For those who continue to believe nobody knows why the pyramids were built

originally posted by: bluesfreak
Hi Hanslune,
Firstly, I wasn’t saying they needed THAT exact belt sander, with a plug on!
What I meant was, a tool that works in the same way, not necessarily electrical, it could be hand wound . Bet you that would still be quicker than pounding. Lots of them look the same width too.
Secondly, floating a 120 tonne obelisk is not the same as 1000 tonnes. What kind of a vessel was that?! Or did they use boats side by side. Still. 1000 tonnes??
You have experience in pounding, so why do it like that, what’s the stone workers reasoning here?
a reply to: Hanslune

An ancient Egyptian drawing of a stone carrying boat - you'd need a big one to carry a 1,000 tons



The AE moved very few stones of that size - probably because it was very difficult.

Why not do it that way? Some traditions are not always rational or the best way to do something - but that doesn't mean they didn't do it that way.

Have you been able to come up with a good reasons for their to be no sign of an advanced machines in AE? How did other civilization work hard stone - at one time or another all of them did.

a reply to: Hanslune

Given what I know about egyptian boat building methods, a boat able to haul 1000 tons is an astonishing 😁 thought.
I bet they used several hulls lashed together.
What a stressful job that overseer had.

This is a representatation of a reduction gear. Why put a 2:1 ratio on the teeth if it means nothing?
They may be coaxial, or fixed to the same spindle .or even planetary, who knows .
I was talking about AE, get told about gears in India , find a pic and put up an interesting link, that’s all!
If your eyes cannot see a resemblance to the ones in the Cairo museum, in terms of spur shape then that’s not my problem.
Just saying they aren’t gears isn’t enough. The fact that they show a 2:1 ratio is enough to raise an eyebrow for me in engineering terms, but go ahead and deny any possibility to yourself, that’s fine by me.
You need to argue with the Indian guy who wrote the link I posted about the name of the god, not me, I know next to nothing about ancient India , but want to now.
Here’s some





a reply to: Phage

If you look at my posts, I have never mentioned electricity. Turning a lathe, or a jig set up with rotating cutters, or a large circular saw ( or even a belt sander type tool) could be EASILY achieved using gears and a hand wound mechanism , this is where I think the ‘crossover’ in terms of ‘advanced’ comes into play.
Just as an aside, if you took my milling machine and put it in the desert unused for a few thousand years, very little would be left indeed in that harsh environment.
Why does everyone say “ where are the machines, then?” When it’s pretty damn obvious they would have crumbled away millennia ago, if they existed, and were even left in situ, which wouldn’t have happened. Or, even more obviously to me, stripped and used, melted down to be repurposed. Just like, for example, a 35ft copper saw blade WOULD be melted down for recycling, THATS WHERE ITS GONE!!!
It’s a loaded question, and a pretty flimsy one at that.
The straiations in the stone that I have been talking about are the forensic fingerprint of the tool and the feed rate of the tool across the surface.
These are things I see everyday in my work on lathes and milling machines, so it implies a form of technology more ‘advanced’ than the general scholarly accepted version of what they were capable of. I just think they were WAY smarter than we think, and why wouldn’t they be?
a reply to: Hanslune

Where are the teeth engaged in the pic then? A geared mechanism can't do anything if the gears aren't meshed. Is this mechanism in "idle?"

These gears don’t engage each other, Harte,they are a representation of the concept of reduction gears in my opinion. ONE of the cogs engages with a different spindle to either reduce by half or double the speed of said spindle.
a reply to: Harte

Anyone seen this idea for heavy stone transport in AE?
I suppose it will be labelled as ‘fringe’ and dismissed, however it is very efficient and within the capabilities of the AE ..
Link



It’s very interesting as a concept, wouldn’t you all agree?
The bit in the link about Herodotus quote on ‘machines’ may possibly need clarifying if that’s the correct translation, but it’s interesting. A 1000 tonnne obelisk couldn’t be dragged .
Interestingly, Steinway use a rolling frame to tip concert grand piano’s ‘into’ , in order to move them around. I’ll have to find some video of that...

Ps- in relation to the tooling forensics, we haven’t really talked about the FORCES involved between the cutting tool and the material being cut that even on a light cut machining-wise, are tremendous.
If we are talking around 1mm (in our measurements, not theirs) per revolution of the blade into granite then this implies a fair amount of rpm coupled with some serious force behind the tool, or in feeding a block into a fixed spinning saw blade.
a reply to: Hanslune

originally posted by: bluesfreak

Where are the teeth engaged in the pic then? A geared mechanism can't do anything if the gears aren't meshed. Is this mechanism in "idle?"

These gears don’t engage each other, Harte,they are a representation of the concept of reduction gears in my opinion. ONE of the cogs engages with a different spindle to either reduce by half or double the speed of said spindle.
a reply to: Harte

Count the teeth. It's not 2:1.
Know much about Medieval India do you? Enough to interpret what the object "represents?"

Note that the two "gear's" surfaces are coplanar. Impossible for the inner gear to engage laterally, unlike the reduction gear pic you provided.

So, this can't be a stylized representation of something else? Wheel of Dharma, the Sun, maybe?

Harte

originally posted by: bluesfreak
Anyone seen this idea for heavy stone transport in AE?
I suppose it will be labelled as ‘fringe’ and dismissed, however it is very efficient and within the capabilities of the AE ..
Link

It’s very interesting as a concept, wouldn’t you all agree?
The bit in the link about Herodotus quote on ‘machines’ may possibly need clarifying if that’s the correct translation, but it’s interesting. A 1000 tonnne obelisk couldn’t be dragged .
Interestingly, Steinway use a rolling frame to tip concert grand piano’s ‘into’ , in order to move them around. I’ll have to find some video of that...

The "Mainstream" is not some monolithic united collection of scholars espousing one theory, Your pic represents the thought of a portion of mainstream Egyptology. Not the majority, but mainstream nonetheless.

Harte

It’s certainly not beyond the AE though is it? But no AE pics of it I suppose, I can’t find any. Very thoughtful, elegant, efficient.
The mainstream is intent on being monolithic when it comes to machine tool forensics, though, wouldn’t you say?
a reply to: Harte

Yes Harte it could well be the sun, but it could be a representation of a gear concept too. We know no ancient art is precise in its representation of ‘making things’ .
Hey, you can shoot me down in flames on ancient India, watch me spiral down with a trail of smoke, I really don’t mind lmao, it’s just an aside that was posted into the thread as far as I am concerned!
It’s a mechanical device either represented or visualised, it has clasps that hold the two together. It’s viewed as mechanical. What does that imply to you??
a reply to: Harte

originally posted by: bluesfreak
Yes Harte it could well be the sun, but it could be a representation of a gear concept too. We know no ancient art is precise in its representation of ‘making things’ .
Hey, you can shoot me down in flames on ancient India, watch me spiral down with a trail of smoke, I really don’t mind lmao, it’s just an aside that was posted into the thread as far as I am concerned!
It’s a mechanical device either represented or visualised, it has clasps that hold the two together. It’s viewed as mechanical. What does that imply to you??
a reply to: Harte

Google Wheel of Dharma and look at images. Several versions look like gears.

Harte

Yep like I said, I could well be wrong, don’t mind at all either way!
They still expressed this object as mechanical in form and function, it IS held together with a nicely designed clasp. Stunning stonework too.
This thread was about AE stone cutting !
a reply to: Harte

Looked up Wheel of Dharma, the vast vast majority of the images that come up don’t look anything LIKE this argued over cog thing. AT ALL!!!!
a reply to: Harte

originally posted by: bluesfreak
Looked up Wheel of Dharma, the vast vast majority of the images that come up don’t look anything LIKE this argued over cog thing. AT ALL!!!!
a reply to: Harte

This is true.
But there are a whole lot of different versions, which tells you that making different versions was not frowned upon.
Only a couple look much like the one in the pic, but plenty have what looks like gear teeth around the outside.

Harte

originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: Hanslune

Given what I know about egyptian boat building methods, a boat able to haul 1000 tons is an astonishing 😁 thought.
I bet they used several hulls lashed together.
What a stressful job that overseer had.

I would think a number of boat more like barges could have been used, they could also have moved it by land but that sounds very difficult too. However they only moved one 1,000 tonner, 2 x 700 and a score or more 400 tonners - that we know of.

originally posted by: bluesfreak
Ps- in relation to the tooling forensics, we haven’t really talked about the FORCES involved between the cutting tool and the material being cut that even on a light cut machining-wise, are tremendous.
If we are talking around 1mm (in our measurements, not theirs) per revolution of the blade into granite then this implies a fair amount of rpm coupled with some serious force behind the tool, or in feeding a block into a fixed spinning saw blade.
a reply to: Hanslune

Sorry no I don't have a mechanical/engineering background. I can speak only to archaeological subjects - Harte is the expert on that subject

originally posted by: bluesfreak

The bit in the link about Herodotus quote on ‘machines’ may possibly need clarifying if that’s the correct translation, but it’s interesting. A 1000 tonnne obelisk couldn’t be dragged .

Its written in ancient Greek which is well understood.

Why couldn't they drag a 1,000 stone? Now very few of that weight were moved but moved they were.

Again the Ramesseum of 1,000 tons WAS moved from Aswan and WAS set up at Thebes - that is 275 kilometers of movement that must be accounted for. Even if the majority of the journey was by ship they would have had to move it from the quarry to the river (probably during the flood time to shorten the journey). Then from the river bank to the site at the temple.

originally posted by: bluesfreak
My apologies for using the ‘D’ word on here ( Dunn) but unfortunately he is talking my language in engineering terms:
Below is a piece of stone from Abu Rawash, that clearly shows a large circular saw did the cutting.
The stone does not lie here. Dunn also shows the correct method for determining the size of the circular blade used by using an equation that gives you the diameter by using 2 points on the circular striations made by the tool. I myself have used this calculation on numerous occasions in the workshop to determine radius. What Dunn shows is correct.
The stone also shows the feed rate of the tool in relation to modern day measurements in mm.
This tool sliced into the stone at just under 1mm per revolution of the (large) circular saw blade.

I see these striations everyday working on a milling machine where rotating circular cutters are passed over various materials, the tool will leave its signature .
I can’t read hieroglyphs , but I can read these, it’s part of my job, and whatever you opinions on Dunn and the ‘fringe’ his method here is correct.
a reply to: Harte

If you look at this picture posted earlier by Harte, there also look to be marks that would seem to indicate a feed rate.



However we know exactly how this cut was made. It was an experiment by some researchers attempting to use a copper tube drill and sand abrasive. If these marks are similar, and don't indicate the tool's feed rate, then probably the ones in the other situations also don't indicate the tool's feed rate. (But if you can see clear differences, then a high feed rate is still on the table.)

originally posted by: peter vlar

originally posted by: UniFinity

do you have any source about the validity of carbon dating. If I google it than it is evident that it is not valid for older dates, as I said in my previous posts already.

Valid for which older dates? Nobody has ever claimed that 14C testing is useful beyond 50-60KA and I know a lot of people who aren't comfortable using ascribed dates of more than 45-50KA. But it's pretty irrelevant in this particular thread as we're talking about a structure that is younger than the half life of 14C making the margin of error so negligible that a date to within a couple of decades +/- is easily accomplished. One of the best methods of calibrating your reading is by comparing dendrochronology. If I take a core sample from a 6000 year old tree for example, I'm going to give a sample of that core to someone else to run 14C and mass spectrometry, before I count my tree rings. Then we compare our results. The results always line up unless there is contamination. As I pointed out earlier, no one dating method is ever accepted. There is always cross referencing with other dating methods and there is always a known margin of error included with any date.

The fact a date is younger than the half life of C14 doesn't matter to that question.

The abundance of C14 is all that is being measured. If the object started out with less C14, then it would appear to have aged quite a bit even mere seconds after the creature/plant had died.

All that matters is if there is good reason for us to believe the field was stronger by enough of a magnitude to affect the C14 content dramatically. I'm reluctant to believe the field has suffered a rapid decline. How can it have been present for over 300 million years, protecting the formation of life, and then in just 10,000 or 20,000 years time it decides to just up and blink out?

It doesn't strike me as probable.

originally posted by: Byrd

originally posted by: CajunMetal
Doesn't this all presuppose there was no pre-Egyptian civilization, though?

There isn't any evidence of a pre-Egyptian civilization (meaning a culture that had a political organization and developed farming techniques and had domesticated animals and people who had trades and lived in cities.)

pre-Egyptian cultures, yes. There's a tons (quite literally) of evidence all over the world for hundreds of thousands of different cultures.

That's a long list of requirements.

1- Political organization.

What human civilization ever didn't? Even tribal hunter gatherers meet that requirement to some degree.

2 - Developed farming techniques.

They've found dairy farming communities, with pottery out in the Sahara. Presumed to be at least 7,000 years old.

www.nytimes.com...

The beauty of finding things out in the green Sahara regions is that nobody has lived there for so long. The sites are largely un-contaminated by rehabitation from later visitors.

3 - Domesticated animals.

Same here: clear evidence of them in the Sahara.


4 - People who had trades.

Even hunter gatherers have some degree of specialization. The guy who knaps the flint for the spears may not be the same guy leading the hunting party.

5 - Lived in Cities.

I don't see how that is a requirement. It is if you need 20,000 workers to complete something in 40 years.

But with longer time frames, or more labor-efficient methods, you might not need 20,000 workers (at least not all at the same time.)

originally posted by: sapien82
a reply to: Hanslune

Aye its very interesting as you say there are no plans for the culture that supposedly made them before the AE
I guess we will never know for sure unless new discoveries are made .

if the current model is to be accepted then the AE were bloody good builders
however I dont believe humans could organise and carry out such a grand structure without any sort of record or detailed plans , a structure that size is so complicated especially with load bearing walls etc , I just dont believe it possible for everyone to remember all of that information in their head!

However they may have constructed small models for this purpose and those just havent survived , or as suggested they started with the precursor models of the stepped , bent and mastaba pyramids !

That idea bothers me too. To organize so many workers on that scale, you'd need to write some things down.

Besides we have the diary of Merer.

en.wikipedia.org...

Which demonstrates the overseers did, in fact, write stuff down as they lead the project. Of course, Merer himself was only involved in moving casing stones, leaving the core structure's making unconfirmed as yet.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

The fact a date is younger than the half life of C14 doesn't matter to that question.

The abundance of C14 is all that is being measured. If the object started out with less C14, then it would appear to have aged quite a bit even mere seconds after the creature/plant had died.

C-14 dating has been verified by checking C-14 dates with tree rings and other methods of dating in particular. It is particularly useful for dating pottery.

en.wikipedia.org...

There are many other methods too that are used in conjunction with C-14

Amino acid dating
Archaeomagnetic dating
Argon–argon dating
Uranium–lead dating
Samarium–neodymium dating
Potassium–argon dating
Rubidium–strontium dating
Uranium–thorium dating
Radiocarbon dating
Fission track dating
Optically stimulated luminescence
Luminescence dating
Thermoluminescence dating
Iodine–xenon dating
Lead–lead dating
Oxidizable carbon ratio dating
Rehydroxylation dating
Cementochronology (this method does not determine a precise moment in a scale of time but the age at death of a dead individual)
Wiggle matching
Datestone (exclusively used in archaeology)
Obsidian hydration dating (exclusively used in archaeology)
Tephrochronology
Molecular clock (used mostly in phylogenetics and evolutionary biology)
Dendrochronology
Herbchronology

That idea bothers me too. To organize so many workers on that scale, you'd need to write some things down.

Besides we have the diary of Merer.

Which demonstrates the overseers did, in fact, write stuff down as they lead the project. Of course, Merer himself was only involved in moving casing stones, leaving the core structure's making unconfirmed as yet.

But no plans. We have approximately 1/10 of 1 percent of Egyptian writings - mostly inscriptions, around 1% of Roman material survived and about half a percentage of Greek. For the Mesopotamian maybe a bit more due to the survivability of fired clay tablets but those sites are not as fully excavated as the others.

The amount of material that has survived from the Old Kingdom are The Pyramid Text inscribed in Unas tomb, The Palermo Stone, Abusir papyrus, a number of inscriptions - basically names and short phrases and Merer's. That's it.

We may find more in the future - The first surviving building plans we have are from the 9th century.

Papyrus was very expensive in that time period and was reused extensively.