in the day.
God, I’m so glad to be back among sane people.
Pyramids, or rather artificial mounds, seem to be a common feature of many different cultures all over the world. Here’s Silbury Hill in England, the largest prehistoric artificial mound in Europe.
There was no need for any interaction between Neolithic Britain and Egypt; this form is simply the most convenient shape for any large monument constructed before the development of vaulted architecture.
I’m unclear about your definitions. The later pyramids were indeed filled in to be smooth-sided, but that’s just facing. They’re step pyramids at their core.
Sneferu is also credited with building two other pyramids, the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, which were the first true pyramids to be built as such from the beginning. Though with this innovation the outwardly appearance of Egyptian stepped pyramids came to an end in favor of smooth-sided true pyramids, the pyramids that followed whose cores have been exposed all show some form of stepped pyramid at their center.
Can we prove that the Egyptians did not travel to South America ?
Sometimes its difficult to prove a negative.
But there’s a whole lot things that out to be have been found already if they did.
eg Hieroglyphs ? No writing at South america ? No writing ABOUT south america at Egypt ?
eg No map of the world announcing their travels.
eg foods… why wouldnt the travellers transfer the crops they grew, so that the people at each end of the journey had crops from the other end. ? The lack of any transfer is quite solid.
Hey transporting all that stone wasn’t easy!
Well, it has been claimed that traces of cocaine were found in some mummies.
I doubt contact though, and there is ‘better’ evidence for ancient Japanese travel to South America.