Posted on 01/18/2014 11:21:03 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Peter James believes ancient Egyptians formed the huge tombs by piling up rubble and small rocks on the inside and attaching the large bricks on the outside later rather than using giant blocks carried up ramps.
There's much debate over how the pyramids were buil AN engineer dubbed Indiana James has stunned archaeologists by rubbishing their theories on how the pyramids were built.
Peter James believes ancient Egyptians formed the huge tombs by piling up rubble and small rocks on the inside and attaching the large bricks on the outside later.
His claim challenges hundreds of years of accepted belief that the pyramids were built with giant blocks carried up huge ramps.
The structural engineer, who has spent the past 20 years studying the pyramids, reckons that would be impossible.
He explained: “Under the current theories, to lay the two million stone blocks required the Egyptians would have to have laid a large block once every three minutes on long ramps.
“The pyramids are also so tall that the ramps for the stones would have had to have been at least a quarter of a mile long.
“If that happened, there would still be signs that the ramps had been there, and there aren’t any.”
Peter, who has been an engineer for 54 years, admitted his theory would be controversial.
He said: “I’m going to have a war with archaeologists.
“They will say, ‘How would you know? You’re not an archaeologist.’
“But if you wanted a house built, would you use me or an archaeologist?
“They have never had the engineering experience.”
Peter and his team at Cintec International, based in south Wales, are world leaders in restoring ancient structures and have worked deep inside two pyramids to stop them from collapsing.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyrecord.co.uk ...
Egypt Week is my favorite flavor.
The science is settled. The debate is over. Anyone who challenges what thousands of Egyptologists have modelled is a shill for right wing extremists funded by big ‘fill’.
He has one good idea — water erosion on the Sphinx — which he borrowed from SchallerdeLubicz; he’s a lifelong professional journalist who calls himself an “independent Egyptologist” (hey, who isn’t?). Generally I enjoy his humor, but he began just a little goofy and has now moved inside goofville village limits. In the otherwise excellent “Mystery of the Sphinx” documentary (mid- to late-1990s) there’s some footage that wasn’t broadcast but is available on the extended version on disk (hmm, I may have to watch that at bedtime), and shows Richard Hoaxland giving his “face on mars” talk in the conf room he rented in the UN building for that purpose (he wanted to be able to say he gave this talk at the UN, see). And of course, during the years 2001 to 2009, JAW went postal over the War on Terror and the Bush administration.
The Central American pyramids are for the most part nested — the first pyramid got built, then some calendrical cycle ended and a new one was begun, which when finished covered the previous one, and so on. There’s a rubble core in some that have insides that are known (obviously it would be expensive to look inside each one), but they aren’t nearly as large as the Giza pyramids, and are quite steep, which transfers the burden to the ground via the stone.
Thanks cynwoody, also nabbed that PDF linked on that page. His thermal idea for the loss of the facing stones is interesting, but the fact is, the facing stones on the Great Pyramid are *known* to have been still present 2000 years after its construction, and *known* to have been stripped off during the muzzie period and carted off to build Cairo. Much of the facing of Khafre was similarly stripped, and one of the caliphs, determined to demolish the Giza monuments from the Age of Ignorance put crews to work on Menkaure. After six months they’d inflicted the damage still seen today, but the estimates of the time needed for all three pyramids was in many decades, so the “work” was abandoned. Djedjefre (son and immediate successor to Khufu) had started his own pyramid at Abu Roash, n of Giza, but died while work was in progress, and his young son who succeeded him was supplanted by uncle Khafre. What remained of the unfinished pyramid at Abu Roash was picked at over the centuries, but in the 18th and 19th centuries the stones were being carted away to Cairo by the camel-load until almost nothing remained.
The facing stones were white limestone, with a pyramidon at the summit of the pyramid. The facing stones had inscriptions carved into them here and there, and since there’s no trace of the stone at Giza, presumably the inscriptions could still exist in medieval structures in Cairo, with the inscribed face turned inward where it wouldn’t show.
Some idea of how it looked can be seen on the upper reaches of the Khafre pyramid. Removing the facing stones from Khufu may not have been as difficult as it may seem, even assuming the Great Pyramid was, after all, completed. A small crew would have had to climb the smooth face, then pried off the topmost blocks, which could have been allowed to slide all the way down, or laboriously lowered by ropes, perhaps using two blocks, one down each side, to counter the weight of each other (iow, a pulley system, so the crew wouldn’t lose footing and get pulled down the face).
Yup. It’s discussed a couple times above, and much more here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/josephdavidovits/index
Whomever you wish to attribute the notions to, I am glad West has brought together so many issues. I am especially impressed with the explanation of Nabta Playa. Isn’t it astonishing to you that someone thousands of years ago, arrange stones a distance from a sighting point using the light years distance to those stars in the calculation of the distance from the sighting point in the Nabta Playa circle? I am blown away that someone a few thousand years ago had a feel for the distance to those stars such that they could use a table of distances to locate viewing stones.!
And I confess to be somewhat taken aback at the vitriol you display toward West. It seems almost ... personal.
Excellent point. That’s how the Egyptians used to raise obelisks, and how the “long ears” on Easter Island raised their famous statues and the topknots that capped each one.
There’s a diagram in this topic, borrowed from an older topic, showing the three known examples of tunnels burrowed through the structure (the access holes leading to the relieving chambers above the King’s Chamber; the Well or Robber’s Hole leading from the Ascending Passage to the Descending Passage; and the Mamun passage that was cut in for one of the caliphs). Not one of these encountered any rubble pile.
Since there’s no evidence whatsoever that anyone prior to modern times had any idea of light years of distance, he obviously has cooked up another of his anachronisms. My disagreements with JAW are as I set out, if you wish to read vitriol into simple disagreement, I can’t help you.
Yeah, it’s been too long since we’d had one. :’)
That “Ancient Aliens” series is on DVD, and there are FIVE SEASONS already, who knew? I almost got the years 1 through 4 box, for $20 at the warehouse club, kept passing it over because I thought I already had at least two seasons somewhere, then noticed at the other club it was over $40. Season five is out as a separate title, same locations. :’) I love listening to that stuff while doing something else (like cyber-FReeping, for instance), and once in a while one laughing over some ear-catching howler from one of their ‘experts’ like the hairdo guy.
JAW did not put forth the distance scale for the Nabta Playa stones. The series quotes many times the writing of Lubicz and attributes his sudden realization regarding the water erosion at the Sphynx to reading Lubicz. I cannot agree with the purposes the Egyptians put to the temples and religion they held (I’m a Christian, so I don’t need a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses), but I certainly would like to learn of them and what they believed and perhaps how in the heck they came by some of the knowledge they had! ... It mightbe interesting to someday read what you think of the Dogon! I’ll bet you can really slam them.
The labor force putting the blocks in place would by necessity be smaller, but getting the blocks up to the right level would take longer and require more labor. It’s possible that the reason these things are pyramids in the first place is, to make something really tall required sturdy but heavy building materials, which in turn meant ramps, which in its turn meant a pyramidal shape. :’) While most of the mass was put in place in the first half of the height, that was still pretty high, OTOH there was more room to work. The lower part, though much larger, probably went into place much more quickly because there were more hands to do it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3113134/posts?page=23#23
The Dogon and Sirius B? It’s interesting from a sociological perspective, both the modern development of the myth itself, and the allegedly modern non-Dogon who believe it. The Cargo Cults which developed in WWII Pacific are a slightly earlier example of the same type of thing.
That is your opinion. Both books are an unprovable theory, advanced to sell books. Both are interesting nonsense. That is my opinion. That’s all.
Thanks PB, related:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2005910/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2010105/posts
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