O/T, disappointed that I missed the thread on the pyramids. As someone who has visited and studied them they remain the most incredible structures ever built. The accuracy, the engineering, the lifting required is totally beyond belief. These were people living in mudhuts using copper tools who builts structures that we would not be able to build today.
A comparision i ofte use is that with our current space technology, its like us suddenly building a deathstar.
Textbooks are so lazy on the pyramids, they spout stuff that there is absolutely no evidence for.
And RIP Pat Eddery, to my mind the greatest of a golden age of horseman. I still watch him come there crusing on Warning in the 1988 QEII at least once a week, it gives me tingles. He was awesome.
'We would not be able to build today' ? Leaving aside the fact we wouldn't be able to build them in the area they are (the Egyptians might have something to say about a fourth great pyramid), and the planning and financing costs, what technically could we not do?
'We' could easily build them, and it would be much easier with modern kit and organisation.
You must also remember (as you undoubtedly know) that the great pyramids were at the end of a long evolution of pyramids, from mud-brick tomb covers, through 'simple' stepped structures, to the grand pyramids. As such, the technological, societal and organisational skills and structures required did not spring into existence overnight, but evolved.
You cannot take the building of the Giza pyramids out of that context (unlike some of the more 'interesting' theories, which say the smaller pyramids were later third-rate attempts to copy the Giza pyramids).
It'd be like taking Salisbury Cathedral with its amazing spire out of the context of all the churches and cathedrals that were built before it.
Comments
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-uk-now-has-one-of-the-worst-healthcare-systems-in-the-developed-world-according-to-oecd-report-a6721401.html
Yet it spends more money than ever.
'We' could easily build them, and it would be much easier with modern kit and organisation.
You must also remember (as you undoubtedly know) that the great pyramids were at the end of a long evolution of pyramids, from mud-brick tomb covers, through 'simple' stepped structures, to the grand pyramids. As such, the technological, societal and organisational skills and structures required did not spring into existence overnight, but evolved.
You cannot take the building of the Giza pyramids out of that context (unlike some of the more 'interesting' theories, which say the smaller pyramids were later third-rate attempts to copy the Giza pyramids).
It'd be like taking Salisbury Cathedral with its amazing spire out of the context of all the churches and cathedrals that were built before it.
new thread