> skaichiavimus F STUDIJU! ar chia dar viena blevyzga? But when we examine the precision of its construction, as well as calculate the logistics that would have been involved in building the Pyramid by manual labor alone, we find that the conservative theory is totally unfounded. Without a doubt, the one thing that is most impressive about the Great Pyramid is its size and volume. The average side length of the Pyramid is 755.78 feet, with a perimeter of 3,023. 13 feet. The height is calculated at 480.95 feet. Within the total area of the Pyramid is 85 million cubic feet of stone, weighing an estimated 6 million tons. There is more masonry in the Great Pyramid than in all the churches and cathedrals built in England since the time of Christ, or more stonework than in St. Paul’s, St. Peter’s and Westminster Abbey combined. In more modern terms, the Pyramid contains enough material to build 30 Empire State Buildings, or construct a highway 3 feet thick and 18 feet across from New York City to Salt Lake City, or build a wall 6 feet tall and 1 foot wide between Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon. No other structure matched the Pyramid in volume as a single stone construction in recorded history until the building of the Great Wall in China. The Pyramid structure is for the most part composed of over an estimated 2,300,000 blocks of limestone, each block averaging 50 x 50 x 28 inches, and weighing 2.5 tons apiece. No doubt, some of the blocks were quarried at Giza itself. But chemical analysis shows a good number of the blocks came from limestone quarries 10 miles east from the Pyramid on the other side of the Nile and modern Cairo. Deep in the Pyramid’s interior, in what is called the King’s Chamber, the builders utilized blocks of granite, which came from Aswan, a distance of 490 miles upriver to the south. The ceiling of the King’s Chamber and the supporting structures above it contain the most massive stone blocks in the Pyramid, each being 27 feet 8 inches by 7 feet square on average, and each weighing between 73 and 75 tons. Originally, the entire Pyramid was covered on the outside with beautiful limestone casing stones, which gave the structure smooth, finished surfaces. Each of the Great Pyramid’s casing stones weighed an average of 16 tons, and measured 5 x 8 x 12 feet. The total number of stones is estimated to have been 115,565, covering the 22 acres of the Pyramid faces. Sir Flinders Petrie, who conducted a highly detailed survey and measurement of the monument in the early part of the nineteenth century, discovered further that the casing stones had been cut and positioned with unbelievable accuracy. He reported: “<…> Though the stones were brought as close as 1/500th of an inch, or in fact, in contact, and the mean opening of the joint was but 1/50th of an inch, yet the builders managed to fill the joint with cement (an amalgam of powdered gypsum, carbonate of lime and sand), despite the great area of it, and the weight of the stone to be moved—some 16 tons. “To merely place such stones in each contact at the sides would be careful work; but to do so with cement in the joints seems almost impossible.” Modern builders regard a 1/10th inch tolerance to be a standard of excellence. So how did the Pyramid builders cut and position multi-ton blocks to a precision 5 to 10 times better? Clearly, the conservative theory that the builders used only sticks and lengths of rope and rolling wheels for measuring cannot be justified. The temperature changes, humidity, and fiber tension in rope and wood would have certainly created far greater errors than found in the Pyramid. The mystery deepens when we realize that all six sides of each casing stone were cut with the same accuracy. Calculating with 115,565 such blocks, it means that the cutting—at a precision of one-fiftieth to one-one-hundredth of an inch—was accomplished over a total area of approximately 130 acres of stone surface. What is amazing still, this same degree of accuracy can likewise be observed in other portions of the interior construction of the monument, multiplying the amount of actual cutting area by several hundred times. With such a refined degree of measuring and cutting so evident, we may well ask what kind of tools did the Pyramid builders use? In the Cairo Museum today one can see several simply copper and bronze saws on exhibit, which conservative scholars claim are like those that were utilized in the shaping of the Pyramid blocks, both the limestone and the granite. But there is one problem here. On the Mohs Hardness Scale of Minerals, copper and bronze have a hardness of 3.5 to 4, copper with 2 percent beryllium (which is the hardest known copper alloy) is 4.5. The Pyramid limestone, on the other hand, had a hardness factor of 4 to 5, and the granite 5 to 6. What this means is that any type of copper or bronze tool would with extreme difficulty cut through the limestone, and barely scratch the granite at all. One Egyptologist proposes that the cutters simply spent most of their time heating, hammering and tin-tempering their copper tools, and had to put up with a high loss by dulling and breaking blades. But one must remember that we are dealing with 115,000 casing stones, 2,300,000 building blocks, and several hundred hard granite monolithic blocks. The amount of time spent on constantly re-melting, reshaping and re-tempering the copper tools would have been many times longer than the actual man-hours spent on building the Pyramid itself. There is a possibility that iron and steel may have been used, but here again we find severe limitations. On the Mohs Hardness Scale, even the best steel today has a factor of 5.5, which means it can cut limestone, but granite would still pose a problem. When the Arabs broke into the Pyramid nearly 1,200 years ago, it took them over three months to tunnel inward 92 feet, employing full-time blacksmiths to repair tools made of the finest steel. When it came to obstacles of granite, by every means available to them they could not at first break through, eventually using heavy sledge hammers, but in most cases had to resort to the slow, painstaking task of digging around the blocks, through the softer limestone. Above and beyond this, because the Egyptian soil is especially nitrous, anything made of iron or steel corrodes relatively quickly, so that there would have been a high turnover of tools simply form weathering. What is more, there is no substantiated archaeological evidence for the existence of either iron or steel existing in Egypt in the early Dynasties or before. Sir Flinders Petrie, over a century ago, proposed that the Pyramid blocks had been cut using saws with nine-foot blades and teeth studded with diamonds or corundum. But once again, there are difficulties involved. First, in the cutting of millions of blocks, even diamonds and corundum wear out, and what builder could have afforded the cost of a fortune in diamonds and rare corundum necessary to complete the awesome task? Worse than this, Petrie himself realized the impossibility of his idea when he calculated that in order for his nine-foot saws to cut through the granite, a pressure exceeding two tons would have had to have been continuously applied. Even if the diamonds or corundum had survived such a crushing weight, it is unlikely that the rest of the saw would have, even if it had been made of steel. On the first two-ton pressure application, the saw would be bent and broken to pieces. It is one thing to consider how the Pyramid stones were shaped—it is quite another matter trying to explain how they were moved and placed into the Pyramid structure. The subject of what the means were by which the Pyramid was built is one that has generated numerous heated debates in historical and archaeological circles for well over two centuries. The scorecard so far shows the conservatives losing, because for every theory they give for construction having been done by primitive methods, a multitude of serious objections can be raised to show otherwise. The first impression usually is that all this sounds somewhat plausible. But let us examine the various aspects of this scenario in more detail. For the method of moving the stones, the conservative historians point to a painting in the tomb of Djehutihotep from the Twelfth Dynasty. The painting shows 172 men straining themselves on ropes, pulling a wooden sled on which rests a stone statue estimated to have weighed 60 tons. One man, riding on the front of the sled, is pouring olive oil on the roadway below, to lubricate and help facilitate the sled’s movement. While this picture is most convincing, there are problems with associating it with the building of the Pyramid. First, according to conservative historians’ own reckoning, the Pyramid dates to the Fourth Dynasty, which means there is a minimum of five centuries between the Pyramid and when the tomb painting was made. There is no proof whatsoever that the techniques of transporting large blocks utilized during one era were the same used half a millennium before. As we shall see later, the time gap is really much greater, by more than eight thousand years. The argument breaks down even further when we remember the quantity of Pyramid stones dealt with. The hauling by muscle, sled and oil may have been adequate to move one stone, but what about a total of over 2,300,000 stones? First, consider the amount of olive oil that would have been needed for reducing the friction of movement. Olive oil was a precious and expensive commodity in ancient Egypt. It was found as gifts only in the most well-to-do of the ancient tombs. The reason is simple—there were definite limits of olive oil in supply. Even if the Pyramid builders had imported olive oil from all neighboring countries, the quantity would have consumed the entire production of olives in the ancient world for two centuries. An even bigger problem involves the quantity of wood needed. Timber, of course, would have been essential for the building of the hundreds of sleds, and for the barges transporting the stones on the river. But the most wood would have gone into the various roadways over which the sleds were pulled. Because of the large weights being exerted on tem, coupled with them being repeatedly softened by applications of oil, they would had to have been constantly replaced with fresh logs. With 2,300,000 blocks dragged over them, the number of logs used up could only have been staggering. In fact, one conservative estimate puts the number at 26 million trees necessary to fulfill the requirements. Now the land of Egypt itself has no forests, and its only trees--olive, date palm, etc.--were used for food and economic purposes, and could not have been spared for construction. The only possible nearest source of timber would have been the forests of Lebanon, the wood of which we know from ancient records the Egyptians frequently utilized, even as far back as Predynastic times. But the need of 26 million trees would have completely stripped Lebanon bare many times over. The cedars of Lebanon which contain the most durable wood are nevertheless a slow-growing tree and would have taken at least a century to replace each time the forests were stripped. Besides, even if such a vast quantity of wood could have been found, how much more wood would have been consumed to build the ships to carry the timber to Egypt by sea? There are objections, too, to the Pyramid builders supposedly having transported the stones by barges on the Nile. But there is no evidence such barges were in existence in the Pyramid age. And even if they were, the actual transportation of the stones on the river is only half the problem. The other half involves getting the stones on and off the barges. It is known that the only time when work could have been done on the Pyramid was during the Nile flood stage, when the croplands were inundated for three months every year, and when farmers would have been idle and available as a labor supply. But the flood stage is also the most dangerous time to be sailing on the Nile, the waters being at their highest and swiftest, with many unpredictable and treacherous currents. More than this, the Nile’s shores during those months were constantly changing, and always uncertain. How could millions of multi-ton blocks have been loaded and unloaded on flooded, shallow, muddy, shifting banks? The engineering problems involved are monumental, even by today’s standards, let alone for Egypt at least 4,600 years ago. The next serious crack concerns the so-called ramp up which the stones were hauled to their positions. The gradient level for such a ramp, to facilitate the hauling upwards of multi-ton stones, could not have been steeper than 1 in 10. This would mean, however, that the beginning of the ramp had to be placed 6,000 feet away from the base of the Pyramid, and the total volume of the ramp would have exceeded 75 million cubic feet of earth, almost equal to the Pyramid itself. There would have been more work involved with the ramp than with the Pyramid, because the ramp would have been piled up, and then dismantled when the project was completed. There is, too, the added problem that the higher the ramp was built, the narrower becomes the ramp way at the top. To have enough room for several hundred men to maneuver the large blocks at the top of the Pyramid would have required the ramp way at this level to be at least 40 feet wide. With such a width, the widening down to the base would have more realistically required a ramp twice the volume of the Pyramid. The final blow to the ramp theory is the simple fact that nowhere in the area of the Pyramid do we find any tangible trace that a ramp once existed. Minor piles of debris exist here and there, but nothing that points directly to the remains of what should have been gigantic slopes or ramps. Many conservative historians admit the ramp theory is untenable, and believe that cranes or levers may have been used instead. Even if such were proven possible, there is a question of just how useful the levers would have been in lifting stones up the Pyramid. One proposal suggests that levers were placed along the four sides, and at each of the 210 tiers, making a grand total of 3,500 levers needed to do the job. Each stone would have been raised from one tier to the next, transferred to the lever positioned immediately above. But to get even a single stone to the top would have involved so much time and effort as to make the entire method impractical. To deepen the mystery further about how the stones were moved, we find several examples in the Great Pyramid and neighboring pyramids of impossible engineering feats, stone blocks that were placed into positions where no cranes, levers or even sheer human strength alone could have put them. Sir Flinders Petrie fond a two-ton portcullis in a narrow passage in the Second Pyramid at Giza in a place inaccessible to a crane, and where no more than 7 or 8 men would have gotten to it. But the size and weight would have required the manpower of at least 50 or 60 men. In the King’s Chamber ceiling in the Great Pyramid, the 75-ton blocks were carefully lifted and positioned using an area where only 4 to 6 men can stand, yet their massive size dictates the need for at least 2,000 men to grapple them. If human energy, even utilizing simple cranes, was not employed, what kind of energy was? The conservative theory of the building of the Pyramid crumbles even further when we begin to calculate the human numbers, the logistics and speed with which the Pyramid was erected. Most scholars believe the words of Herodotus, the Greek historian who visited Egypt in 443 B.C.E., and wrote that the Great Pyramid had been built in 20 years’ time, with 100,000 workmen hauling the stones by physical labor. What scholars fail to recognize is that Herodotus, by his own admission, was an Initiate into the secrets of Egyptian higher wisdom, and thus never would have fully revealed the true methods of how the Pyramid was built. His story and estimate were thus purposely written as fiction, to satisfy the curious and uninitiated, and hide the truth for the learned few. The ploy worked beyond his expectations, for even today Herodotus’ narrative is still the most quoted evidence in support of how the Pyramid was constructed. Let us look at Herodotus’ figures more closely. First, the historian mentions 20 years of labor. As we noted earlier, only 3 months out of every year were available for construction projects, during the flood seasons, since the rest of the time had to be devoted to agriculture to feed the nation. This means an actual work-time of only 1,800 days, or at 12 hours per day, a total of 21,600 hours. Now divide this sum into 2,300,000 blocks, and the result is the Pyramid builders supposedly place about 1,200 blocks a day, or 100 blocks an hour—or more than a block every minute. As any modern engineer will tell you, this is a speed totally incompatible with what can be accomplished with modern technology, let alone a technology based on sheer muscle power. Herodotus’ mentioning of a labor force of 100,000 stone haulers working at the Pyramid over the designated period can only be part of the total picture. If 100,000 men were dragging stones from the Nile to the Pyramid, then there would also have been needed proportionate numbers of quarrymen cutting stones, men pulling the stones to the barges, sailors unloading (at both ends), technicians, planners, architects, draftsmen, foremen and overseers, stone carvers and dressers, metallurgists repairing tools, men replacing worn-out logs on the roadways, men to construct and maintain the ramp or ramps up the Pyramid, soldiers and policemen to maintain order. In addition, there would have been women and children to mix cement, and cook, feed, carry water and see to shelter and clothing for the work masses. The grand total could, with these numbers, have been as many as a million people. The problem is, the archaeological record shows that in the Fourth Dynasty, when conservative scholars insist the Pyramid was built, the entire population of Egypt was less than one and a half million. So for this theory to work, the full population of the Nile would have been needed continuously for two decades of time. Complicating things even further, there is evidence the Great Pyramid was erected with such a speed and so few a number of workers as to make any form of physical labor out of the question. There are Coptic legends, in fact, which record that the Great Pyramid was indeed built in exactly that time period. Taking the 3 months’ flood season as the actual work-time every year for 6 years, this figures to a total of 540 days, or at 12 hours per day, 6,460 hours. In terms of stonework, this means an incredible 350 stones were placed an hour, or 6 stones a minute. Now add to this the discovery by archaeologists of what they believe to have been the actual workingmen’s quarters at Giza, which housed the workers who labored on the various early Dynastic monuments on the plateau. The quarters, the archaeologists have determined, housed no more than 4,000 people. Even if this number represented only on-third of the total labor force (with one-third working at the quarries, and the other third transporting the stones), this still means a total of only 12,000 workers. If we were to ask a modern construction engineer, someone who had access to all the latest heavy lifting machinery and sophisticated carving equipment, to build a structure 85 million cubic feet in volume, composed of 2,300,000 stone blocks averaging 2.5 tons each, with each block to be positioned and jointed with tolerances of no more than one one-fiftieth to one one-hundredth of an inch, and to complete the entire task in 540 days with only a crew of 12,000 men…. Before you went any further, the engineer would stop you and tell you what you were asking is not possible by any known means today. If a modern engineer, then, with 21st century technology, could not tackle such a project, how much more impossible would it have been for a “primitive” society—supposedly using sticks, copper blades, sleds and ropes—to have attempted the same work? For more consideration, engineers have discovered that the foundation of the Great Pyramid is amazingly level. No corner of its base is more than one-half inch higher or lower than the others. When we consider the Pyramid’s base covers 13.11 acres, this degree of near-perfect leveling over such a large area is truly remarkable. In fact, it is far better than what modern surveyors tolerate in modern building construction. One conservative idea explains the Pyramid’s accurate leveling this way: The builders first constructed a wall enclosure around the foundation site and filled it with water. Then, using the water level as a guide, a series of holes were drilled into the bed relative to the water level. Once the water was removed, the bedrock was excavated and smoothed over, uniform to the depths of the holes. While this sounds practical, actual tests have shown that--because of the action of air currents on water surfaces (it gets very windy atop the Giza plateau), the difficulty of drilling into water-soaked rock, and the expansion and contraction o the rock due to saturation and then subsequent drying—the closest accuracy of leveling over a 13-acre area would have been within one foot. But the level of the Pyramid is closer to near-perfection by 24 times that amount. After the leveling was completed, a base platform stone foundation was laid out, upon which the Pyramid structure was built. This platform too exhibit’s a remarkable degree of leveling. The Egyptian Survey Report of 1925 revealed that no corner of it was horizontally off from any other by less than seven-eighths of an inch. Another curious aspect of the Great Pyramid is that it is still, even after the many thousands of years since its construction, one of the world’s most accurately aligned buildings to true north. The alignment is only one-twelfth of a degree off true north-south, and one-thirtieth of a degree off true east-west. In terms of each side, the north side of the Pyramid is aligned to within 2 minutes 28 seconds of a degree, the south side within 1 minute 57 seconds (an error of only 1/10th inch in 756 feet), the east side within 5.5 minutes, and the west side within 2.5 minutes. One of the best examples our own civilization today can offer for a perfectly aligned building is the Paris Observatory, and it is aligned 6 minutes off from true north. "Toxis@ze_yvil_place" <tox@work.ble> wrote in message news:i0knk1$8ns$1@trimpas.omnitel.net... > > ne, neteko girdet, netgi prieshingai per discovery zhiurejau kaip jie > tampe tokio dydzhio blokus patys archeologai su samdyta jega naudodamiesi > senovinem technologijom, jei idomu, galesiu pabandyt rast, gal youtubas > turi > "netas" <a@aa.aa> wrote in message > news:i0kmpo$7h8$1@trimpas.omnitel.net... >> Šią medžiagą gerai žinau, skamba gražiai - bet tik kol nepradedi >> skaičiuoti. >> Kokie buvo tuometiniai Egipto ekonomikos pajėgumai, piramidės blokelių >> skaičius ir svoris, plaustų galia, turėti įrankiai, o ir visi pačios >> piramidės matmenys - tada prasideda įdomesni klausimai. >> Ar teko girdėti, kad yra keletas akmenukų, kuriuos ten įmontuoti >> neįmanoma >> net su jokia šiuolaikine technika? >> >> >> >> "Toxis@ze_yvil_place" <tox@work.ble> wrote in message >> news:i0kj3n$1aa$1@trimpas.omnitel.net... >>> ir vel praleidai proga pabandyt pasidomet ir paskui kalbet, bet chia >>> manau >>> jau chronishka liga.. >>> bet visgi...: >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_pyramids >>> >>> chia http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pyramids/pyramids.html taip >>> populiariai paaishinta - apie statybas: >>> Who Built the Pyramids? >>> >>> Contrary to some popular depictions, the pyramid builders were not >>> slaves >>> or foreigners. Excavated skeletons show that they were Egyptians who >>> lived >>> in villages developed and overseen by the pharaoh's supervisors. >>> >>> The builders' villages boasted bakers, butchers, brewers, granaries, >>> houses, cemeteries, and probably even some sorts of health-care >>> facilities—there is evidence of laborers surviving crushed or amputated >>> limbs. Bakeries excavated near the Great Pyramids could have produced >>> thousands of loaves of bread every week. >>> >>> Some of the builders were permanent employees of the pharaoh. Others >>> were >>> conscripted for a limited time from local villages. Some may have been >>> women: Although no depictions of women builders have been found, some >>> female skeletons show wear that suggests they labored with heavy stone >>> for >>> long periods of time. >>> >>> Graffiti indicates that at least some of these workers took pride in >>> their >>> work, calling their teams "Friends of Khufu," "Drunkards of Menkaure," >>> and >>> so on—names indicating allegiances to pharaohs. >>> >>> An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 workers built the Pyramids at Giza over 80 >>> years. Much of the work probably happened while the River Nile was >>> flooded. >>> >>> Huge limestone blocks could be floated from quarries right to the base >>> of >>> the Pyramids. The stones would likely then be polished by hand and >>> pushed >>> up ramps to their intended positions. >>> >>> It took more than manual labor, though. Architects achieved an accurate >>> pyramid shape by running ropes from the outer corners up to the planned >>> summit, to make sure the stones were positioned correctly. And >>> priests-astronomers helped choose the pyramids' sites and orientations, >>> so >>> that they would be on the appropriate axis in relation to sacred >>> constellations. >>> >>> From stone pusher to priest, every worker would likely have recognized >>> his >>> or her role in continuing the life-and-death cycle of the pharaohs, and >>> thereby in perpetuating the glory of Egypt. >>> >>> >>> >>> "netas" <a@aa.aa> wrote in message >>> news:i0kiq3$q7$1@trimpas.omnitel.net... >>>> Istorija žino tik keletą piramidžių, ne tūkstančius. Jei ir buvo >>>> tūkstančiai >>>> bet nieko neišliko - vadinas, kokybė buvo prasta, technologija dar >>>> netinkama, tai iš kur ji staiga atsirado. Ir kur po to vėl dingo, kodėl >>>> nebebuvo vystoma toliau. >>>> Čia tas pat kaip indėnams gyvenantiems vigvamuose vieną dieną >>>> pasistatyti >>>> Akropolį. Na nepasistatys iš karto, prie to einama nuosekliai ir labai >>>> lėtai. Paimk bet kurį kitą istorinį laikotarpį ir pažiūrėk, niekas >>>> nevyksta >>>> šuoliais >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> "Toxis@ze_yvil_place" <tox@work.ble> wrote in message >>>> news:i0kgg6$son$1@trimpas.omnitel.net... >>>>>o jei priesh tai pasidomet priamidzhiu istorija, galima butu paskui >>>>>neapsikvailint priesh visa interneta - bet chia tik mano nuomone... >>>>> >>>>> "netas" <a@aa.aa> wrote in message >>>>> news:i0kech$pbi$1@trimpas.omnitel.net... >>>>>> girdėjau. Va Lamanšo tunelį per 1 metrą į šoną nukrypo, ogi ne >>>>>> medines >>>>>> liniuotes naudojo. Be to, šiuolaikinė statyba turėjo laiko >>>>>> pasitreniruot >>>>>> su >>>>>> milijonais pastatų, o štai piramidės - gavosi iš pirmo karto. Žmonės >>>>>> vos >>>>>> ne >>>>>> pirmykščiai, kreivose molinėse trobelėse gyvena ir staiga pyst - >>>>>> piramides >>>>>> pasistato. >>>>>> >>>> >>