I am not closing my mind to anything at all. I have shown through a preponderance of evidence that ramps weren’t used. This means there is about a 2% chance they were actually used. I’ve identified other methods that could have been used and some are more consistent with the evidence. There’s only a 75% chanbce they used the weight of water but Egyptologists will each tell you there’s a 100% chance the ancients were superstitious. I seriously doubt they were superstitious but this is based on simple logic alone (in the absense of water to build pyramids). Simple logic simply doesn’t always work.
Was Dick Clark in charge of funding?
(All editing mine)
See, this is what I was talking about. It sounds like you’re claiming that the ancient Egyptians spoke a “metaphysical”, orderly language that modern humans cannot any longer understand, that focusses one’s knowledge. But language doesn’t work like that. The human brain has not changed in the 5,000 years since the pyramid-builders worked, and there’s no evidence that Egyptian language was fundamentally any different than any other human language before or since.
There is a “language” that could be described as “metaphysical” and “orderly” that the Egyptians did use: mathematics. But moderns understand that language as well as the Egyptians - better, really.
No, we don’t “remember” how the pyramids were built - that’s what this whole thread is about. We look at the evidence that we have and, using the tools of reason, try to make the best guesses we can. And we revise those guesses as we learn more about them. You may be right that the builders pulled blocks directly up the sides rather than using ramps. But you’re not going to convince anyone by citing evidence that only you can read, and the wisdom of your viscera.
And on that subject, brains are the only organs of cognition. The only thing your guts can tell you is what’s going on in your body. “Visceral knowledge” is a just a metaphor.
It’s not the human brain that changed. It’s the “operating manual”. Babies are born speaking the natural language but it isn’t reinforced and expanded by their parents. Indeed, babies must “unlearn” the natural language to acquire modern language.
The fact that an entire corpus of wroiting exists but even the simplest terms can not be defined virtually proves there was a different language. It at least proves that the methods being used to understand it are not working. I know why this is; the ancient language expressed meaning in context so taking it apart to study it destroys the meaning. In modern language each word is defined by context and the meaning is interpreted by the listener. We make direct statement that each listener misunderstands where the ancient language directed listeners to the thought that underlay it. If you misunderstand ancient language it just sounds like gobbledty gook exactly like the PT sounds like gobbledty gook. It is not gobbledty gook and the authors were not sun addled bumpkins.
Actually ancient math is not understood! There are some really bright people working on it.
“Math” as we understand it doesn’t apply to the real world. It only applies to our science, machines, and how we (mis)understand the real world. I’m betting the ancient math is ordinal and does apply to the real world but I haven’t had the chance to work on it and it has become difficult in recent years to think in the way needed to figure it out.
Most people haven’t thought twice about how they were built. They merely remember a teacher saying it mustta been ramps. Even most people who have thought twice either didn’t research it themselves or simply defer to authority.
Real knowledge is internal knowledge and spouting disjointed facts is merely memory. If you can’t see the forest for the trees how do you know anything at all about the forest? Most people are specialists and have visceral knowledge in relatively few areas.
It’s facts and logic that will probably end up discovering how the pyramids were built. Most discovery is based directly or indirectly on facts and logic. It is almost never based on authority or the status quo even when it doesn’t contradict them.
You’ll have to forgive me here. I’ve spent nine years at this and can’t help skipping ahead while waiting for everyone to catch up. It’s my understanding of the PT that has allowed me to find all this physical “proof” that they used water. This strongly implies that my understanding of the PT really is based on author intent rather than mysiticism or assuming the conclusion. If so then I need to be able to explain why other people can’t seem to see the culture right in front of my eyes.
Perhaps there are much simpler answers than anything I’ve proposed to date but I’m trying to work within the confines of evidence and logic using the limited visceral knowledge I have available. I often say I’m almost perfectly ignorant but this is because almost all my knowledge is in my gut. I can’t state many facts but I can see some answers.
It has gotten to the point that just an answer to how they built the pyramids is wholly insufficient without an explanation of why it isn’t widely known. People want to know why Egyptologists don’t even know ramps are debunked. There has to be a reason offerred that experts and professionals aren’t on board and are clinging to ramps for dear life in the rising tide.
I should ignore this.
“Visceral knowlege” is primarily a metaphor but it’s not true that all “cognition” talkes place in the brain. Many parts of the brain are not within the realm of consciousness just as the ganglia and other nerve clusters are not experienced as consciousness. It seems to me that if bacteria can act as though they have brains and consciousness than there’s no reason to presume one’s gut or hand lacks “consciousness”. I believe it will eventually be found that animals have multiple consciousnesses which are well aware of the consciousness experienced by the individual. But this is a one way street through the medula because there is no benefit to the organism to be buried in a sea of sometimes conflicting desires. It is beneficial to the organism for each part to work together in perfect harmony. I believe this is most of the basis of “muscle memory”. The body part “knows” in advance exactly what’s expected. Just as the veins in the leg help the heart pump the blood in a runner the entire body is involved to a greater or lesser extent in all facets of usage, including thought.
This is going off topic though so I intend to avoid responding further.
Can they?
There is a species that flouresces when the population hits a critical level.
I’m not sure you’d call this consciousness or intelligence but it is interesting.
Missing the point spectacularly, you are indeed really bad at stealing 
The point was that the best scientific rule of thumb out there is: Thou shall not cherry pick.
The point was that Rigano also informed us that there was no evidence whatsoever of water being used to transport the stones up. He has a completely different theory than yours.
As Feynman used to say, it does not matter or how many scientists think a theory is right, is not true if it doesn’t match experimental data, or the evidence found. You have the biggest problem here because you claimed that he explained your idea first. Not so.
In my case I have to look at all facets of the paper, and conclude that while interesting, it is not much important and he missed a lot of evidence that was not available to him. It happens.
Piffle, more than once I have pointed that one of my role models is James Burke. Besides pointing that indeed ideas are usually “stolen” his point was that the ideas are transmitted and refined because they are useful or based on evidence, and so they allow us to progress.
I already did, your claim that Rigano had your idea does not stand, because nowhere in the article did he tell us that water was used to transport the stones.
There is no logic by cherry picking and ignoring contradictory information from the ones that you claim to be the ones that agree with you.
And yet again another straw man, please quote me where I claimed such a thing or acknowledge that you are not being serious.
I gather that the Old Kingdom workmen had bronze or copper chisels and mallets. These are very soft, and would have worn out very quickly-did they use hard stone cobbles (granite) to finish the blocks? The Incas used cobble stones; would the copper tools have been faster?
Most of the stones in the pyramid were sandstone. As for the granite they used dolerite hand hammers to quarry it (that and fire to crack it along existing fault lines, building walls and fire pits then shocking the fault with water to rapidly cool it) and probably copper saws with sand for grit to cut and shape it. It’s not that difficult to do, as long as you have workers willing to sit there all day long and pound one rock into another or saw a few inches per hour, all for beer, chicks and food.
Pounding away for beer, chicks and food?
Sounds like Rock Music.
You don’t understand. You can’t prove me wriong by saying my idea doesn’t fit Rigano’s because there’s no way of knowing if he’s right or not. It’s irrelevant to my theoiry whether you think our ideas are the same or not.
Logic says they pulled the stones up one step at a time and the actual means of imparting a force sufficient to lift the stone doesn’t matter one whit to me at the current time. I don’t care about ANYBODY’s opinion or ideas and this includes Rigano even though his work is far more advanced than mine in some ways at this time.
Part of this lack of concern is simply tactical; it will be far easier to convince people the stones were lifted with water filled counterweights once it is accepted that ramps really are debunked and stones really were pulled up one step at a time. If Charles Rigano can help convince people of this I’m one step closer to gettimng Egyptology to do the science that would answer the question.
I have no idea why Egyptology was given the power to decide whart is done at Giza rather than scientists but this is the way things are. The powers that be were installed by the Egyptian government and won’t do the testing. Pressure must come from above or below.
I’m surprised you find our ideas distinct frankly. He says steps, I say steps. He says stones were pulled up, I say stones were pulled up. I do prefer not to have people think they are the same since he beat me to it and will necessarily get some of the credit. It’s very common that identical new ideas arise in multiple places at the same time. There are numerous reasonds for this though I’m not sure which if any might apply in this instance. “Coincidence” springs to mind but the world is a very complicated place and I’m sure I don’t understand it.
I can’t wait for this logjam to start moving. Truth to tell I won’t even mind being proven wrong but I suspect I’m going to be right about most of the basics. I wager they never had more than about 8000 men, women, and children on site and they all worked to build with most of the men working in the quarry as “sculptors”. These projects were nothing like people imagine and this is why the evidence doesn’t support the assumptions.
Interesting, but not interesting enough to believe I’ve got a brain in my stomach.
Not much is known except many of their quarrying techniques. As I understand it they mostly pounded narrow trenches with hard stone pounders and then inserted wooden wedges underneath which broke the stone free when they swelled up with water. Much less is known about other techniques but they did do a great deal of sawing. The PT suggests that this sawing was powered by falling water.
There should be copper oxides around if they used copper chisels extensively, I believe. I believe there will be copper hydroxide produced from a different source by a chemical reaction on the north side and in the golf course below. This compound is barely soluble in water so might still be there.
The stone is limestone.
I believe the fire technique is a modern theory for the means of quarrying granite. Few of the ancient techniques are truly “known” but there is more evidence for some of these things than mere speculation as is done with how they moved the stones.
I know. And I do cherry pick extensively which does work against my theory. In this particular field you almost have to cherry pick because there is almost nothing at all known.
I believe my “theory” is the most scientific around. Of course Rigano’s is excellent but I believe I’m right so his just doesn’t go far enough. His is probably the theory with the highest probability of being correct in its entirety.
I believe he’s still working on this and has made some ground breaking discoveries that support our theories. I’ll have to post more on this as it becomes available.
Facts and logic are weak tools to understand reality but they are the only tools we have. All progress is not derived from past progres; ie- some progress is paradigm changing. Past work is simply scrapped because it is shown to be wrong.
I ignore nothing. My theory explains far far more of the known facts than any other theory. Most things that are established fact are explained by my theory. To my knowledge there is no significant contradictory evidence and I cherry pick contradictory evidence prefentially to supporting evidence. My biggest leaps forward are trying to incorporate contradictory evidence.
Some magicians can swallow objects and regurgitate them at will. I don’t know how they do it though. As something of a “magician” myself I know it could be sleight of hand rather than slight of stomach. I believe it was exactly what he purported it to be.
Yes you do, besides ignoring that Rigano is not pointing at any evidence for water lines or channels to move the stones up. You also ignore the evidence of ramps found, and that the most recognized experts do not see that ramps have been debunked (it has to be pressed: even the experts are not talking about the big long ramps) for the simple reason that they are part of the latest research that is going on.
If your theory was the most scientific around you should had been capable of pointing at several experts that support your idea already, The problem here is that it is clear that you have also trouble identifying proper experts and scientists. And that was shown by pointing at Rigano, while he is a good writer and generalist he is not an expert in the field. And then he does not support your water theory.
So no, you have not shown that you know the difference between science and pseudo-science.
Irrelevant. My hypothesis is in no way dependent on anyone else’s. It stands or falls on its own.
Irrelevant. The paths for counterweights, water, and stones all exist independently of whether any individual can see them or not.
No! The existing “ramps” are integral to my theory. But no man ever strapped on a stone and dragged a stone up one.
Irrelevant. My theory and the evidence are in no way contingent upon the opionion of experts or anyone else. The theory must stand or fall on its own merits and it doesn’t matter how many people or who chant that there mustta been ramps.
Still irrelevant.
There is no true “research” going on. I and everyone else has to just study the data that was already collected because Egyptologists quit gathering data in 1987.
Irrelevant. Opinion is not facts or logic.
There is a little trouble with this but I believe this applies to almost everyone. The media has dropped the ball and even once respectable media like Scientific American and Nova are now pandering and publishing tripe. Every field is suffering from some degradation as the educational system collapses. But this is still irrelevant because it hads nothing to do with facxts and logic until you can show I have fact wrong. I don’t believe any of my facts are wrong even if they are cherry picked.
Irrelevant.
Very few people understand metaphysics. I believe I could hold my own against almost anybody but, more importantly, I might be the only person in human history to understand two different metaphysics.
Most science now days is pseudo-science. Even cosmology suggests an infinite number of pyramids built with an infinite number of ramps. If technology reflected the progress in science we’d still be driving around in Stanley Steamers and Model T’s. No real science has been done at Giza in a generation. Most younger Egyptologists know nothing about doing science. It’s something they read about from the past.
You tell me where to draw the line between science and quackery because I don’t know. But it’s still irrelevant. Only the facts and logic are relevant.
Unless they’re swallowing a smartphone, that’s got fuck all to do with the idea that people actually think with their stomachs.