Who made the pyramids. They must have been smarter than us!

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Kaak


nah, i got that from the learning channel...

Now THAT is a learned source!

Next thing you know, you'll start quoting the History Channel.

[King of Rasslin]

The History Channel is one of the best channels on TV, but TLC occasionally gets nutty. The pyramid show did seem to be solid and believable, since they did bring up a lot of facts and not very many opinions.

[Lord Merciless]

I think we are neither smarter nor stupider than the ancients. Afterall, we are biologically the same human. But what we differ from them is the that we have far more knowledge than our ancestors 4000 years ago, and knowledge can help humans make better decisions and carry out better activities.

People today are definitely not more smarter, as described by the narrowmindedness of many people. Just because THEY can not imagine to do something, they assume that nobody else beside them can do it, and would like to resort to supernatural explanations.

Saying that today's people are not capable of replicating the pyramids is an insult to the millions of scientists, engineers, and architects. Before you make such claim, or repeat similar claims from a vulgar TV channel, you should first ask MULTIPLE experts before drawing your conclusion.

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by King of Rasslin
The History Channel is one of the best channels on TV, but TLC occasionally gets nutty. The pyramid show did seem to be solid and believable, since they did bring up a lot of facts and not very many opinions.

So what? Building after star formations should hardly be surprising. Nights in ancient times were far darker than today. People who had nothing to do during night times would certainly look up to the skies, watch star patterns, and think about stories.

I'm sure if you end up in such an environment, you would do the same thing.

[Robert]

I thought I should quote this from that website Kaak came with:

- The Great Pyramid lies in the exact center of the Earth's Land Mass. The longest latitude land line and the longest longitude land meridian meet at the location of the Great Pyramid. The odds of its having been built where it is are 1 to 3 billion.
- The exact location of the Pyramids is the only place on earth able to endure such immense weight. Only a solid mountain can endure the weight of the Pyramids. Astonishingly enough, a flat granite mountain happens to be located just beneath the surface of the ground directly under the Pyramid.
- The Great Pyramid is the oldest structure on the face of the earth having been built at 4,617 years ago.
- With incredible precision, the pyramid is exactly due north, south, east, and west. Each side is oriented to one of the four cardinal points of the compass at a rigorous 51 degree/51 minute angle. Modern man's best effort, the Paris Observatory, is six minutes of a degree off true north. The Great Pyramid is only 3 minutes deviant! This error is probably due more to the gradual shift of the Earth's axis since the pyramid was built, rather than an error in its original alignment.
- The Pyramid reflects the earth in volume, area and weight. The Pyramid's estimated mass of 5.995 million tons is one billionth of the estimated mass of the Earth (5.9 X 10 21 tons)
- The Great Pyramid was constructed with a protective outer layer of white Tura limestone that gave it a smooth and seamless outer surface. In the 14th century, the local inhabitants stripped the casing stones from the pyramid to rebuild buildings damaged from an earthquake.
- The sum of the lengths of the 4 sides of the Pyramid equal to 36,524 inches. Modern science has proven that the exact length of the solar year is 365.24 days.
- The average height of land above sea level (Miami being low and the Himalayas being high) happens to be 5,449 inches, the exact height of the Pyramid
- The locations of the three pyramids of Giza, parallel the positions and sizes of the stars in Orion's belt as seen at Giza in 10,500 BC. Even the position of the Nile matches the position of the Milky way in this epoch. With the help of complex calculations, geometric researcher Robin Cook showed that the air shafts in the king's and the Queen's chamber had pointed to Sirius(the brightest star in the constellation of the big Dog) found in 2600 BC; and towards Little Bear (the second brightest star in constellation).
- Pi was designed into the pyramid 4,600 years ago, a time when supposedly pi was not yet discovered. If the circumference of the Pyramid is divided by twice its height (the diameter of a circle is twice the radius), the result is 3.14159. Incredibly, this number happens to be pi accurate to the six digits
- Many have estimated that 2.3 million blocks were used to build the Great Pyramid, with an average weight of about 2.5 metric tons per block. The largest block weighs as much as 20 metric tons.
- Thirty times larger than the Empire State Building, the Pyramid's features are so large that they can seen from the moon.

again, thanks to Kaak: http://www.egyptiancharm.com/know/know.html

I'll try to find more on the 'longest latitude' and all that tomorrow.

CS

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I mean if it was 36,524 of something else - but inches????

What the**** did Egyptians know that we will use - or actually that the Brits will use an inch as a measurement???

[LDiCesare]

Inches!!!
As for the claims about the center of the Earth, I have to say the center is always where I stand.
As for being due north etc. and more precisely so than the Observatoire, well, consider the error in inches instead of angle, and you will see that it may not be as precise. It is always easier to draw a straight line when it is long than when it is short.
Tura limestone was used on most pyramids. Some still retain it.
Anout pi, I am afraid that if you just let some sand fall and look at the angle you get in the thus-created pyramid, you may get an inclination much like that of the pyramids (they were built so they couldn't collapse). From that, the ratio of height/perimeter follows. And note that Egyptians knew the wheel. When you divide the perimeter of the wheel by the diameter, you get a figure which they had to know. Or else, how would they have built a wheel?

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Kaak
also important:

-the pyramids of giz perfectly match the stars of orion's belt

Only if you look at it from a bizzare angle, squint, put sand in your eyes and then pretend all that made sense.

http://www.legon.demon.co.uk/orion.htm

Bauval, the man responsible for that theory, wants to claim the allignment was from 10,000 years ago. Why then? Because he thinks Atlanteans were involved. The total lack of evidence for Atlantis besides one unfinished story by Plato regarding a story he said he heard as a child doesn't seem to faze Atlantis fans.

-there are shafts in the bottom chambers of the pyramids that lined up perfectly with these stars once a year at the time of construction...

Yes, well supposedly anyway. That one took a bit of planning but they had lots of time, hundreds of years of experience and there is no reason to think that people that could move all that rock couldn't plan where not to put it. After all all they really had to do was get the angle of elevation right. The whole pyramid was allready alligned to the north and most likely by using the star in question. It is just one star not stars. So right there one variable is taken care of.

Oh and the shafts don't go all the way to an exit. They stop and can't actually pass starlight into the pyramid.

-The pyramids have an impossibly stable foundation. The have sunk less than a foot in the 4000+ years they have been around. The white house has sunk 2 feet in 200. And more importantly, they are built on sand?!

The White House was built on marshy soil and then someone added so much to it that the building nearly collapsed from the weight of the new construction. The pyramids were built by experienced people that learned how to get a good foundation over centuries.

anyway, it is said that modern architects builders couldn't duplicate these feets...

Said by people that don't want to believe the Egyptians could build it despite all the evidence that they could and did build pyramids for centuries. They look for ways to say it can't be done instead of figuring out how it might have been done.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by CyberShy
I thought I should quote this from that website Kaak came with:


- Thirty times larger than the Empire State Building, the Pyramid's features are so large that they can seen from the moon.

I will just deal with this one. Its utterly false. So preposterously erroneous that it calls all else from the source into question. Unless of course they are using one heck of big telescope. Can't even be seen naked eye from low Earth orbit.

About the telescope. That won't do it either.

We can see features of about one foot across from low Earth orbit and that is with the best scope the governments money can buy. Thats about 100 miles away. The Moon is about 230,000 miles away or 2300 times the distance. So a foot becomes 2300 of them. Cheops is less than 800 feet on a side. So it can't be seen from the moon even with spy satelite scopes.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kaak
-the pyramids of giz perfectly match the stars of orion's belt

This is false. There is no such lining up.

Originally posted by Kaak
-there are shafts in the bottom chambers of the pyramids that lined up perfectly with these stars once a year at the time of construction...

There are several questions:

1. What was the time of construction used?
2. Is there any independent verification of said shafts?

[Urban Ranger]

Just to pick apart a few assertions:

Originally posted by CyberShy
- The Great Pyramid lies in the exact center of the Earth's Land Mass. The longest latitude land line and the longest longitude land meridian meet at the location of the Great Pyramid. The odds of its having been built where it is are 1 to 3 billion.

The Earth's land masses are scattered, it makes no sense to used the so called longest latitude land lane (whatever that means) and the longest meridian (all meridians are the same length by definition).

Originally posted by CyberShy
- The exact location of the Pyramids is the only place on earth able to endure such immense weight. Only a solid mountain can endure the weight of the Pyramids. Astonishingly enough, a flat granite mountain happens to be located just beneath the surface of the ground directly under the Pyramid.

That's a load of crap. Where's the calculations that shows this?

Originally posted by CyberShy
- The Great Pyramid is the oldest structure on the face of the earth having been built at 4,617 years ago.

More lies.

Originally posted by CyberShy
- With incredible precision, the pyramid is exactly due north, south, east, and west. Each side is oriented to one of the four cardinal points of the compass at a rigorous 51 degree/51 minute angle.

What does this mean? Does it mean the sides of the base of the Great pyramid aligns exactly with the cardinal directions? If so, they will have to be 90° from their neighbours.

Originally posted by CyberShy
The Great Pyramid is only 3 minutes deviant! This error is probably due more to the gradual shift of the Earth's axis since the pyramid was built, rather than an error in its original alignment.

Say what? True north doesn't change.

Originally posted by CyberShy
- The sum of the lengths of the 4 sides of the Pyramid equal to 36,524 inches. Modern science has proven that the exact length of the solar year is 365.24 days.

Inches this time and not el? Make up your mind already. This kind of correlations are bunk anyway, stink of the whole Bible Code fiasco.

Originally posted by CyberShy
- The average height of land above sea level (Miami being low and the Himalayas being high) happens to be 5,449 inches, the exact height of the Pyramid

This is going to be tough, as the elavation of every single point on Earth must be taken. Has this been done?

Originally posted by CyberShy
- The locations of the three pyramids of Giza, parallel the positions and sizes of the stars in Orion's belt as seen at Giza in 10,500 BC.

So how does that mesh with this?

"The Great Pyramid is the oldest structure on the face of the earth having been built at 4,617 years ago"



I'll stop now, this thing is just one big hole.

[JohnT]

I still think it is funny UR (as somebody pointed out earlier) that the Egyptians measured things in inches. Damned foresightful of them, dontcha think?

[Thucydides]

I should point out that we can actually do better then the Egyptians and building pyramids using modern technology. Aside from the dramatic decrease in the time it would now take to build the damn things, we can measure it more acurately as well. For instance, the pyramids are on a north-south/east-west axis to within a degree of arc (very impressive at the time. It's been suggested they used an artifical horizon and averaged out stars rising and falling to get true north). Now a days though it is possible to get within a 100th a degree of arc (I hope I remembered this correctly, it's been years since I took that course in Ancient Technology). I'm sure the range of accuracy is similar for other measurements.

In other words, ancient technology was impressive and well thought out, but they were no way technological nearly as sophisticated as we are today.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by JohnT
I still think it is funny UR (as somebody pointed out earlier) that the Egyptians measured things in inches. Damned foresightful of them, dontcha think?

Yeah, and el's too

[Robert]

ok, thus the conclusion should be:
- the guys who build the pyramids were not smart at all
- they were plain lucky though