DailyDirt: Egyptian Pyramid Construction Techniques
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Construction techniques have changed a lot over the last thousand years. The example of the Great Pyramids, though, shows that projects with enormous scale can be accomplished without the help of modern machinery. We may never know exactly how the pyramids were built, but it's fun to try to re-create some of the methods they used. Here are just a few examples of possible construction techniques for moving extremely heavy building materials in the desert.- The Egyptian secret for moving huge 2.5-ton stones might be to "just add water" to the sand on the ground to reduce the forces necessary to drag them across the desert. This secret is actually apparent in artwork depicting people pouring water on the sand around other people hauling a huge statue. [url]
- A Caltech aeronautics professor has demonstrated that a kite could have been used to help move heavy objects like a 6,900-pound obelisk in the desert. This technique could have been used by ancient civilizations with technology available thousands of years ago. [url]
- Construction of an Egyption pyramid could be less mysterious than it seems when people have shown that a 2-ton stone could be moved by about 12-20 men on wood tracks. A mini-pyramid was built with only manpower and ancient tools, but the outcome wasn't quite as polished as the actual Egyptian pyramids. [url]
Filed Under: ancient tools, construction techniques, egyptian pyramids, great pyramids, human labor, kite, mysteries
