For some reason people seem to think they’re fundamentally smarter than people were back then.
Yeah, you may have technically had a better education, but you’re not inherently more intelligent than the average person back then, and a genius from that time is still miles ahead of you.
Yeah they had less lead in their environment. They probably were actually smarter, just had less access to foundational knowledge
Less lead, but probably more malnutrition and disease.
The way God intended.
God: I intended more lead. I fixed the bug.
We fixed the glitch.
God: sorry sent too many bugs by mistake.
Egypt was very fertile and had food surpluses, many societies that build cool shit had food surpluses.
I don’t know. Looking at the pyramids I’m tempted to think all they had was foundational knowledge.
Yeah, it’s been linked to systemic racist thought patterns (which are often unintentional but should be acknowledged). I explain it to people like this: take a handful of sand and turn your fist so that your palm faces perpendicular to the ground. Now release the sand slowly… What shape does it form? It isn’t rocket science.
Ancient aliens literally has Nazi origins. They didn’t just have race-science, but race-history. I guess you could call their thinking ancient-Aryans because they believed that impressive structures built by brown people must have been led by a Northern European diaspora who eventually vanished because of race-mixing.
You can watch the History channel all you want, but nobody is going to question the Parthenon or the Colosseum. Stonehenge is the only one I can think of where Aliens had to help white people.
The two things you named were built thousands of years after the pyramids are believed to have been built though. You said it yourself, people think aliens helped with Stonehenge. That’s because it’s much older and there is no written history from when it was built.
I don’t doubt racism is factor in all sorts of aspects in life but this seems like a massive fucking stretch. Maybe come up with better examples.
https://hyperallergic.com/470795/pseudoarchaeology-and-the-racism-behind-ancient-aliens/
Pseudoarchaeology has a pretty long and not-so-awesome background due to the profession’s colonial roots with treasure hunters, adventurers, and the like, especially in antiquarian circles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_archaeology
In the late 18th to 19th century archaeology became a national endeavor as personal cabinets of curios turned into national museums. People were now being hired to go out and collect artifacts to make a nation’s collection more grand and to show how far a nation’s reach extends. For example, Giovanni Battista Belzoni was hired by Henry Salt, the British consul to Egypt, to gather antiquities for Britain. In nineteenth-century Mexico, the expansion of the National Museum of Anthropology and the excavation of major archaeological ruins by Leopoldo Batres were part of the liberal regime of Porfirio Díaz to create a glorious image of Mexico’s pre-Hispanic past.[22]
So that’s great evidence for racism being in archeology in general but I still don’t see the connection between that and people crediting aliens for things we don’t completely understand.
Edit: There are definitely good examples in the article but they also use your argument about things that were built way more recently compared to things that were built before written language. Egyptians definitely built the pyramids, they’re in Egypt so by definition that’s what happened. But I really don’t believe people getting excited over the mystery around how it happened and then pointing to aliens as a possible answer is rooted in racism at all. That being said, there seems be all sorts of nefarious reasons to put that alien explanation on things that are much easier explained without aliens.
Yeah, and it is hard for many people to see the direct correlation of “Chariot of the Gods” etc. with Nazis because it isn’t hitting them in the face. I try to show people that people were smart back then, too, instead of punishing these icky mindsets because they tend to be a bit reactionary anyway. Some people just don’t know any better for a variety of reasons.
I was thinking “three ridges” first 😅 (I imagined the sand running between the four fingers of my semi-closed fist)
Mind blown
So you’re saying the pyramids are just giant rocks piled on top of each other?
If so, then what was dropping them and how could the intricacies inside the pyramids be possible if they were just dropped on top of each other?
Pyramids = basic engineering shape for a sturdy structure. Wide base, tapered top. A lot of early monumental structures were constructed with that basic concept in mind.
its not the basic shape thats impressive, its the truly gigantic pieces that have tighter tolerances than a tesla.
TBF that’s not hard
I don’t think people have ever been blown away from the shape of them.
Edit: and it’s actually really silly to think about someone who would be… “Woah! How are those things triangles???” Like what?
I probably didn’t have as good an education as the highest educated classes in most ancient Egyptian dynasties.
I don’t know about that. Intelligence is attractive and it’s a predictor of lifetime success.
It’s fair to imagine the challenges a building team would face 2k plus years ago.
Like in this example, building levers that are strong enough to lift the load. I bet they broke a bunch of stuff.
But eventually they figured it out, via trial and error. Levers, ramps, etc. They probably couldn’t describe why those things were inherently the best way, but more approached from the “we tried 9 other ways and they suck. This is the best way.”
Next, the phrase “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is relevant here, but in a backwards way.
Since we struggle to imagine what it would take for an ancient society to master the techniques to build these things, we therefore begin to grasp for unrealistic conclusions (magic…read…aliens).
Same goes for Europeans building cathedrals and stuff, the trick is the history, the methods and the results were more documented and understood.
There are some racism concerns that I think go beyond and around what I’ve discussed, which is more abstract. I’m not discounting the other topics, just not covering them here.
Egyptians didn’t just decide “hey, let’s build a pyramid”. Mastabas were first, the shape of a Pyramid evolved later.
Not to mention that there’s a few faulty pyramids (e.g. Bent Pyramid which were finished quickly or all together abandoned before completion.
Merer forgot to mention aliens in his diary too.
But hey, aliens did it. They couldn’t just land on Earth. Their ships were designed to land on a Pyramid because that’s how intelligent race would build their spaceships. Don’t question it, just trust the specialists (who wrote books!).
Anyway, for anyone interested in Ancient Egypt, the best thing out there (I think) are Bob Briers lectures also available on Audible.
Don’t know why you replied this to me, but cool links.
I never suggested there’s any validity in the alien-pyramid thing, only described how it could have entered the discussion in the first place.
(“We don’t know what they did, seems hard even for us, must have been magic”. Pathway)
Not advocating anything, not arguing anything, no tinfoil on my frog’s heads, they live naturally.
Pretty sure they were just agreeing with you. It’s like an argument you imagine in the shower, but co-op mode.
Just covering my ass, cause Lemmy
The bent pyramid may not have been faulty, but instead had a different internal layout because of it’s use in cult worship rather than only burial.
Great video from History for Granite archeologist on the subject.
Yeah, I was hoping someone mentioned that guy. He’s doing great work actually gathering data.
He builds up his photographs a lot in that video, which is totally justified since seemingly no-one in history has ever bothered to (accurately) publish what’s there before, but that’s not his normal style. He’s usually just gathering all the available published accounts and noting what makes sense and what doesn’t.
It’s great to see someone say they don’t have all the answers but that there are answerable questions that can be posed. Even better when they go get the answers themselves - without breaking any rules.
I like the theories about them being ancient power stations or radio devices, using the water channels and gold cap stone to create enough pd to be useful in occult practices. It doesn’t have to be aliens that helped make them but I think there’s something the really resonates with the idea of aliens coming down and teaching ancient people how to make super complex and beautiful machines to synthesize small amounts of potent narcotics. Like none of the other reasons aliens would come make much sense but a tiktokable prank like that really does.
Imagine how fascinating it would be if we find loads of old alien stuff on Mars with like little model pyramids and pictures of them with the pharaoh. Or if when we meet aliens and have first contact they got us up with galactic tiktok and people are reposting all the old videos of pranks aliens have pulled on earth over the years.
Yeah they were probably just the biggest coolest looking thing that knew how to make so everyone wanted one, yeah they were probably just dragging rocks up sandy inclones and using water filled counter weights… but we don’t know aliens weren’t there so I’m going to enjoy being open to that possibility.
You should check out the youtube channel in the sibling comment. There’s a good video on why the cap stones were unlikely to be special (and very unlikely to be gold): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZxmkNESTpM
Ok but nothing I’ve ever experienced or witnessed has ever made sense, literally nothing ever fits any form of reason or logic - a thousand years from now if they write off all the things from our lives that make no sense or are absurd then the vision they come up with won’t resemble reality at all, not one little bit.
So when someone says ‘its unlikely they’d waste resources’ or ‘this would be totally unfeasible and require insane amounts of totally needless extra measures while providing no benefit what so ever’ that just makes it feel even more likely to me, like yes of course that’s what they did that’s what we always do!
Sounds like an interesting video though, I’m going to watch it but I’ll be thinking about aliens and trying to find cracks in the narrative where I can poke them in!
One thing is for sure: you can’t leverage those stones with a primed FJ 1x6 from Lowe’s. I’ll bet they went through quite a few of those!
Lowe’s definitely made lots of USD getting the pharaohs to think the pyramids were a good idea
Now what were you thinking about a backsplash here?
But imagine the size of the lever. And how would they haul it on top of the pyramid? Wouldn’t we have found traces of a 500m long lever ?
you mean like they lifted the rock from the ground , all the way up in one trip?
sounds good enough for me. I bet they didn’t, they had the aliens lower it with antigravity technology
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Pretty sure the Egyptians were smart enough. But the European cathedrals cannot be explained w/o aliens
Great Wall of China? Come-on, no body can do that. And its not aliens, its GOD, who show favors protecting his favorite people, the Chinese.
Not to mention the Chrysler tower. Def aliens
The constant barrage of Joe Rogan clips of idiots claming it was impossible to move these huge stones over those distances with the tech at the time was what drove me to disable YouTube shorts.
You can disable shorts??
I need to do that. I get stuck in a loop of watching them, and 90% of them just piss me off anyway.
Honestly, the first and arguably most important step is recognizing how much of online content is specifically designed to get a reaction out of you, primarily in the form pissing you off.
Yep, might explain some of the irritability of people online.
What’s funny (I guess funny lol) is ever since I got my current job about 2.5 years ago, I no longer need to use social media. I am much, much happier without it. But I still get into little fights on forums and I really wish I didn’t. Every now and then I resolve to be less hostile, and things really do improve, but somehow I always get dragged back into old habits. But I’m a little hesitant to completely abandon things like Kbin because they are often my only window into events/what is going on/my hobbies. Idk what the answer is.
Well, the fact that you have the self awareness to realize is a great place to be. Not sure what to say other than try to treat your body with respect and your mind will follow.
I honestly I’m surprised how much of a problem this is for people. All I’ve done is made sure to hit the “not interested” type buttons on YouTube and tiktok whenever they pop up, and I’ve run into next to nothing after like 3 times of doing that. Sometimes I’ll watch something the algorithm thinks is adjacent to ragebait or alt-right bullshit so it’ll try to feed it to me, and after not-interested’ing the video it goes back to feeding me the stuff I actually want…
Do people just not use those features or is my experience with the algorithms really that different?
So you’re actually thinking of it a little more narrowly, which is understandable. What I mean by “content designed to piss you off” is VERY broad.
Conservatives like Fox News, but it makes them pissed off, right? Social media can be exactly the same way.
Ah that’s fair, I think I might’ve been injected other related conversations I’ve seen into this one. My bad!
No worries
i turned off watch history. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725.
now i dont get any recommendations from youtube and only watch what i am interested in.
There’s probably a way to do it in browser with ublock origin or another extension.
On android, ReVanced.
I use ReVanced on my phone and it has an option to hide shorts permanently. In the browser I use an extension for that, there are multiple ones.
The creation of the feature is what made me disable shorts. If I wanted vine then I’d go back to 2013.
Hey take that back. Vine and 2013 were marvellous times
Lifting it is like 1/100th of the challenge. Moving it across hundreds of miles, cutting it, getting it to the top of the pyramid, and setting it in place are all bigger problems than simply lifting the stone.
I think they started at the top and then built down
they were just trying to find the upper block limit after hitting bedrock
He who cast the first stone built the pyramid
Nobody has so far given you a serious answer, so:
Cutting - They only had IIRC bronze, which is not enough on its own to cut through the granite. However using sand to add friction makes it cut significant faster/easier.
Moving miles - Boats are incredibly capable of carrying heavy loads with minimal energy expenditure to move said boat. Using logs and levers also goes far.
Getting to the too of the pyramid, that’s a little more of a mystery. But there is evidence they included ramps within the structure as they built the bigger ones as they went. And IIRC the smaller ones had pulley systems going through the center.
It doesn’t require fancy tech, just of patience and application of basic physics.
Here is a guy using some of the basic movement techniques in his backyard with multi ton stones:
Lifting is the hard part, you can move blocks short distances on rollers, long distances on barges, really short distances by a dozen men pushing
If you take the heaviest stone and divide it by a reasonable weight to walk long distances- say 20lbs, you find you need a few thousand people to carry one stone. You need several thousand ropes for each worker, but again each rope only needs to lift 20 lbs of the whole.
Modern estimates put the number of workers at 10,000. So they just had to carry them.
It’s no wonder they didn’t document it. Lift stone and walk. What’s the big deal?
Slavery: It get shits done.
Moving material gets done via cart, or rolling on top of logs. I had heard various theories for how they got the big bricks up, from rolling up a dirt pile (put into place by, you guessed it.) to building a waterproof chute with the bricks in it on a raft, and just filling the chute with water to make the raft go up.
The pyramids were not built by slaves.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/great-pyramid-tombs-slaves-egypt
The masonry had to have been done by professionals. The blocks fit together with such precision. Even today it would be an architectural feat to be able to cut and place 15+ ton blocks with millimeters-thick tolerances.
“Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world,”
ay good one, Archimedes
A couple years ago my chemistry teacher told my class that the Egyptians had really advanced technology (technology even more advanced than our own) thousands of years ago but it all got lost because they started a nuclear war
Edit: she told us that the evidence was that there were smartphone paintings
Sounds like he was sneaking sniffs in the flammable cabinet a little too often.
Famously impossible thing to detect in historical records: massive amounts of uranium-235.
Pfff I’m sorry but no, it was the cats.
You see cats have powers similar to Telekinesis. Why do you think they choose rivers surrounded by deserts to start the first civilizations. Sandboxes everywhere they please.
But one dark day the Faraó Ramses forgot to refil the food pile because and I quote “but it still had food from yesterday”.
This one mistake doomed humanity to the eternal silence treatment.
(and that’s why his tomb sucked, his was the first that humans actually had to build)
I do really enjoy the theory that the great pyramids are actually industrial reactant chambers.
Great filter theory bit it already happened and nobody noticed.
She must go to some good parties.
But we all know the lever was invented by Jayzus Christ in America when Washington and Lincoln were reading the Bible and praying together!
There’s a whole chapter on levers called Leviticus
Amen.
Also, ramps.
Also, boats!
Were block and tackles a thing in that time too?
The Greek historian Herodotus instead depicts Khufu as a heretic and cruel tyrant. In his literary work Historiae, Book II, chapter 124–126, he writes: "As long as Rhámpsinîtos was king, as they told me, there was nothing but orderly rule in Egypt, and the land prospered greatly. But after him Khéops became king over them and brought them to every kind of suffering: He closed all the temples; after this he kept the priests from sacrificing there and then he forced all the Egyptians to work for him. So some were ordered to draw stones from the stone quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, and others he forced to receive the stones after they had been carried over the river in boats, and to draw them to those called the Libyan mountains. And they worked by 100,000 men at a time, for each three months continually. Of this oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not much less, as it appears to me, than the pyramid. For the length of it is 5 furlongs and the breadth 10 fathoms and the height, where it is highest, 8 fathoms, and it is made of polished stone and has figures carved upon it. For this, they said, 10 years were spent, and for the underground chambers on the hill upon which the pyramids stand, which he caused to be made as sepulchral chambers for himself in an island, having conducted thither a channel from the Nile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khufu
Among the items recently found were hundreds of fragments of papyri. Some of these were inked with records that were the logbooks of a group of some 40 workers who were crew on a boat during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu. They record the transport of limestone blocks along the Nile River and then through a series of water-filled basins, using terms such as “Khufu’s Lake”. At the base of the pyramids, workers unloaded the rock to cover the outer layer of the Great Pyramid, then, the boat crew would head back to a quarry for another load of rock.
https://roseannechambers.com/ancient-boats-and-enormous-blocks/
I am not sure they found any boats other than the funerary ones, but they seem pretty comparable.
This is very interesting but he is asking about pulley systems. A block and tackle is a pulley system that gives a mechanical advantage in lifting something.
There’s a lot of evidence to show that a small team of skilled craftsmen could have used water channels and animal skin floaters to lift the blocks into place.
Here’s a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1y8N0ePuF8
Actually I was listening to a podcast that explains this. They didn’t have levers yet. They did have other devices but no lever.
you can’t just not have levers.
It was before levers
Lol of course you can. They were invented at one point. And before that point… You didn’t have them. I recommend: Let’s Learn Everything episode 49: Goosebumps, (Not) Alien Pyramids, and Nessie & Cryptids.
Podcast webpage: https://www.LetsLearnEverythingPod.com
I think the lever here is a stand-in for mechanical advantage. I don’t believe anyone is seriously proposing they lifted the blocks with a very long stick.
But the length of the stick is what’s required for the lever, unless they used some kind of gearbox.
But others have levers
“Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world. ”
- Archimedes
I know how they’re built because I watch Witual. Internal ramp theory babeeee!
Friendly reminder the Mayans had a highway
The aliens had to come to Earth to learn how to build pyramids from us
Woah
The great pyramid of Giza weighs around 6 million tons https://weightofstuff.com/how-much-does-the-pyramid-of-giza-weigh/
An average human can apparently develop about 200N https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/ergonomics/push1.html
Meaning that an average human would need a lever about 3×10^8 m long (considering a 1 metre load arm) to move the pyramid.
Do you find this credible?
ETA: some people think I’m serious. This is quite the flabbergast.
Don’t worry I got what you were putting down. People can be very reactionary with their downvotes here, if your joke is too subtle it can fly over their heads.
It made me smirk! For my reference, how many zeros is that (I’m shit at maths but want to try and imagine such a long lever protruding into deep space)?
8 zeros, so 300 000 kms (but I’ve probably messed up somewhere)
WhERe woUlD yUo fINd a TReE tHaT BIg???
That’s almost as far away as the moon! Therefore, the only logical explanation is ALIENS
Take that scientists!
I’m going to go out on a limb and say i don’t think they found the pyramid whole and moved the entire thing. I think they took small pieces, possibly block shaped and moved those one at a time
I would never have thought of that! But I still don’t understand how these satanic Duplo work, so who am I to judge
The ancient Egyptians utilized neither wheels nor work animals for the majority of the pyramid-building era, so the giant blocks, weighing 2.5 tons on average, had to be moved through human muscle power alone. But until recently, nobody really knew how. The answer, it seems, is simply water. Evidence suggests that the blocks were first levered onto wooden sleds and then hauled up ramps made of sand. However, dry sand piles up in front of a moving sled, increasing friction until the sled is nearly impossible to pull. Wet sand reduces friction dramatically beneath the sled runners, eliminating the sand piles and making it possible for a team of people to move massive objects.
https://daily.jstor.org/scientists-have-an-answer-to-how-the-egyptian-pyramids-were-built/
You’re gonna need a bigger load arm. The pyramid is way more than a meter across.
How much more? One metre, tops?
