Who is saying anything about filling it with water during construction?
I’m open to options, and besides smaller and internal ramps it is likely that the very sides of the pyramids (remember Fuller and doing things with less?) was were the “ramps” for the lower levels were located and the workers themselves were pullers and counterweight on the other side of the pyramid, and going below ground level on the other side was made easier by having the workers and counterweight to go below ground level.
There are Egyptian engravings showing workers moving large stones over wood sleds with the help of bulls, the context shows that they preferred that than using waterways all the way up to the pyramid.
No, that is a red herring, and also a move that the ancient aliens proponents like to use.
No one has denied that many stones were transported by river, and that does not deny that a lot of the stones came from the site itself, (one big reason why the location was chosen)
IMHO a boat worker that organized those feats was more important than the stone cutter that locally was not considered as important, it is also important to notice that in the pyramids were the remain of ramps still exist that no images regarding them or their construction have been found.What it tells me is that the ones that worked making them were not very important for the Egyptians in those days. Nevertheless, even if they did not engraved or painted about them, they existed:
After skimming cladking’s (I just can’t make myself read them closely - too damn confusing and poorly-written) posts, I realize that he is actually one of the “ancient aliens” crowd. At first I agreed with him, that Egyptians of that time weren’t any more stupid or unobservant than modern humans. But as I read that Egyptians’ gods were just shorthand for scientific ideas, and that they had access to “ancient” science that we deluded moderns have lost, what with our obsession with observation and experiment; that they spoke a “metaphysical” language, and our modern language that has become sundered from the true, natural language that animals and the ancients knew; that cladking alone has discovered their secrets, by way of understanding the language without reading it, and heeding the truths of his viscera; and that when he is inevitably vindicated the wisdom he has shown us will lead to new paradigms of comprehending science and nature, I realized that the only difference between cladking and the crazy hair aliens guy is that Crazy Hair Aliens Guy thinks that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians. cladking thinks the ancient Egyptians were the aliens.
The last statement doesn’t miss too much. I hate the idea that people accept this claptrap without hesitation. It is embarrassing.
As to the rest all I can do is just sigh.
Yes, I stumbled over the answer and no, I don’t understand why it isn’t seen. To some extent perhaps I had the misfortune to discover this because I’m not so very different than the ancient Egyptians. I’m a self taught generalist and as I understand the term this essewntially makes me an observational scientist. Of cpourse I have important advantages over the Egyptians. I have many centuries of modern science behind me. I also have a computer and google. Imagine what Sir Isaac Newtoin could have done with google!
Ancient science was not superior to modern science any more than generalism is superior to specialization. They are different. It’s no longer even possible to use metaphysical language because it’s far too complicated for any human being to manipulate. The only real advantage of the language was the ability to focus all one’s knowledge. It was a very orderly way to think. In this case “orderly” means reflective of nature. However the amount of knowledge that could be achieved was tiny by today’s standards; we simply know far more today than was known in 2000 BC.
Your guts don’t learn truth, they gain knowledge. Visceral knowledge always has a basis in reality and in the real world but remembered facts aren’t necessarily facts at all. Evertybody remembers the pyramids were built with ramps. Here’s an old article written by someone who came to the same conclusions and beat me by many months. I didn’t know until two years ago.
Note that he cites Reisner’s ramp find which is predicted by my theory.
When all is saids and done it’s the predictive capabilities of a theory that are determinative. A theory probably can’t be wrong if it always makes accurate predictions. Somehow we seem to have lost sight of the very reason for doing science at all and the reason it works; reality acting through experiment determines the results. A proper experiment makes a prediction tested by the results. Modern metaphysics is so simple that people forget or never understood at all.
Perhaps because the author, Charles Rigano, is a retired Air Force officer and now manages information programs for Northrup Grumman, I do respect the work of a generalist, but Houdin’s background is in architecture, And very important Egyptian archeologists are taking notice of his theory like Dr. Rainer Stadelmann, Bob Brier, Dieter Arnold and others.
The article from Charles Rigano comes from 2006 and I can see that Houdin got more support and evidence around that time for his internal ramp so that could be the reason why he missed the internal ramp theory. (BTW that theory includes also a smaller external ramp than the one that Charles Rigano dismisses, and as pointed before: most serious researchers do not think the long ramp was made, it is really a bit of a straw man nowadays), but the biggest problem I can see is that evidence for a ramp in the south of the great pyramid is ignored.
BTW that was Zahi Hawass back in 1998, Rigano dismisses the evidence about the ramp evidence found in the south but others like Dr. Rainer Stadelmann do not agree with that dismissal, as the previous cite I made showed, the controversy is mostly related on what happened after a certain height; Hawass and Stadelman think that ramps did go as an spiral around and over the pyramid, but at least Stadelman is graceful enough to concede that he could be wrong about the location of the ramps in light of the evidence found by Houdin.
What is clear is that Houdin and many others do agree that there was an external ramp that only did go just about a third of the height of the great pyramid. What it will be interesting will be if future research points more to a ramp that did go around the pyramid like Hawass thinks, or if the internal ramps of Houdin come with more evidence.
My hypothesis predicts two “ramps” south of G1. The one with two points known toward the SW corner and the other with a single point known that should go to the SE corner. These routes moved stones from the main quarry to first the base of the pyramid and later to a platform at 81’ 3". The purpose of the platform was to reduce the average numberof times stones had to be lifted. They also lifted water to accomplish the same task so the average stone had to be lifted only 1.7 times. This saved vast rigging with 2 1/2 million stones.
No men ever dragged a single stone up a ramp to build pyramids. Stones lifted out of the quarries were pulled by the western cliff face counterweight and the main eastern counterweight. Stones moved up from the Sphinx Quarry were pulled by the eastern cliff face counterweight.
While I learned only two years ago that Rigano beat me to the answer by about 3 months I’m the one who has been able to show the answer. He got the correct answer through visceral knowledge and intensive study while I tripped over it and then fell in through the back door. Who gets credit for this is irrelevant anyway and the question is how did they build the great pyramids. Ramps are debunked and every physical fact says they used the weight of water to lift stones straight up the side one step at a time.
I believe that after nearly nine years things are going to finally start moving. Egyptians are going to finally get the proper credit for their genius and we’re going to have to start recognizing that we are not at the crown of creation.
[QUOTE=cladking]
I believe that after nearly nine years things are going to finally start moving. Egyptians are going to finally get the proper credit for their genius and we’re going to have to start recognizing that we are not at the crown of creation.
[/QUOTE]
Even leaving aside all the rest of the horseshit, are you saying that if the Egyptians used ramps that this somehow lessens the achievement of building the pyramids??? :eek:
Yes. He thinks the idea that they used ramps is incredibly insulting to the ancient Egyptians. Akin to thinking them thuggish brutes. He is convinced that they used some complicated hydraulic system that will show that our modern construction technologies are no big deal. Once this is recognized, it will turn all philosophy on it’s head. He knows all this because through intense study, his gut instinct has become a finely honed assessor of truth.
Just that they used ramps isn’t very insulting. If they had actually used ramps then our saying they used ramps wouldn’t really be insulting at all would it?
But Egyptologists aren’t saying they used ramps but they are saying that they were so backward and primitive that they ONLY could have used ramps. This crosses the line only a little bit into insulting them but it insults us even more. Where it really insulting is their reasons for believing the people were so backward that they could only have used ramps. Egyptologists understand the people as having to tell their self conscious gods to not walk in corpse drippings!!! Egyptologists believe the ancients thought their most important goddess stank to high heaven!!! I’m not even sure how imaginary entities can have any odour at all but Egyptologists believe they must have. Based on this low opinion and the modern sense of superiority and omniscience the 19th century British scientists came to the considered conclusion that “they mustta used ramps” and they’ve been defending it ever since.
At first maybe the dead Egyptians were just smirking in their graves but it has gotten worse in more recent years. I believe they would be offended at our refusal to do science and I fear they are ashamed of us as well. Of course no matter how fast they spin as ever more graves are desicrated in the name of “science” it doesn’t really matter since they are dead. There are no walking mummies as Hollywood might have us believe and dead people don’t really have any feelings but we are their descendents and can’t understand ourselves until we understand them. Egyptians have a right to the answers and Egyptologists aren’t providing them. All men have a right and a duty to know themselves and we’re stuck in a 19th century Egyptological rut.
I really only want to know how the Great Pyramid was built. This has been my goal all along. I don’t want to say that “based on current evidence there is about a 75% chance they used the weight of water”, I want to say that “based on current knowledge and evidence it has been established that they used the weight of water to build the pyramids.”. I want to be as sure of this as that Moscow is a city in Russia or that light from the sun takes nearly ten minutes to get here.
Over the years my confidence has increased from 40% to 75% but I need 99.9%
The answers are there. The data isn’t being collected.
Nonsense, first it is clear that to keep your ideas going you have to embrace a miasma of contradictions, Rigano mentions no evidence for water that lifted the stones whatsoever, so what you are doing here is just grasping at straws. As for the big picture you need to be aware that not all journals are created equally, some have more weight than others. And I was wondering why Rigano was not popping up among the ones that are at the fore front of current research, and the simplest explanation is that while he is a very good writer and has looked at the issue, it is clear that the Journal where he published was not very influential, in fact it looks as it stopped publication in 2013.
In the case of Houdin experts are agreeing with him and also pressuring the Egiptian authorities to allow Houdin and others to explore the Pyramids with the tools of the 21st century to confirm his theories, when one talks about weight and influence or if something is debunked it is important to check what the active experts are talking about.
Another straw man, they must be on sale somewhere.
Most indeed do recognize the genius of the ancient Egyptians; in fact ideas like the ancient alien astronauts had an element of prejudice as a good number of the proponents of that idea assumed it was impossible for native people to have done such feats in the past.
Incidentally I have to notice how mysticism seem to be your angle, and I have to say that one has to be also on guard against that affecting judgment because besides being an explanation full of woo, I have seen displays in the Rosicrucian museum in San Jose (around 1980) that showed that they also do think that only white people (yes, all Egyptians were pictured like that in the big size models!) were the ones that made the pyramids.
I believe that jobs on the pyramid were very highly prized and were awarded to people who lived in the home towns of previous greats. For instance the man who discovered adding natron to the wells would force eruptions was from the city of Chemis only a few miles north of Giza. So from that time on all the “prophets” who predicted how compounds would interact were from the city of Chemis. They were the first chemists. Cities became associated with the natural process discovered by their notable citizens.
There was only a tiny handful of pyramid jobs and they were like a nine month long party so there was a waiting list to sign up. This is the reason that the builders viillage is so tiny. It hides behind the Wall of the Crow because dangerous gasses often flowed down the wadi adjacent to it. There was even an occasional flood if the coffer dam around G2 failed.
I doubt there was much conflict or slavery during the era. It was very difficult to wage war with the fragility of ancient suupply lines and the need would be much less. With everyone speaking a single language most differences could have been redressed. I doubt the people who becames the Jews were a coherent entity during the great pyramid building age.
[QUOTE=cladking]
But Egyptologists aren’t saying they used ramps but they are saying that they were so backward and primitive that they ONLY could have used ramps.
[/QUOTE]
Leaving aside the irony of the fact that you are basically doing the same thing in the opposite way (i.e. closing your mind to any other possibility, despite having evidence shown to you), can you name an Egyptologist who says this? That the ONLY possibility is ramps and that they used ramps because they were ‘backward and primitive’?? I mean, the Greeks and Romans used ramps…were THEY ‘backward and primitive’ as well? I believe they used ramps even into the modern era…also ‘backward and primitive’? You use the technique that best suits the job, not one that might be cooler or more advanced. Most writings I’ve seen by the experts in this field concede that the Egyptians used a lot of different ad hoc methods to build the various pyramids, not a single technique, and that they would change or modify their techniques as work progressed and as experience was gained.
As with many things in this thread, this is all in your own head and not reality. YOU are offended, for your own obscure and strange reasons, but saying they used ramps (or didn’t use them) isn’t insulting…it’s a hypothesis that can be tested. And HAS been tested and refined (which, for instance, is why the single long ramp theory has been tossed out).
Again, this is ALL my own theory. I steal ideas freely but I did not steal Rigano’s idea because I was not aware of it at that time.
Two out of three famous geologists are unaware of the existence of CO2 geysers. ~3% of physicists don’t understand the nature of a wheel. Why in the world would I care where I steal ideas? After I’ve stolen them I might not even remember if it was my idea or someone elses’. No man is an island. We exist therefore we think.
In the 1850’s surgeoins believed that washing their hands was a waste of precious time in saving lives. Most of their patients died of infections.
Time marches on. Progress comes in tiny little steps. If the status quo were always right we’d still be living in caves.
I understand many of my ideas are anathema to almost everything that is widely believed. But none of my ideas are contrary to known evidence or science to my knowledge. Show me I’m wrong.
No, it really isn’t. Expert opinion is always the best but it is only opinion. I’m talking about facts and logic.
I beg to differ. They describe a stinking duck in intimate detail and then they call it swan.
Yeah, right.
Egyptologists say superstition made them powerful and I say only science makes people powerful. Who exactly is being mystical?
Every single article written by virtually every single Egyptologist has some form of the phrase “they mustta used ramps”. They dress it up in fancy words and extend it into long sentences but it’s just “they mustta used ramps”. Wiki took this sentence out briefly a couple years ago but it was quickly added back in because it is the only basis for believing that ramps were used. There used to be one site that used the concept 14 times in one short article.
I can’t and won’t speak for individual Egyptologists. These folks aren’t stupid and have a wide range of opinion except they pretty much all agree that the great pyramids were built by changeless and superstitious people who dragged tombs up ramps. Ask any Egyptologist what their “gods” were. Ask them what the pyramids were used for. Ask them for evidence that ramps were used or at least attestation that the word existed. Every Egyptologist will provide about the same answer though most don’t want to talk about it especially now days.
We use ramps today.
So what exactly is the state of the art in ramp theory? They all disagree still. Far worse than the disagreement is that each of them will modify their models as you pick it apart. It’s like their model was designed by MC Escher and the ramps can go up and down at the same time.
This isn’t intended to mean there aren’t some truly brilliant ideas within these various ramp theorires, but merely that none really rise to the level of hypothesis and, indeed, none are logically complete. None fit the physical evidence which shows they did it the easy way; they pulled stones up five step pyramids one step at a time.
:eek: