Posted on 09/29/2015 12:38:02 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Astonishingly, the papyri were written by men who participated in the building of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu, the first and largest of the three colossal pyramids at Giza just outside modern Cairo. Among the papyri was the journal of a previously unknown official named Merer, who led a crew of some 200 men who traveled from one end of Egypt to the other picking up and delivering goods of one kind or another. Merer, who accounted for his time in half-day increments, mentions stopping at Tura, a town along the Nile famous for its limestone quarry, filling his boat with stone and taking it up the Nile River to Giza. In fact, Merer mentions reporting to “the noble Ankh-haf,” who was known to be the half-brother of the Pharaoh Khufu and now, for the first time, was definitively identified as overseeing some of the construction of the Great Pyramid. And since the pharaohs used the Tura limestone for the pyramids’ outer casing, and Merer’s journal chronicles the last known year of Khufu’s reign, the entries provide a never-before-seen snapshot of the ancients putting finishing touches on the Great Pyramid.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
keyboard spew alert
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.
Thanks for the info. I like reading about history. It will give me something to do with down time at work :)
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...
Shh! I’m part of the coverup! ;’)
;’) My pleasure!
I think it depends on:
Genes play a role, but the circumstances play a bigger one -- much like Sun Tzu's opening sentence says :)
Thanks for the reply. Hunter gatherers only 1000 years ago. wow.
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.
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
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
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?
The population didn’t necessarily change, but the smallish groups at the top (both rulers and their architects etc) did.
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.
More proof that the pyramids were not built by slave labor but by the nation as some kind of national project
Yeah, just like the dome on the US capitol. /s
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
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
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
[four months later] Thanks SatinDoll!
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