

Egyptians may have moved massive pyramid stones on wet sand - era86
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/02/the-surprisingly-simple-way-egyptians-moved-massive-pyramid-stones-without-modern-technology/

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AlexMuir
"[A team of eight researchers led by Daniel Bonn] placed a laboratory version
of an Egyptian sledge in a bin of sand that had been dried in the oven. Then
they threw down some water, and measured the grains’ stiffness."

Surely the way to test this theory isn't to make a model of a sledge, and bake
some wet sand in an oven in your lab in Amsterdam! Go to Cairo, build a wooden
sledge, get some water and fifty men for an hour and see whether one can
sledge two tons across wet sand. I quite fancy testing it out myself. Perhaps
I could run a Kickstarter to build a pyramid.

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afarrell
Why Cairo? Why not Fort Mohave, Arizona?

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noonespecial
I'm not sure I wouldn't rather explain to Egyptian vs American immigration
officials that I wanted to go out into the desert with a bunch of people and
"build an experimental..."

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untog
I'm not sure you'd want to be a Westerner in the deserts of Egypt right now,
either. It's not exactly a safe place.

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junto
The picture is quite convincing indeed... once I was biased by the
explanation!

For those of you that haven't read the article yet, I suggest you study the
picture with the hieroglyphics in detail first and then read the conclusion!

Edit:

Just to be clear, I wanted others to have the benefit of seeing the picture
before the explanation, because after the fact I had no idea whether I had
been biased by what I had read first! I wasn't trying to suggest it was biased
per se! I have no idea whether I was biased or not. I can't undo history.

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chc
OK, I did that. Still haven't read the article yet, actually. It looks like a
statue on sled with a guy pouring something out in front of it. And having now
read the article, it appears that's exactly the same conclusion it reaches.

~~~
junto
Cool. Glad to know. I was worried I might have been biased by the text. Good
to know it was obvious before reading the text as well.

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kabdib
In 3,000 years, I'd love to see what archeologists have to say about our code
(assuming any of it survives, which IMHO is a long shot):

"Ancient engineers used text editors to write machine language."

"But how did they construct network packets?"

"With Emacs macros. And purification rituals involving Python."

"No way. It had to have been aliens."

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te_platt
I love seeing how clever people figure out ways to solve problems with the
tools they have. Also good to remember hacking didn't start with and doesn't
only apply to computers.

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whoismua
computers have only been around for a few decades, "people" have been solving
their daily problems for millions of years.

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amalag
Stephen Colbert tweeted:

A new theory says wet sand was used to build the pyramids. But where did the
aliens get all that wet sand???

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maw
_If the water had the appropriate level of wetness, something called
“capillary bridges” — extremely small droplets of water that glue together
individual grains of sand — would form._

I wonder what happened when the water wasn't wet enough.

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eurleif
I like this part, in reference to a painting that shows water being poured on
the sand in front of a sled:

>“In fact, Egyptologists had been interpreting the water as part of a
purification ritual, and had never sought a scientific explanation. And
friction is a terribly complicated problem; even if you realize that wet sand
is harder – as in a sandcastle, you cannot build on dry sand — the
consequences of that for friction are hard to predict.”

Makes me wonder what other practical things we might be misinterpreting as
rituals. Are we constantly ignoring ancient cultures' innovations because we
assume they have no practical purpose?

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alex_doom
Well technically, the slaves built the pyramids. They just don't get the
credit in the README.

~~~
aspidistra
Unless Bertolt Brecht is writing it.

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zyxley
> In all, the scientists say, “the Egyptians were probably aware of this handy
> trick.”

Wheelwrights hate him! Use this one weird old trick to make your pyramid
bigger!

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mrbill
How many times is someone going to discover yet another way the Egyptians
built the pyramids?

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whoismua
OK, but how did they move the water? I can't load the Uni page to see how much
water was needed but if we're talking miles or tens of miles, we should be
talking about a lot of water. Water that dries very quickly so the path has to
be wet again for the next load.

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venomsnake
I think that egyptians had access to irrigation technology. And from what I
remember as a kid on the beach you don't need that much water - you only need
to create a film.

A few ways come to mind - a channel from nile parallel to the hauling route.
On the barge itself.

Although I would have used combination of highly polished wood, leather/hides
on wood planks and cooking oil. And crews that just take the back pieces and
move them in front.

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whoismua
I agree, but the alternative to have more slaves (plenty of them) pull and
have them pull harder.

I guess it depends how far the rocks were moved. I know they were quarried
far, far away but then moved via the Nile.

Now from the Nile to the final location is how far?

