New research strongly suggests the Giza pyramids were constructed using artificial stone

There are a lot of processes that would enable them to remove the initial mould once the jars where cast, simple vibration is used today to reveal the cast objects.

Chisel marks could be simply down to reduction or shaping because of anomalies left behind by whatever was used to set the concrete in, perhaps there was some expansion or reduction in the process, that required them to finish off each cast to match the others? if they used reusable moulds, then even with the best settings the moulds say where in 3 or 4 parts to disassemble? each block would have been slightly different.

If this is right they would have used hundreds if not thousands of moulds for the castings, so the finished hardened rock would need to me finished with tools to match them up, hence the tool marks, perhaps the moulds where removed before the cast stone was !00% dry to allow easier tooling and adjustments, would make a lot more sense than waiting for them to be so hard it would take days or weeks to tool them to what they needed.

Great thread.

The one thing this discussion leaves out that is compelling evidence that the stones of the pyramids were quarried and that is the large amount of graffiti on the stones themselves written in the patois of the time by the various teams that built it.

Shouldn't there be a way to clearly tell the difference between concrete - even the ancient kind that was far better quality than today's concrete - and quarried stone? The Great Pyramid (Khufu) wasn't constructed entirely from limestone anyway. On the interior, around the King's Chamber, there are 70 or 80-ton slabs of GRANITE. Supposedly there are other harder-than-limestone rocks (that can't be chiseled with copper tools) used there like grandiorite, syenite and basalt. See Wiki:

en.wikipedia.org...

Watch this movie about piramides.

The way this man is thinking in my opinion is rational.

Very good post ,and quite possible by all accounts.
How i hate to spoil the party,i must point to 1 thing that makes me wonder is,How the SOLID granite blocks were cut using the limited tools that they had,(that couldnt cut granite),as it is too hard.and also that they would have still had to move them into place ?

reply to post by nonconform


Granite was used for the veneer...the blocks themselves were sandstone...if they were granite this thread and the argument it is based on would make no sense.

reply to post by grover


Never heard of the granite-covered sandstone. Can you cite a source for that information? Either way, the granite couldn't be carved with copper tools.

I will look for a source but Herodotus and other Greeks described it as being covered in granite with...I believe a gold cap.

OKAY I was mistaken. But not by much:

The Great Pyramid consists of more than 2.3 million limestone blocks. The Egyptians shipped the limestone blocks from quarries all along the Nile River. The largest stones in the pyramid, found in the "King's" chamber, weigh upwards of 60 tonnes and were transported more than 500 miles away from Aswan. Traditionally, ancient Egyptians cut stone blocks by hammering wedges into the stone which were then soaked with water. The wedges expanded, causing the rock to crack. Once they were cut, they were carried by boat either up or down the Nile River to the pyramid.

At completion, the Great Pyramid was surfaced by white 'casing stones' – slant-faced, but flat-topped, blocks of highly polished white limestone. These were carefully cut to what is approximately a face slope with a seked of 5 1/2 palms to give the required overall dimensions. Visibly, all that remains is the underlying step-pyramid core structure seen today. In AD 1301, a massive earthquake loosened many of the outer casing stones, which were then carted away by Bahri Sultan An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan in 1356 in order to build mosques and fortresses in nearby Cairo. The stones can still be seen as parts of these structures to this day. Later explorers reported massive piles of rubble at the base of the pyramids left over from the continuing collapse of the casing stones, which were subsequently cleared away during continuing excavations of the site. Nevertheless, many of the casing stones can be seen to this day in situ around the base of the Great Pyramid, and display the same workmanship and precision as has been reported for centuries.

en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 27-9-2009 by grover]

reply to post by Dean Goldberry


granite blocks were used in the main chambers ,look it up

reply to post by tauristercus

Cute idea, but it's easier for me to believe aliens or a pre-humanoid race provided the anti-gravity machine that moved the stones into place. No real "evidence" seems to be in play here...just someone’s postulation. Of course that could be said of all the various theories. I'm not sure lugging all that heavy slurry up the ramp to be dumped in a mold is any easier than lugging the stones themselves.

The subject of the great pyramid is indeed one of the great mysteries of history. Even the age of the great pyramid is in question. Some have postulated it was built by non-humans, perhaps a race that lived here on Earth prior to humans as we know them today. I mean , if Earth has existed for eons, why do we not accept that intelligent life may have cropped up here on Earth many times in the ancient past and then disappeared for unknown reasons?



.....................

Great thread, OP. Thanks for laying it down for us. I have no problem believing that the Egyptians had their own method for creating a type of concrete well before the Romans. OR, that conventional Egyptologists got a big part of the construction of the pyramids completely wrong.
It just bothers me that after at least a century of Pyramid study that no on realized that the bottom stones were different than the top. Nobody ever took a sample? Now, just because I have a hard time with that doesn't mean it's not true.
Either way, interesting read. Thanks again.

newdawnmagazine.com.au...
Engineering_Marvels_of_the_Giza_Pyramids.html

just grabbed this off google as one source,if you copy and paste link into browser,as i never learned to set up a link.
or try google search,granite inside giza pyranids,hope this helps

Oh, this is pretty interesting. Just the way the blocks were made sprouts interest. I guess it's because the technique is behind it's own time. I've been skeptical on the entire belief on how the pyramids came to be, but this isn't the place for conversation. Does the way the stones are made by this technique quicker than what was previous believed?

Hmm, I don't know. Anyway, thanks for the info, good thread.

Originally posted by grover
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

The Romans supposedly developed concrete in and around 200 BC. If this hypothisis is correct then it would predate the Romans by over 2000 years.

BTW I am giving you a star for this thread.

[edit on 27-9-2009 by grover]

Oh, don't get me wrong; I'm well aware of the differences in time frames. I'm just trying to point out the general merit of 'the ancients' using what's often assumed to be fairly modern technology. It's also worth pointing out that the Romans were, in many ways, often standing on the shoulders of proverbial giants and took on various technologies and ideas from other cultures they came into contact with.

As the OP admitted himself, the author of this work has been touting this idea now for decades (it's got to be around 20 years or so since I came across it myself) and I was puzzled as to what the angle was on this.

Christopher Dunn has uncovered amazing evidence for saws being used to cut stone and of granite blocks with perfectly drilled holes (exhibit 23) complete with the original, spiral bore marks:
www.gizapower.com...

Think the ancient Egyptians had only copper chisels? Phooey! They had MACHINERY that cut blocks of granite to any size and shape they wanted. Dunne has discovered the artefacts to prove this. Only it is ignored by Egyptologists because it does not fit the academic view of history as a state of ever-progressing technology

Originally posted by tauristercus
The majority of mainstream archaeologists and egyptologists hold to the accepted theory that the main Giza pyramid (Cheops) was constructed over an approximate period of 10-20 years and using 1000's of labourers

A construction management study (testing) carried out by the firm Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall in association with Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists, estimates that the total project required an average workforce of 14,567 people and a peak workforce of 40,000. Without the use of pulleys, wheels, or iron tools, they used critical path analysis to suggest the Great Pyramid was completed from start to finish in approximately 10 years. Their study estimates that the number of blocks used in construction was between 2-2.8 million (an average of 2.4 million), but settles on a reduced finished total of 2 million after subtracting the estimated area of the hollow spaces of the chambers and galleries. Most sources agree on this number of blocks somewhere above 2.3 million.Their calculations suggest the workforce could have sustained a rate of 180 blocks per hour (3 blocks/minute) with ten hour work days for putting each individual block in place. They derived these estimates from modern third-world construction projects that did not use modern machinery, but conclude it is still unknown exactly how the Great Pyramid was built.

Source: en.wikipedia.org...

Great topic OP, Since I can remember the pyramids have always been very interesting to me. The concrete/slurry theory...another "possible" theory, and one I hadn't really heard about, so thank you for bringing it to my attention.

My issue with these theories is the "time to complete" the accepted theory gives.

Sooo... 10-20 years to lay 2-2.5 million blocks of stone. Simple math says thats...

10 years x 365 days = 3650 days of possible work in 10 years.
2,000,000 blocks / 3650 days = about 548 blocks layed per day average to achieve a 10 completion.

20 years x 365 days = 7300 days of possible work in 20 years.
2,000.000 blocks / 7300 days = about 274 blocks layed per day average.

Thats laying an AVG of 23 blocks an hour or about .38 of a block per minute in 10 years and an AVG of 11.5 blocks layed an hour in 20 years!! 24 hours a day!! And I'm using the most conservative numbers they are using, imagine if the amount of blocks was 2.8million. Really?

How do archaeologists explain this? Is there a flaw in my logic or math?

And, that doesn't even begin to explain the accuracy these giants were built to.

So yea, I'm all ears for a different theory because I have a hard time believing you could build something on the magnitude and accuracy of the pyramids by laying an AVG of 23 blocks an hour.

edit to change layout

[edit on 9/27/2009 by JohnnyR]
(bbcode)

[edit on Tue Sep 29 2009 by Jbird]

Concrete stones?
I guess it is possible.
I'm not sure it goes a great way to solving anything either way.
As someone else pointed out, you are STILL lugging the load up a ramp. Anyone here ever worked concrete? It is a pain in the behind. Very heavy. And even the author's own work says that this was only done for the upper courses. Which means that half of the thing (200') would have been constructed the "conventional" way.

Plus, the core of the pyramid is made of granite. Extremely heavy stones. The King's chamber, for instance, is surrounded by HUGE blocks of granite and it is situated over 150' above ground level.

This is a good thread and I'll give it a star and flag on presentation and intrigue, but as I said, this does nothing to solve anything. The same problems still exist.

reply to post by tauristercus

You are quoting Wikipedia. I will take my chances with more credible and monitored materials. Until someone more professional says something, I will take the original story on this one.

Its bull.

So they never used pulleys OR modern technology?

How did they do it then? Push the blocks uphill?

It's like the very precise Mayan architecture, where the 'rocks' have been fitted in so well one could not slip a piece of paper in between the cracks...

Perhaps they too knew how to make and shape rock like the Egyptians did, and not do the seemingly impossible task of shaping these blocks with primitive rock hammers before fitting them into their positions despite the insistence of archaeologists that they did.