Well, it's also a much smaller scale project compared to a pyramid.
>So either, (1) "civilised" society was much more common historically and ancient in origin (2) There were "pre-civilised" ways of organising very large numbers of people. Or (3), they had very clever building techniques that did not require many people.
I think (1) is almost a given. Our idea for anything prehistoric is basically based on old prejudices. We find all kinds of things pushing civilization several millenia before where we thought it was.
If it takes a lot of people, that implies a lot of people coordinating at that time an place. In a sense, it gives us a minimal level of societal complexity that must have existed. Since britain didn't seem to have towns or cities, the nature of this complexity would be pre-civilised in the literal civil=city sense.
I agree though, civilisation has been getting older as evidence emerges. Or, as I prefer to think of it, the mysterious precursors to civilisation have been getting more impressive.
He claims he sent samples of his cast limestone to geologists and they couldnt tell the difference. Overall I think his theory makes much more sense. It just would have been easier to pour each block in place rather than lug huge stones around.
>If it is not convincing enough: Recent scientific studies using very powerful and modern equipment found the ultimate evidence that the pyramids stones are synthetic. Believing in the artificial stone theory, or countering it, is simply no longer relevant. It has become a fact, a truth.
https://www.geopolymer.org/faq/faq-for-artificial-stone-supp...
In my experience, people who use repetition like this are not to be taken very seriously. It's a blunt persuasion tactic employed by the likes of used car salesmen and cult leaders.
You can find videos of them on youtube actually making these stone blocks though. The method works. Based on how long it took a small team to make a couple on their first attempt, it could be a hundred or even thousand times more efficient than carving them out and transporting them.
So if I were going to build a large limestone pyramid that's how I would do it.
Analysis of pig bones at Durrington Walls - probably a work camp - showed that this animal had been brought in from Scotland.
In reality nobody has any idea how, when or even by whom (I would despute the cartouche as solid evidence) the great pyramid was actually built and egyptology certainly won't figure it out (at least not with its current systemic issues).
I think it sounds plausible in terms of the amount of work. 1 man year per stone.
This is some pretty incredible jargon is this widely used, I've never seen it before and needed to look it up.
Is it really that hard to say 2,500 years ago?
It's pretty widely used in the context of history these days, mostly because it's common to look at long stretches of time. It's really the easiest system once you know the acronym.
Here...
Herodotus is a 5th century BC historian, a favourite among the 13th century European historians that founded the modern discipline. He was relaying information that may have been invented sometime in the 2nd millennia BC, as many primary records were lost during the 19th century BC dark period. The Pyramid itself was constructed in the 24th century BC.
This is a little more confusing to me than ybp.
BTW, I'm still not really sure what AD stands for.
As I understand it, the "present" in YBP refers to 68 years ago, 1950. This is related to the advent of carbon dating, and the way widescale nuclear tests altered the proportion of carbon isotopes found in nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
Insofar as 68 years is a rounding error when discussing the Great Pyramids, YBP is a lot less clumsy. But 500 years from now it will probably begin seem just as clumsy as BC/AD. At least this time there is a pragmatic reason for the delineation (carbon 14 levels being altered.) Of course in 1,000 years you'll probably have people on hyper-reddit very smugly pointing out that nuclear testing actually started in 1945 not in 1950, just as today they point out Christ was not born in 0AD. ;)
I like the holocene calendar idea, personally. I can live with AD, but kind of dislike the non-universalism of using a specific church's calendar.
2.5 tons sounds really heavy, but just 25 people could lift and move that much weight. 50 people could move reasonably quickly and 100 people could carry that at a normal walking pace all day long.
PS: They also used larger stones on the bottom and smaller stones at the top.
In which planet's gravity?
And carrying them from which remote location, on which nicely paved roads to make this easy?
People building these things where not stupid. These stones where not being lifted over boulders or anything just reasonably flat level ground.
PS: You will note the pyramid happens to be near a very nice river flowing in the correct direction. So, they don't exactly need to build hundreds of miles of roads, just enough to minimize effort.
Wearing specially mounted load, in specially designed clothing, hooks and suck, and nicely distributed among various body parts.
And even the higher end of that range (100 pounds) is still 1/55 the weight of the huge, monolithic, piece of rock.
>People building these things where not stupid. These stones where not being lifted over boulders or anything just flat level ground.
They didn't have to be stupid to have to lift them over non-flat ground. They just had to not have a source of such rocks in a straight line over flat ground to the pyramids.
Plus, when they got them there, they had to raise them appropriately.
Not to mention the cutting of those stones at the quarry itself.
They are also expected to be able to move someone else with most of that gear attached to the both of them.
Really, carrying 50 pounds most of the day or lifting 200 pounds off the ground and moving to is reasonable for most physically fit people.
What I try to get across is that this is not some army backpack and paraphernalia.
We're talking going in extreme heat (Egypt!), with sandals on your feet, and with 20+ people coordinating to pull a 2.5 ton rock (with some larger rocks going up to 6 tons). And then somehow pull it up, up to 400+ feet.
And even for the army, most of them having to carry 200 pounds for any extended period will end up royally fucked up after a few hours of this, much less entire years of working on such projects for hours every day...
Actually, do you know that for certain? These were decades long efforts, at least, so some specialized harnesses and paraphernalia probably were invented along the way.
For a direct comparison you can look at how many people moved litters over long distances. There are a few natural poisons to carry a litter especially if you can group people by height. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_(vehicle) People would get swapped in an out for long trips allowing for faster speeds, but up to ~100lb per person via logs was not uncommon.
A few months ago lidar revealed a lost Purépecha city that had more buildings than Manhattan. The Purépecha were contemporaries of the Aztecs that most people have never even heard of.
Sometimes archaeology makes me feel about humanity the same way a Randall feels about dinosaurs--we know so much and yet it's almost nothing:
Think about how distinct the 50s, 70s, 90s, and 2010s seem, or how different pre and postwar Japan are, say, over just decades. Then think of the thousands of years since some early wonders were built.
There's got to be so much we're missing.
All in all, what I'm saying is that we see the past as using "brute force" construction methods because those are the construction methods we still use today. We just use denser energy sources to make it happen faster. This isn't going to change any cultural understandings unless you're trying to paint a picture that magic was involved before.
There is a tendency to underestimate what can be done by human labor.
When we (now, and in the past) look at ancient construction projects, we instinctively tend to imagine fairly "brute force" construction methods. Basically, the way things are done now but with people powered trucks, cranes and such. Think of all those depictions of many people dragging huge loads on rollers or sleds. Very large groups of people using muscle power.
Thousands of labourers, hundreds of years. Herodotus suggests that it took 100,000 builders over 20 years to build a pyramid, 2m man years. In egypt, it's plausible. They had huge numbers of people, an empire, large scale slavery...
With stonehenge in 5,000 ypb britain, there are thought to be far fewer people. It wasn't a massive urban culture like egypt. People are thought to have lived in small dispersed groups at that time, with little evidence of large "political" authority that could command a large labour force.
Gogleki Tepeh's builders achieved similar feats 12,000 YBB. This is before large scale societies are thought to have existed at all, anywhere.
So either, (1) "civilised" society was much more common historically and ancient in origin (2) There were "pre-civilised" ways of organising very large numbers of people. Or (3), they had very clever building techniques that did not require many people.
Any of these answers, or some combination of them could add a lot of flavour to our understanding of the neolithic, culturally.