Setting the Record Straight: Stonehenge and the Pyramids

Great Debates
1

I cannot stand this anymore. I am tired of all the hogwash about the “technologically superior pyramids” and how “they could not possibly have been made by the Egyptions,” and so theynassume it was some advanced culture or space aliens. Every now and then someone pops up to spit out something like that. Well, here is a thread to debunk that.

The Pyramids are not some awesome engineering achievment. The real wonder was in the transportation of materials and assembly of wealth required to do it.

  1. The Pyramids are shaped like that for a reason - they have really crappy materials. They are using stone, and its vastly inferior to modern structural steel. This is the plain reason the Pyramids are the way they are - most of the mass is in the bottom half. Hence, the stone can still bear the weight of the upper portions. One Pyramid is bent because the builders realized halfway through that it wasn’t going to stand up.

  2. The Pyramids didn’t start out that big. The earliest ones, of which we have ample evidence, are far smaller than Giza’s.

  3. Modern archeologists have experimented with several ways of moving stone blocks of the neccessary size. The Egyptions did not record these methods, but we know of any ways they could have done it.

  4. The Egyptions built many temples and tombs of great size and wonder. So did a lot of ancient peoples. The point is, that almost every people who built state-level societies were able to command rsources enough to create marvels of architecture. Egypt’s just happened to be bigger than most.

Next up: Stonehenge

2

What’s the debate? Are you waiting for someone to say that extraterestrials built the pyramids? Of course they didn’t. They were too busy building Stonehenge!

3

I don’t think you’re going to find much dissent fom your position here.

The words “awesome” and “marvel” are subjective - like, I think that building the pyramids was in fact an “awesome engineering achievement”. Just not one that required anything other than existing technology and a lot of resources.

Easter Island, though - that must have been aliens.

4

I’ve always been fond of the graffiti found on one of the larger stones of one of the Gizeh pyramids that translates roughly into “My goodness! We did it! The Tiger Team”.

smiling bandit, I don’t think you’ll run into a lot of fans of von Daniken (sp) round these parts. Frankly, I didn’t know that that sort of thing was still bandied about; you seem to have recently encountered a floating ball of idiots, which is always nasty.

Now, the Egg on the Albany Mall, and the buildings around it? Definitely aliens. Nelson Rockefeller took the credit, but then again he would. Hope the lovely old state capitol building isn’t too damaged when that thing finally takes off.

5

A good comparison would be people from the future visiting us and laughing at our primitive nuclear power… our slow computers (microsoft especially) … our rudimentary medicine. Do you agree that we call this the “Era of Information” for silly reasons ? I think that in the same light we should admire "primitive Egyptians managing a social and economic capacity to build the pyramids. I certainly think that satelites, the internet and computers are the current marvel.

6

I am amazed that in those silly Chariot of the Gods books people claim the Great Pyramid is exactly 1/(some large number) of the distance from the earth to the sun.

Really? On which day?

7

I do find them marvels of engineering. The skills of those workers back then has to be admired.

Last time I checked people who view the pyramids rarely go “feh it is so primitive” We aren’t talking mud huts here. Hell they were the tallest buildings up to the last few centuries (can’t remember if it was surpassed in the 19th or 20th century)

The thing I detest about the Chariots of the Gods/Atlantis folks is that it covers a bit of hidden racism. For example early Spaniards looked on the Pyramids of the Aztecs and assumed some other group (such as the lost tribe of Israel) must have built these because primitive non whites were incapable of such things.

These massive structures (Stonehenge/the Pyramids/ Easter Island/ etc) are a testament to the ingenuity and genius of our species. When we set a goal no matter how lofty or seemingly impossible we do it. (Moon anyone?)

8

Egyptians built the moon?!?!?!

:eek:

How, exactly, do you propose they accomplished that?

Crackpot.

9

No, Egyptions did that.
You know, those little slave drones of the Egypticon Inter-galactic empire.

10

:confused: Huh? They are not an awesome engineering feat? Why not? They are huge, took a lot of manpower, and a hell of a lot of brains. There are very few things in the world that come close.

Which one? I know a couple of them have fallen but what do you expect after 4000 years?

Do you make things full size right away? Not usually, so why would you expect them to be any different? You test out on the smaller scale so you know what to expect.

Yes ways they could have done it, but there may be other ways that we haven’t thought of. No I’m not saying anything really bizzare like aliens, but there maybe something we are over looking, some artifact that we’ve found that makes no sence to us but could be a key. And no I don’t have any ideas, if I did I sure wouldn’t be working where I am now.

Of course, but what’s the point. There has to be one real big reason to build something so huge. For the most part people are lazy, I mean how often do you go out and build a big building? people don’t build huge things for no real reason. However, you don’t need a big state-level society, just look at places like Stonehenge, Newgrange or Easter Island, none of those places are known to have big societies so it can be done with a lot less.

Cool are you going to build a new one? Or are we going to talk about alignments to the stars?

How about after that we talk about the light from Venus lighting up the triple spiral at Newgrange? There has been some talk of that on one of my mailing lists. There is a theory that at Newgrange in Ireland the light of venus lights up the triple spiral at the end of the passage. I guess they never read the Straight Dope because I remember one thread over in GQ about not being able to see much if you would look at the stars through a fireplace, which is essentially what you would be looking at at Newgrange. People really do believe some strange stuff.

And since I’m sure not a lot of people know about Newgrange there’s a link.

Now for my own wacky thinking, I think that many of the monuments were built in less time then is usually thought. My reasoning comes from the original Washington Monument which was partly built in a day by 500 people. They built to a height of 15 with a circumference of 54 feet and cut the stones by hand. No, I’m not saying you can build a pyramid in a day, but maybe in a few years less then most tend to think.

11

The Pryamids are glorified rock piles.

There.

I said it.

The ONLY thing that is impressive about them is the amount of labor it took to move all of the stone there and set it up. The achitects took a few rules of thumb and applied them on a grand scale, but what really makes it cool is the sheer scale. But its exactly the same principle as piling rocks in your backyard, and requires little more engineering knowledge.

No, one of them is shaped like this:
-------[li] [/li]-----[]
–[]
-[]
[******]

Ok, its not a good depiction, but the pint is that they tried to build it too steeply. they had no real idea of the limits of their own technology, and wound up finishing off the upper portion at a very shallow angle.

12

I’ll never let a little thing like a lack of actual opposition stop me from beating up on them!

I’m ignoring Stonehenge for now because its boring.

Easter Island:

Its not really all that impressive. Oh, its cool, all right, but the actual techniques involved weren’t really amazing.

I believe it was Thor Heyerdal who traveled there and investigated it. He had some cash and wanted to see how they built it, so he went off and… asked. The villagers said the heads had been therer when their ancestors came, and directed him to and old family. So he went.

They said: Give us some of that nice money and we’ll build one for you. And they did. The family carved it out of the rock with some simple tools.

And Thor said: Neat. How do you get it down there, though?

And the people said: give us some money…

And they took half of it, gave a feast for everyone around, with the price of admission being that you had to tug on the ropes hooked to the statue. And they did move it down the island.

And Thor Said: Ok, now how do you get it standing upright? (he probably had the money out and ready at this point)

And the people demonstrated that they easily did this by slowly wedging it up and piling rocks underneath. It wasn’t quick by any means, by eventually it was standing straight up, and they removed the rocks.

And that is the story. The moral is, when rich men named thor come around, be very nice and smile broadly while holding out your hand. :wink:

13

You’re talking about the Bent Pyramid.

14

Argh. Bandit posted between me and the topic I posted on.

Darn you, Bandit, darn you to a 404 page.

15

This reminds me of a little story I once heard.

Thor was up in his godly mountain home, and he grew weary of throwing thunderbolts around all the time, so he decided to come down to earth to see what mortals got up to.

So he assumes human form and descends to earth. He finds himself standing in a city street, and he can hear music coming from a house nearby. Curious, he follows the sound, and finds himself admitted into a party.

Being a god, and an incredibly buff one at that, he immediately attracts the attention of all the ladies in the room. One very attractive woman approaches him, and wordlessly leads him by the hand out onto the dance floor, where she and he boogie on down.

Eventually they start kissing, and wordlessly she leads him out of the party and back to her place, where, wordlessly, they make rampant love all night.

The next morning, Thor awakes, realises that he’s overslept, and that he needs to get back up to heaven and carry on his hammer-and-thunderbolt duties immediately. So quietly he gets up and tries to retrieve his clothing.

His partner of the previous night hears him, and stirs, saying “what are you doing?”

“I must leave,” he replies. “For I am Thor.”

To which she says:“You’re think you’re thore? I’m tho thore I can hardly pith!”

16

I didn’t read the whole link but I did catch this fun fact at the bottom:

Trying to say that the pyramid was built like that because of where it sat. But this is what I said before, you build the little ones to make sure everything works out, then build the big ass ones. I mean how embarassed would you be if you made a mistake like that on one of the big ones?

So exactly what rules should I know? That and how do you know they were that simple for them to build? I would guess that people now think something like the Empire State Building is “simple rules of thumb” so it wasn’t that hard to build.

How many of today’s buildings will last 4000 years? Any? Probably not without some serious help, yet places like the pyramids have lasted that long with little to no help.

smiling bandit, your story sounds, well just like a story. For all the things that I have read and watched, which is limited, on Easter Island, none of the remaning natives by the turn of last century, which according to this site was 111, was that no one knew how they were made. But as I said I know very little of Easter Island but I thought that there were still a number of differing thories as to how they were transported and raised.

17

Thing is, Edward the Head, Thor thoughtfully took pictures of the whole thing. They’re probably on the Net somewhere. I know I saw some of them in the Pacific Peoples exhibit at the Met recently.

18

smiling bandit,
I pretty much agree with your assessment of the pyramids (and I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks they look like piles of rocks ;)) but now I’m curious to hear your take on stonehenge. I did some research on for a college class once and I visited the site when I was a kid. I can remeber standing there, staring at the rocks wondring what the big deal was. They looked kind of lumpy to me, and they weren’t that big. It’s not even that big a deal to drag the rocks a few miles from the quarry to set them up. The most intriguing thing about them for me is just the sheer age of the monument. There are a lot of hills and tells around the same area that could probably yield more interesting archaeological information than stonehenge at this point but I saw cows grazing on the tells (this was a long time ago, though. Maybe it’s changed since the 70s).

What do you think?

19

This made me laugh.

“Hey man, I’m dying for a beer. You just want to make the top a little smaller so we can get the hell out of here and make happy hour?”

20

Though they might not be impressive by comparison to the pyramids, the smaller stones at Stonehenge are 3 tons weigh. The bluestone of which they’re made is only quarried in the Preseli Mountains of Wales, 240 miles from Stonehenge - considerably more than “a few”. In 2000 there was a reconstruction to show how they might have been transported using Neolithic materials.