Originally posted by wild_cat
This is to Harte. Radiocarbon dating of the great pyramid ranges from 2853 to 3809 B.C. Average being 3809 B.C. The wheel was invented between the
3200 to 3500 B.C. So yes the wheel WAS invented when the great pyramid was constructed.
ourworld.compuserve.com...
www.brigantine.atlnet.org...
From your ourworld.compuserve link:
Most Egyptologists believe that the Great Pyramid was built about 4600 years ago by Khufu (Greek: Cheops), the second king of the 4th
dynasty...
...The radiocarbon dates for the Great Pyramid ranged from 2853 to 3809 BC, the average being 3029 BC...
I'll accept the first date from that site, at least until there's reason not to.
From your other (timeline) link:
Pottery invented c. 7900 B.C... ...Wheel invented c. 3200 - 3500 B.C....
The date here for pottery is
wrong by about 6,000
years!
Also, the first invention of the wheel is thought to have occured
about 8,000 BC in
Asia.
While the wheel's first appearance in
Mesopotamia may have been between 3200 and 3500 BC, it did not appear in
Egypt until around 2500
BC, or so it is currently thought.
The wheel spread from Mesopotamia quickly into Northwest Europe. Wheels also came into use around that time in India and China. In Egypt, the
wheel became known about 2500 bce.
Source
Here's a link to an inventor's site that speculates on the various theories as to how the
pyramids were constructed without using wheels.
BTW, the pulley itself wouldn't have helped anything in the construction. A simple pulley provides no mechanical advantage at all, it merely changes
the direction of the required force. To gain any mechanical advantage, a compound pulley must be used. The compound pulley was invented by Archimedes
sometime in the 3rd century BC, more than 2,000 years after pyramid construction ended.
Source.
So, I wasn't clear and technically, we're both right. Yes the wheel was invented, and no, the wheel wasn't invented (or not introduced)
in
Egypt at the time the pyramids were built.
Regardless, it has been shown in recent years that the mass of the stones was great enough to destroy even
log rollers, so wheels are pretty
much out of the question anyway. This is because a log roller, having a much larger surface area in contact with the load and the ground
simultaneously than any wheel can, distributes the load much much better than a wheel. Yet the loads were so great that no log could carry them
without the log either being crushed or split in very short order.
Harte