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

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.)

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Hi bloodymarvellous,
I understand and partially accept Stocks proof of concept, why wouldn’t the AE use sand as an abrasive, and it’s more than readily available.
However, a mere cursory look at the two pictures will show that the ‘proof of concept’ core drill picture is FAR rougher, the sides of the cut granite are smashed and mangled up by the use of the abrasive and any resemblance to feed rate striations are far more random and messy.
The picture containing the nearly (in our measurements) 1mm very consistent tool striations shows a far ‘cleaner’ surface against the tool.
As a machinist that suggests to me that the the tool was able to cut the granite under more rigid conditions and at far more suitable rpm and feed rate combination.

Just as ps to this, we’re not necessarily looking at high rpm for a cut like this to be achieved if we consider a roughly 40 ft circular saw: the outside edge of a large circular saw has A LOT of surface area in its circumference , so one revolution of the saw is achieving quite a cut in itself . Lots of saw passes through the material being cut.
Kind of hard to get a definitive on rpm as other factors are required to find it, such as teeth number of the saw, intended surface speed in feet per minute ( in our measurements from our time) and we don’t have those.
They might not have thought like that though , we don’t know do we? A good machinist can ‘feel’ a good feed rate when working manually on a lathe or mill, by the vibration of the machine itself and the feel of tool resistance ( and noise sometimes!)
However, if these forensics are feed rate ( which I personally suspect they are) then it shows a cut done with a feeding system ratio’d to the rpm : what we call today ‘power feed’ , an automatic feed of the material under the cutter ( or cutter fed along a material) using gears from the spindle itself to drive it.
These striations are very even indeed and it leads me to think of power feed results I see in the workshop.
Incidentally, if I use my mill in a manual way to take a surface cut, I will achieve a good finish, but you will notice when looking at the striations that there will be inconsistencies in the gap between striations where your hand turns the handle fractionally faster or slower, no matter how hard you try or how good you are as a machinist!
That’s not evident here , there’s a real consistency going on in this cut. Wierd eh?
a reply to: bluesfreak

Ancient Egypt didn't waste hours on their smartphones or spend it relaxing taking time off. They spent their lives dedicated to their job because there wasn't really anything else to do besides wait for harvests.

Aliens have nothing to do with Pyramids.

I'm fairly sure they would've known that If you water down a long path from the quarry to the pyramid, it would make transporting the slabs easier.

I'm not quite sure how they got the slabs to to the top of the pyramid but I can assure you aliens have nothing to do with it.
they probably made dirt ramps and cleaned it off afterwards.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

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.)

Keep in mind that the cut above is done using what Denys Stocks has speculated is the method. And the cut was made by people who've never sawn stone like that, so the striations may not tell us the same things as truly ancient ones and would certainly look at least a little different.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

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.

Not exactly the case.
What is measured is the ratio of C14 to C12. As was stated, that ratio is known for various eras from dendrochronology and other methods. This is how C14 dating is calibrated.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelousAll 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.

What field is this? I must have missed it - or forgot about it.

Harte

Im not talking about Aliens...(!)a reply to: SpaghettiHero

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

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.

Not exactly the case.
What is measured is the ratio of C14 to C12. As was stated, that ratio is known for various eras from dendrochronology and other methods. This is how C14 dating is calibrated.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelousAll 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.

What field is this? I must have missed it - or forgot about it.

Harte

It's from earlier. The claim is that the Earth's magnetic field might have been stronger a long time ago. (IN theory) The Earth's magnetic field can reduce the effect of cosmic rays. It's very weak, and I don't know too much about it, but it has an affect that is surprising for its strength. I think part of the reason is because magnetic force is proportional to an object's speed, making it more effective for fast moving particles.

It mostly stops particles from the Sun from stripping away at Earth's atmosphere. Mars having barely any atmosphere is partly attributed to Mars having no magnetic field.

Anyway.... if the magnetic field were stronger, that could cause fewer cosmic rays to hit the atmosphere, causing less C14 to be made. This means the overall ratio of C14 to C12 in the atmosphere would be lower to begin with.

If it is lower to begin with, then even mere seconds after something dies, it will have a lower ratio of C14 to C12 than a creature that dies today.



- All that said, I would want to carefully review the evidence for a diminishing magnetic field. It surely must diminish over time, because it is caused by left over rotation in the Earth's core, which should have been fastest right after the Earth formed, and be slowing down continuously.

But..... we're talking timescales of millions (maybe even billions) of years. Not thousands of years.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous
Given the limits of C14, magnetic field variation is not a problem. There's been no significant change in field stength/deflecting cosmic rays in the last 50-60k years or it would show up in both old lava flows and dendrochronology.

I mean, C14 has been calibrated over vast periods of time already. The magnetic field is all over the Earth so you don't need to test in any specific place to calibrate C14 dating.

Harte

a reply to: Harte

Yeah this is the 'American football quarterback' problem. An American quarterback can throw a football 60 meters with amazing accuracy - this is due to his having done so for twenty years prior and with assistance from experts at doing so, there are even books that will direct him on what to do - he might even come from a family of football players.

Go to Egypt and ask an Egyptian archaeologist to throw a foot ball. He's never done so before and he might be able to send it 15-20 meters with absolutely lousy accuracy.

This illustrates the difficulty of archaeologists and other amateur trying to redo old masonry techniques - one they don't know if they are doing so the right way, or even knowing it was the way it WAS done, they have no expert around to show them, they don't come from a family with 'special skills passed down father to son', they have no practice or experience.

It took three generations of archaeologist to regain a competent level of stone tool making - and they had experts still around who could show them how to to do - from Ishi and others.

en.wikipedia.org...

(Ishi: Ishi is revered by flintknappers as probably one of the last two native stone tool makers in North America. His techniques are widely imitated by knappers, and ethnographic accounts of his toolmaking are considered to be the Rosetta Stone of lithic tool manufacture.)

It would take generations of steady practice to relearn and become competent at such tasks - even if we knew exactly how they did it - which we don't.

originally posted by: Hanslune
a reply to: Harte


It would take generations of steady practice to relearn and become competent at such tasks - even if we knew exactly how they did it - which we don't.

That's the crazy part. We won't ever really know exactly how they did it. But we know of a few methods that could work.

The "drill feed rate" problem is the hardest one for me to be sure about. I can't be certain whether the marks are actually indicative of turns of the drill, or if they're indicative of the number of times the cylinder was pulled out of the hole so the old sand/abrasive could be washed out and new sand/abrasive added to start another cutting session.

Another group did a proof of concept using different abrasives, and they determined that using Emery as the abrasive gave the most similar cut, but unfortunately this link doesn't have any pictures:

www.penn.museum...

Absolutely, unless we find a tomb with detailed drawing or miracle of miracles a written discourse on masonry we will never know how it was done. More annoying is that sometimes the ancient did things that were NOT the best way to do it.

Example:

In the transition from stone tools and weapons to copper and bronze the same methods to fasten stone tools to a wooden shaft were used for copper and bronze. This didn't work very well so the leather thongs and glues were replaced by rivets. I believe it took several hundred years to come up with the idea of a tang with rivets driven into that instead of the cutting head itself. The rivets use to constant get ripped out. Finally they came up with a solid tang with a handle placed around it.

Base riveted bronze knife/sword in the same way stone tools were -secured to a handle at the base with glue not rivets



Intermediate methods base and a tiny tang



Full tang



Those darn ancients were smart guys but often hobbled by tradition and customs.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous
At the beginning of the article is a link to these two dentists' (yes, they're dentists LOL) pdf. It's been in my favorites for years.
There's pictures in the pdf.

Harte

Yep, and Gobeckli tepe built by noah or his sons i bet.

Ancient aliens...puhleeze.



a reply to: Leonidas

Why do we have to insist on the OCT when there is a better explanation for the placement of the Giza pyramids. This match is not just anywhere it is in modern Egypt. I deal with the encoding in my book.

I thought this youtube was very interesting because it shows you how to make beautiful vases with very basic tools. I was always under the impression that creating these objects required higher quality tooling.