The World's Oldest Papyrus and What It Can Tell Us About the Great Pyramids

Smithsonian ^ | Monday, September 28, 2015 | Alexander Stille

[SteveH]

keyboard spew alert

[wildbill]

Doesn’t mention any stones being ‘poured’ as far as I can see.

Have you ever seen any stories/videos on the ‘Coral Garden” in Florida that was constructed by one little Danish man who claimed he had figured out the secret of the construction technique that enabled the building of the Pyramids?

Per our previous comments, simply hewing, dressing, and dragging 2.5 ton stones to the construction area and setting them in place with an exactness that amazes at a rate of one every seven seconds or so doesn’t compute.

[dp0622]

Thanks for the info. I like reading about history. It will give me something to do with down time at work :)

[SunkenCiv]

Right, the labor merely for the quarrying of the stones and making them so precise — using only copper and stone tools — then moving the stones to the site and putting them in place over a period of just 20 years is, uh, implausible (at best), and the support village on the Giza plateau has been excavated and found to consist of dozens of bakeries and whatnot to feed the crews.

Then consider the level of labor needed to grow the food and haul it to the site for prep...

[SunkenCiv]

Shh! I’m part of the coverup! ;’)

[SunkenCiv]

;’) My pleasure!

[Cronos]

One wonders how some cultures were so brilliant and some are the same as they were maybe 10s of thousands of years ago. Some tribes in Africa and South America.

I think it depends on:

• the environment -- if it's too cold (think the Yenisian peoples who remained the same for millenia) or too hot (Saharan) or too much jungle (Amazon rain forest), then it is difficult to evolve beyond hunter-gatherer. Alternatively -- if the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is too easy (i.e. food is readily available), then why change (think of the Amazon rainforest -- they evolved poison arrows, no need for anything else when food is easy to get)
  
• Beasts of burden: In eurasia you have cattle, horses, sheep, etc. that were relatively easy to domesticate -- in the Americas there were few animals that would be suitable to domesticate -- the llamas are what I can think of. Or in Australia with no suitable domesticable animals. Or in Africa where I can't imagine a wildebeest being domesticated
  
• Neighbors: From what I know (which is not much), circa 5000 BC you only have civilisations in the lands that are now eastern Turkey and Iraq, and then extending across Elam (south-eastern Iran) to the Indus valley in India -- probably all Dravidian peoples. And you have Chinese Zhou civilisation. From the Sumerian-Dravidians you have the first ideas of culture -- agriculture, irrigation that spread to Egypt and India etc. -- these peoples created the idea of civilisation that then spread to the Semites (c. 2000 BC) and to the indo-europeans (1200 BC). But for centuries, this idea of civilisation was spread by contact (peaceful or violent) with neighbors -- think of the fact that Estonians and Finns were hunter-gatherer primitives as recently as 1000 years ago and Slavs the same just 1600 years ago and Germanics the same 2300 years ago and even the Greeks were barbarians (oxymoron alert!) in 2000 BC when the Amorites were at their heights of civilisation

Genes play a role, but the circumstances play a bigger one -- much like Sun Tzu's opening sentence says :)

[dp0622]

Thanks for the reply. Hunter gatherers only 1000 years ago. wow.

[Cronos]

actually, dp -- the egyptians did advance quite fast during the Old Kingdom. Technology changes etc. were relatively fast.

Rome was good at expanding on other's innovations. Most of their innovations were military related or administrative. Whereas the latest rounds of innovation (in the past 250 years) are more driven by commerce and individuals.

[Cronos]

Why so much technical advancement in the last half a century?

Because things build on each other -- For tens of thousands of years humans had slow to no progress. then, BAM - agriculture and things moved, slowly accelerating over centuries. This increased speed during the industrial eroa and went to light speed recently -- with communication -- smart people people used to earlier congregate in cities -- that's still important as great ideas come from building on other ideas and talking with people

[Cronos]

Political corruption in the Old Kingdom that lead to the first interregnum? I don't think so -- more like climate change

for Rome, that's not true either -- Rome became Christian in 398 AD and fell to the Huns in 430 -- so moral regeneration before this and the political corruption was ended in the late 200s under Diocletian

[Cronos]

really good summary. I didn’t know about the geopolymerization idea — why do you think the transition from the Old to Middle to New Kingdoms in terms of architecture happened?

[SunkenCiv]

The population didn’t necessarily change, but the smallish groups at the top (both rulers and their architects etc) did.

[dp0622]

Interesting thanks.

I guess the ideas were there. Humans knew for a long time that there was SOME way to fly, they just didn’t know how to do it.

and there were predictions of motorized transportation long before it happened.

interesting topic.

[Cronos]

More proof that the pyramids were not built by slave labor but by the nation as some kind of national project

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, just like the dome on the US capitol. /s

[Cronos]

I also wonder why Egypt or Rome didn’t advance much further in the sciences and technology areas. Why so much technical advancement in the last half a century?

Population density -- ideas and inventors feeding off each other AND Diversity - diverse ideas, free thoughts etc

Egypt did come up with great ideas, but remember that the population of the country at the time when Cyrus the great conquered it was about 1 million people or so (500 BC) -- in fact Cyrus the Great's Persian Empire was the largest empire EVER in terms of % of the world's population at 44%

But people were thinly dispersed.

If one goes back to 3000 BC, even Egypt was thinly populated and the largest concentration of humans was in Sumeria, followed by the Indus valley and Elam -- with up to half a million people each (less for Elam). They came up with ideas, but mostly life through the centuries was the same -- in fact in the Indian Harappan civilisation it looks like families lived in the same houses for a thousand years or more. They had a different concept of progress (or no concept)

Cut to the time of Christ and the Roman Empire is 40 to 50 million -- or to 600 AD when the Lombards and Goths invade Italy -- at that time Italy's population was only 5 million!

Population density -- look at where banking and other financial instruments were created - in relatively densely population medieval Italy or where the Industrial revolution came about -- in the triangle between Amsterdam-London-Paris -- diverse ideas, mingling of information due to these peoples as having gone outwards more (even thought the Dutch, English and French was second after the Portuguese and Spanish in their explorations)

Then what has happened in the past half a century? People from every corner of the world can communicate and exchange ideas. And NOW, with you being able to talk to someone in Japan and Brazil simultaneously, the world is one big city, so extreme diffusion of diverse ideas and ideas feeding off ideas.

The pace of technical advancement will only increase

[Cronos]

oh, and I forgot to add — freedom to come up with ideas. That’s why the USA lead from the 1910s and why it will still lead unless the PC crowd kills off Americans ability to think

[Cronos]

Yet note that even Republican Rome was 'corrupt' -- it was expected that you got elected with someone's money and paid him back with contracts. Cicero even boasted about this (I think it was Cicero) and gave thanks to his sponsor.

Moral degeneration, you may have a point, but moral degeneration with a corresponding laziness to stand up for what the nation stands for -- so hiring mercenaries to be legionnaries

[SunkenCiv]

[four months later] Thanks SatinDoll!