Posted on 09/21/2002 7:56:15 AM PDT by The Wizard
Quite possible indeed, I was just being contentious for the fun of it. Honestly, I personally think the "pi" explanation the more likely. The professional Egyptologists claim it is impossible because the Egyptians didn't know pi that accurately. But they base that on papyri that are 1000 years more recent than the date of the pyramid, in which pi was approximated by 19/6 - about = the sq. root of 10. But that disregards the possibility that the level of Egyptian technical expertise deteriorated in the intervening 1000 years. In fact the building skills seemed to have peaked around the time of building Cheops' pyramid and deteriorated subsequently.
One interesting source, if you aren't already familiar, is "Fingerprints of the Gods" by Graham Hancock. Many would dismiss it as crackpot, although Hancock is a "mainstream" journalist. Even if some of the speculation is a little far- out, the book is still a good source of a lot of interesting information. I find it amusing that the Encyclopædia Britannica gives the dimensions of the pyramid but never mentions the fact that pi appears as it does. This presumably because the "experts" have dismissed the fact as mere coincidence and not possibly being of any significance.
Are you a troll, or just monumentally dense?
No, I did not "make your point". I dismantled your point(s) entirely, showing how you did not have a single valid point, *and* that contrary to your claims, it *is* possible to move huge blocks of stone even with primitive technology (such as horses and wooden carts).
while I wasn't sure of the total tonage that can be cut and moved many of you links showed that today,
Oh, no you don't -- you can't weasel out of your original foolishness that easily. Your position was not that you "weren't sure" what size blocks can be cut and moved today, your position was that you WERE CERTAIN we couldn't handle 20-ton blocks even today. Here are your statements:
"I have personally watched today's machines try to cut and move 20 ton blocks and it just ain't do-able....."So... Are you now telling me that you *didn't* actually know what in the hell you were talking about, but you felt confident stating it as certain fact in your prior post? You admit you were lying? You admit you were just MAKING IT UP when you claimed to have "personally watched" modern machinery "try" and fail to "cut and move 20-ton blocks" and, you say, "it just ain't doable"?"(we don't cut stones this big, when we need something like this we build it in place like a foundation)"
"And I mean no offense, but go to a construction site, or talk to a crane operator and find out first hand what their limitations are.....I can't quote exact tonnage, but it ain't 20...."
"and we still can't build it today....ask someone from Jersey in construction......he'll tell you....."
How, on God's green Earth, do you see my exposure of your falsehoods as "making your point"?
we can move large blocks.....
FLIP-FLOP ALERT!
while I didn't bother to open all links that you provided I appreciate your time......
A closed mind gathers no thought.
The links prove that the technolgy we are told did the job could not have
*boggle*.
Actually, they prove beyond doubt that a) You were flat wrong in your prior claims about past and present capability, and b) primitive technology most certainly *can* (and has) moved blocks far larger than even 20-tons.
Deal with it. Any further attempt to cling to your untenable position (especially if you again try to assert that I "made your point", *snicker*) will just make you look like a loon of the first order.
But there are a lot of unanswered questions: does the minor emendation actually restore the text to its original form that was corrupted by an error of some copyist? Was the relation above the original basis of the design of the pyramid, or is it simply (as you suggested it may be) an accidental relation that someone happened to notice in the 1000+ years between the pyramid being built and Herodotus' visit to Eygypt? I think the issue is interesting (and I sort of regret exploiting it (after a few beers) as a not very funny joke). I really wish I could find someone with a good knowledge of the classical Greek who would look at the passage and independently corroborate (or not) the analysis that I described above.
If you haven't worked out the math, the relation "the area of a face equals the square of the height" gives the following: the cotangent of the angle of elevation of a face is the square root of the so-called golden mean, i.e.
sq.rt.((sq.rt(5)-1)/2) = sq.rt.(.618034) =.78615
and the ratio of the perimeter of the base to the height(*) is 8 times that or
6.2892.
(*)It is of course that ratio which is approximately twice pi, not the inverse ration as I incorrectly wrote in my post #157,
I think that the answer is that (as I am sure the Hebrews did) they used letters of the alphabet, alpha for one and so on. But that is just off of the top of my head, I'll try to check it.
I was amazed to learn just recently that the ancient Greeks had a kind of trigonometric table; not exactly in modern form but containing essentially the same information, so they had to have some fairly sophisticated system to represent those.
alpha thru theta represented 1 to 9; iota thru pi represented 10 to 80, a symbol apparently from an older form of the alphabet for 90; rho thru omega for 100 thru 800, another symbol I can't identify for 900. They also had notations for 1000 thru 9000.
Source:
A history of mathematics
Carl B. Boyer
Discostu, you asked I think the only way to answer that question is to develop a great project, but what? If you could hammer through the appropriations and permits to build any grand structure, intending it to be the autograph of this generation on America ala the Golden Gate Bridge or Empire State Building or getting a man on the moon, what would it be?
A GREAT question!
With no barriers to construction, I'd build This. The space elevator. Amazing concept, and not impossible.
And, if we are feeling really ambitious, we can build a Pyramid right next to it to power it!
Regards
Notheast
But I think the Pyramid builders must have had these already, so I need to think of something else.
Regards
Northeast
Be well
Northeast
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