Mystery of the Lost 35 Foot Granite Disc-Cutter Used in Ancient Egypt

originally posted by: conspiracy nut
a reply to: 2Faced

i went on an ancient egyptian surfing expedition after reading the op last night lol in order to believe the big flood theory we would have to move the timeline back of when the pyramids were originally built. the big flood and cataclysm theory is very interesting as i have read that earth passes through the dryas every 12000 years or so which would mean we are due very soon!

We don't. 12000 years doesn't match with any cycle, and in any case there's no regular flooding of the Earth. The person who wrote what you were citing is either quoting the long-disproved Velikovsky or is trying to refer to the Milankovitch Cycle and got the time period really wrong.

i am more willing to believe that the ancient egyptians really did build it themselves with perhaps some misunderstood or forgotten technology coupled with good old fashioned drive and elbow grease. hundreds of thousands of workers with no football, internet or nintendo to distract them, i think we underestimate their capabilities.

Not only that, but they were used to physical labor AND we have the names of the supervisors, the cargo list for boats, rubbish pits full of garbage and the remains of food, etc, etc.

originally posted by: Marduk

originally posted by: conspiracy nut
a reply to: 2Faced

i think we underestimate their capabilities.

That would be the people who claim that the Egyptians didn't build the pyramids
The previous King, Sneferu, actually built three pyramids with a combined mass far exceeding anything before or since. But you don't see the cranks claiming he didn't build his, that's because they don't know diddley squat about the subject, yet are happy to make claims based on almost no evidence

So the technology wasn't forgotten, it had been used for almost two hundred years before the Great pyramid and it went on for about another two hundred years afterwards, then they started burying their kings in the Valley of the Kings, because by that point they found out that the best way to hide the dead, was not to put a big symbolic mountain on top of them...
None of this is rocket science or requires a lost race of Master builders, the Giza radiocarbon project took hundreds of samples from the area and all of them came back within the accepted timeline.
Currently the main proponent of the "Older Giza" nonsense is Graham Hancock, who doesn't hold a single academic qualification, but hey, he's a journalist so he's qualified to write crap which the majority of his ignorant readership will believe, because they are incapable of fact checking or doing their own research.

Yet there are some things that don't really answer questions like; why do we find pyramids all over the world (south america, asia, europe, africa etc.), most of witch built at, or around, the same time? Why do we find megalithic stone walls and foundations all over the world, that are so similar, that it looks like the architect and builders traveled around the world to teach their advanced skills to all the other civilizations? None of that should be possible, not 4500 years ago, certainly not 12000 or more! Not if we stick to the current explanation anyway.

Granted, I personaly would like nothing more then the alternative scollars and (pseudo) scientists, to be correct about the pre flood advanced civilization theory. And I must admit that I sometimes "hate" the crap out of guys like you, who come and crush a much more intriguing colorfull and exciting alternative theory, then the currently accepted one, with facts that are also hard to deny However, I do find that a lot of facts presented by people like Foerster, are also very hard to dismiss And not only because they have more sex-appeal to me

p.s. Please do not think for a second that I actually hate you, or anyone else with a plausible theory for that matter, if anything, I am more then often impressed and intimidated by the wealth of information and knowledge I find here. So my respect massively overrules the "hate" .

originally posted by: 2Faced

Granted, I personaly would like nothing more then the alternative scollars and (pseudo) scientists, to be correct about the pre flood advanced civilization theory.

They have never been correct about anything, not a single one of them, what they are good at is learning just enough to be less ignorant than their readers and then lying about their evidence, then lying about the academic evidence, usually by omission.
So like I said earlier, if you don't fact check, you will always miss the lies they are telling you

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

If we're discussing a big, round, saw. That doesn't require a hub. It could be placed sideways on the ground, with a protrusion in the center pointing downward onto a concave slab of stone, and that would allow it to be made to spin freely, and used to cut stones.

Isn't that a hub?

If it's spinning sideways, it doesn't even need to be thin or flat. It could be a giant cylinder shape, or even a sphere, with a ridge on the outer edge of the cylinder/sphere to cut the stone. Just put a round builder on top of a pinion and spin it. Then attach an outer circular edge to the outside of the builder.

Okay...now think about this.

A disc of rock that's ...what... 10 feet in diameter? Check out the weight of a granite countertop - they can weigh as much as 30 pounds per square foot - rough calculation says that there's about 160 square feet there, so that means they have to get something in motion that weighs around as much as a car.

Now.... in order to cut something, it's got to move. Water wheel won't do it (and they didn't have any nor the geography to set up a water wheel.)

I haven't seen anyone demonstrate how to move a circular saw the weight of a car at a speed of 1000 RPM which is on the low end of circular saw speed. Egyptian did not have pulleys or gears, and humans (or cattle or anything else) can't run at that speed.

originally posted by: Blarneystoner
I’m a stone cutter. I’ve been cutting stones using diamond sintered saw blades for use in lapidary work for over 20 years now. Pretty much everyone responding to this thread seems to understand that in order to cut a stone, abrasives must be used. The basic tenant of stone cutting is that the abrasive and the implement used to put pressure on the abrasive MUST be harder than the stone being cut!

Hardness is measured using a scale developed by the German geologist and mineralogist Friedrich Mohs.

Mohs scale of hardness 1-10 with example stones:
(1) Talc
(2) Gypsum
(3) Calcite
(4) Fluorite
(5) Apatite
(6) Orthoclase
(7) Quartz
(8) Topaz
(9) Corundum (Emery)
(10) Diamond

It is impossible to cut a stone that is harder than the abrasive and implement being used to cut it!

Stones like Hornfels (Mohs 2-3) and Limestone (Mohs 2-3) are easily cut using Bronze implements and sand because Bronze has a hardness of 3 and typical silica sand has a hardness of 6-7.

Stones like chert, jasper, chalcedony, granite, basalt which were used in Ancient Egypt all have a Mohs hardness greater than Mohs 6!! Those stones can be cut using an abrasive like Emery but if a Bronze tool is used to apply the abrasive, the Bronze tool would be worn away, not the stone. This is the fundamental problem I see with current theories regarding ancient stone cutting tools and techniques. There must be some other explanation other than “they used Bronze tools” because it’s just not possible.

Unfortunately for you, this exact thing was done on television by Denis Stocks. So, sorry, I'll believe my own eyes instead.

Harte

originally posted by: conspiracy nut
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

the part that baffles my mind is how they lost the knowledge, were they taken over by barbarians with lesser technology? did they go through a sort of "idiocracy" caused by inbreeding or other reason? have any blueprints, plans, lists of supplies, employee time cards or architectural drafts ever been found? what kind of technology or knowledge of how the pyramids were created was around at the time of the greeks or romans in egypt?

i have a million questions!!!

a breath of fresh air and a fascinating thread op!!

You have to try and understand that, without a printing press knowledge is not that hard to lose.

With a printing press, the moment a discovery is made and shown to be true, thousands upon thousands of copies of that information are made and spread around. Those who learn of it, write it down again, each creating hundreds or thousands of copies, which others then read and re-write..... etc.

After a little while, the difficulty of extinguishing every copy, or unteaching all those who have learned it would be enormous.

But that is only true BECAUSE of the printing press. If scribes had to make copies by hand, you'd be lucky to see 50 copies floating around.

Worse, because without a printing press only a few people would even know how to read, there would be only a few people anywhere who actually knew how to apply that technology. If the books were lost to time (papyrus eventually rots, causing books to die out if no scribes come along and recopy them.) - And the few who know how to use the technology don't pass it on (perhaps because the kingdom falls into poverty and can't afford big building projects for a while andtheir skills go unused).

originally posted by: Marduk

originally posted by: conspiracy nut
a reply to: 2Faced

i think we underestimate their capabilities.

That would be the people who claim that the Egyptians didn't build the pyramids
The previous King, Sneferu, actually built three pyramids with a combined mass far exceeding anything before or since. But you don't see the cranks claiming he didn't build his, that's because they don't know diddley squat about the subject, yet are happy to make claims based on almost no evidence

So the technology wasn't forgotten, it had been used for almost two hundred years before the Great pyramid and it went on for about another two hundred years afterwards, then they started burying their kings in the Valley of the Kings, because by that point they found out that the best way to hide the dead, was not to put a big symbolic mountain on top of them...
None of this is rocket science or requires a lost race of Master builders, the Giza radiocarbon project took hundreds of samples from the area and all of them came back within the accepted timeline.
Currently the main proponent of the "Older Giza" nonsense is Graham Hancock, who doesn't hold a single academic qualification, but hey, he's a journalist so he's qualified to write crap which the majority of his ignorant readership will believe, because they are incapable of fact checking or doing their own research.

The problem with using radio carbon as "proof" of a later timeline is that nothing stops the pyramids from having been built at one date, and then someone moving in much later, leaving biological samples all over the place, and maybe building a temple complex in front of the sphinx, or chiseling a man's face onto it (after the original lion face has gotten worn out to the point it no longer looks like anything.)

There might even be a workers' city built, for the expansion projects.

Imagine if there is an apocalypse, and a civilization 1000 years from now finds Giza, not knowing it had been a tourist attraction in 2017 AD. They would find biological samples dating back to 2017, which could lead them to believe the pyramids were built in 2017.

originally posted by: 2Faced
Yet there are some things that don't really answer questions like; why do we find pyramids all over the world (south america, asia, europe, africa etc.), most of witch built at, or around, the same time?

Answer: we don't. Doublecheck those numbers and the photos of the "pyramids."

The "Chinese pyramids" for example, are hills of dirt.

Mayan pyramids were built 3,000 years AFTER the large Egyptian pyramids.

Nubian pyramids were made by the Nubian rulers of Egypt, around 1800 years after the Great Pyramid...but they ruled Egypt and wanted to be seen as very Egyptian, so they did take their ideas from there.

There are no European pyramids.

Why do we find megalithic stone walls and foundations all over the world, that are so similar, that it looks like the architect and builders traveled around the world to teach their advanced skills to all the other civilizations?

Mostly because the people showing you the pictures are taking pictures from one angle and photos that show something that looks similar to one part of another structure.

I could show you a picture of a dragonfly wing and a mosquito wing blown up to the same size and claim they were very similar, but this doesn't mean that dragonflies and mosquitoes are the same.

None of that should be possible, not 4500 years ago, certainly not 12000 or more! Not if we stick to the current explanation anyway.

I don't mean to be offensive, but it sounds like your ideas of "what we think are possible" came from various internet sites and not from reading things like JEA, Oriental Institute publications, Journal of Neolithic Archaeology, etc.

A lot of what people here think we know is actually not correct or is outdated by 70 years or more

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

The problem with using radio carbon as "proof" of a later timeline is that nothing stops the pyramids from having been built at one date, and then someone moving in much later, leaving biological samples all over the place, and maybe building a temple complex in front of the sphinx, or chiseling a man's face onto it (after the original lion face has gotten worn out to the point it no longer looks like anything.)

Actually, as anyone who's taken archaeology classes can tell you, it would be possible to detect all that... and rather easily. We've got a lot of known cases where burial material was made for someone and then reused and "retooled" a hundred or even two hundred years later. It's very common in Egyptology and if you visit a museum with a good Egyptian collection, they'll have several examples on display where this has been done.

Mind you, people who haven't studied this can't tell. But someone who's studied the culture and art styles and tools and construction can pretty easily tell (my daughter and I were easily able to spot the reworking on Hatshepsut's granite sarcophagus although the museum docent couldn't see it (this was visiting collection and the docent was a local and not someone who traveled with the show.)

Imagine if there is an apocalypse, and a civilization 1000 years from now finds Giza, not knowing it had been a tourist attraction in 2017 AD. They would find biological samples dating back to 2017, which could lead them to believe the pyramids were built in 2017.

Only if they were very bad at archaeology. And I mean REALLY bad at it. Worse than the Victorians. Worse than Napoleon's scientific crew.

They'd have to be REALLY clueless tourists pretending to be archaeologists to make that kind of error.

(and I'm saying this as someone who's both gone to Giza and who's taken archaeology courses.)

a reply to: Byrd

Now I remember where I heard it, Joe Rogan podcast with Graham Hancock whom you do not agree with. One of the things that struck me is Graham said he had some sort of conference with the leading Egyptian archeologists and they walked out on him and wouldn't even discuss some of the evidence and theories that Graham had.

originally posted by: conspiracy nut
a reply to: Byrd

Now I remember where I heard it, Joe Rogan podcast with Graham Hancock whom you do not agree with. One of the things that struck me is Graham said he had some sort of conference with the leading Egyptian archeologists and they walked out on him and wouldn't even discuss some of the evidence and theories that Graham had.

If Graham said that he was lying, he had a debate with Zahi Hawass after he was kicked out of his antiquities minister job and Zahi walked out. But then, Graham has been pretending that Zahi has been covering up the truth for years on his own website, accusing him of misconduct and unprofessionalism. Which is odd, because Zahi is well known to be accommodating and even had the A.R.E. at Giza

So the spin he put on it, wasn't true, he actually walked out because Hancock insisted on using ideas and images of Robert Bauval, who Hawass regards as a thief. Hancock was told that in advance but ignored it, precisely so he could later claim "the experts walked out on me"


Better description and video here

This was sometime after the dating of the Giza pyramids was proven to be in the fourth dynasty by radiocarbon dating, so why Hancock is still flogging his dead horse is a mystery if you don't think money is the sole thing that motivates him

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

The problem with using radio carbon as "proof" of a later timeline is that nothing stops the pyramids from having been built at one date, and then someone moving in much later, leaving biological samples all over the place, and maybe building a temple complex in front of the sphinx, or chiseling a man's face onto it (after the original lion face has gotten worn out to the point it no longer looks like anything.)

The problem with trying to debunk the Giza radiocarbon project, when you don't know anything at all about the Giza radiocarbon project is that it becomes very clear that you don't know anything about the Giza radiocarbon project at all
The samples were not taken from all over the place. They were removed from the mortar between the blocks which contained samples of carbon from charcoal. That would be from places that hadn't seen the light of day since the construction. Unless you'd like to claim that the Egyptians didn't build the pyramids because they didn't know how, but they were clever enough to take it all apart to the bottom row and then put it back together using fresh mortar
Which is plainly nonsense
Maybe you should actually look into he radiocarbon project and see what they actually did, I bet you probably don't have the time/can't be bothered, who needs the facts right ?

A civilisation 1000 years from now would also remove samples from places that can't be contaminated, that is the basic basic basic procedure to the science, which again, you apparently know nothing about, yet here you are commenting

Btw the sphinx never had a lion face, if you knew anything at all about the morphology of the rock its built from that should be obvious, you don't seem to know anything about the facts at all really, did you get all your claims from a pseudo historian, you were conned buddy



Are you even aware what the motto of this website is ?

originally posted by: Harte
originally posted by: Blarneystoner

Unfortunately for you, this exact thing was done on television by Denis Stocks. So, sorry, I'll believe my own eyes instead.

Harte

Why would your willful ignorance be unfortunate for me? Denis Stocks chisels limestone with a tempered copper adze, definitely not "this exact thing". You can believe your eyes but (fortunately) that doesn't change the facts.

a reply to: Harte

Without any reference provided by you, I'm assuming that you're talking about the NOVA broadcast where archaeologists and stone masons went to Egypt to perform experiments on stones to determine if it was possible to reproduce the cuts using the tools thought to be used by the pyramid builders.

Here's what one of the stone masons, Roger Hopkins had to say after attempting to chisel Limestone and Sandstone using a Copper chisel:

"We're losing a lot of metal and very little stone is falling off," observes Hopkins, which is hardly the desired result. Hopkins' simple experiment makes this much clear: The Egyptians needed better tools than soft bronze and copper chisels to carve granite.

Source: NOVA Online

...but please don't misunderstand. I don't think the pyramids were built by aliens. I just don't believe they were constructed using the primitive tools that archaeologists claim they were limited too. The official explanation doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

originally posted by: Blarneystoner
originally posted by: Harte
originally posted by: Blarneystoner

Unfortunately for you, this exact thing was done on television by Denis Stocks. So, sorry, I'll believe my own eyes instead.

Harte

Why would your willful ignorance be unfortunate for me? Denis Stocks chisels limestone with a tempered copper adze, definitely not "this exact thing". You can believe your eyes but (fortunately) that doesn't change the facts.

Doesn't change the fact that he wasn't chiseling anything either.
Starts here. Video not available, as far as I know, but it was on NOVA (PBS.) That's not a chisel, and the stone is the same granite the Egyptians used.

So, yes, unfortunate for you, your claim bit the dust. Granite dust.

Harte

originally posted by: Blarneystoner
Here's what one of the stone masons, Roger Hopkins had to say after attempting to chisel Limestone and Sandstone using a Copper chisel:

"We're losing a lot of metal and very little stone is falling off," observes Hopkins, which is hardly the desired result. Hopkins' simple experiment makes this much clear: The Egyptians needed better tools than soft bronze and copper chisels to carve granite.

That is not what Roger Hopkins said at all, he simply said "We're losing a lot of metal and very little stone is falling off", the rest of your misquote is some unknown author. An intelligent person would say you had better get a lot more chisels then, like maybe the loads of broken chisels they found in the quarries that the stone was cut from, left there by the Egyptian masons. wouldn't you call that a clue
I mean, you didn't even check the next page where you get the answer to the question posed by Hopkins

"We're going to put sand inside the groove and we're going to put the saw on top of the sand," Stocks says. "Then we're going to let the sand do the cutting."

Then the mystery author again,

It does. The weight of the copper saw rubs the sand crystals, which are as hard as granite, against the stone. A groove soon appears in the granite. It's clear that this technique works well and could have been used by the ancient Egyptians.

Seems you are cherry picking your quotes and ignoring what doesn't fit.

originally posted by: conspiracy nut
a reply to: Byrd

Now I remember where I heard it, Joe Rogan podcast with Graham Hancock whom you do not agree with. One of the things that struck me is Graham said he had some sort of conference with the leading Egyptian archeologists

Only one Egyptologist - Zahi Hawass. It wasn't a conference, it was a debate and Hawass walked out after Hancock tried to force the conversation to something they agreed beforehand that they wouldn't discuss.

Note that Hawass is the most famous Egyptologist but he's not the leading Egyptological expert on Giza (that would be Mark Lehner.) Nor is Hawass an all-around expert in everything Egyptological (we are dealing with more than 5,000 years of history and nobody can be expert on all that) - the living experts would be Quirke, Snape (yes, really. Someone named Stephen Snape (I have to force myself to NOT call him "Severus")), Allen, Teeter, Tyldesley, Kemp, Altemuller, Cooney, Hornung, and all these people.

...and wouldn't even discuss some of the evidence and theories that Graham had.

Graham will only discuss his hand-picked evidence and won't discuss ALL the evidence (because it does disprove his idea.)

a reply to: Byrd

its been a while since i listened to that podcast and i believe you as to how it all played out. if i remember correctly the stuff they were discussing on the podcast was fascinating, the younger dryas, cataclysms, ancient civilizations, mass extinctions etc etc. do you think his theories are hogwash? i am a skeptic at heart but that podcast was intriguing!!! the podcast was the joe rogan experience w guests graham hancock and randall carlson.

originally posted by: conspiracy nut
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

the part that baffles my mind is how they lost the knowledge, were they taken over by barbarians with lesser technology? did they go through a sort of "idiocracy" caused by inbreeding or other reason? have any blueprints, plans, lists of supplies, employee time cards or architectural drafts ever been found? what kind of technology or knowledge of how the pyramids were created was around at the time of the greeks or romans in egypt?

i have a million questions!!!

a breath of fresh air and a fascinating thread op!!

The flow of the Nile changed. The whole Ancient
Egyptian empire was built around the North and South of the Nile. There's a theory that there were two Sphinxes that guarded the entrance to the Nile. One became list in flooding.

They needed granaries to maintain a constant food supply along with a steady supply of meat for the pyramid builders. Their schedule was four hours morning, break at high noon, work another four hours. If that food supply was disrupted there would be no work.

Only the exterior and interior of the pyramids are stone. Everything else is rubble and dirt. That way they wouldnt even waste the chippings. It would be easy to grind two stones on wooden rollers against each other. They also had four teams, each assigned to a particular corner of the pyramid. So by transporting stone blocks using wheels made of circle quadrants (four to a block), it would be easy to roll them along.

Looking at all sorts of ways that the famous 3-Lobed wheel may have been used, I came up with what I think is a plausible hook-up for such a device. Perhaps it was designed as a capstain where ropes attached to it. It could have been to suspend a veil or canopy of silk over the pharaoh, high on a pole, or perhaps the top of a tent pole to attach the downropes... Or (wild), some sort of capstain that would spin and centrifugal force would whip the ropes around for some reason,

Anyway, this is my very crude example of how the ropes may attach to this thing... What do you think?

originally posted by: charlyv What do you think?

I think its a great idea, but siltstone isn't very great at load bearing.

The period in Egyptian history that this dates from is full of examples of siltstone bowls, mmost of which performed one of three functions
1. libation vessels
2. toilet trays
3. bowls

Its not so much a mystery object as it is undetermined which of the three it was specifically designed for