Seriously amazing video

[Valentas]

If you are INTP, you will be glued to the screen because everything is calculated and thought out. I never knew this stuff and even though history for me is boring, this was so interesting...when you watch, discuss here what do you think?

It is a long watch but bear with it and it going to be very interesting in the second half of this documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU2KEY79brU

 

[Architect]

Watched half of it. Interesting, but any set of facts can be strung together in many different ways to create the appearance of intelligence where there is none. In this case they've so far left out the fact that people back then had enormous human labor capital. Today we can't imagine cutting a obelisk out of bare rock with primitive tools, because we think in terms of machine leverage. Back then they had human leverage, which is better in many ways because there was human level intelligence behind each pair of hands.

For instance, I think the Egyptians would think nothing of throwing a thousand workers at carving out a statue. Further there's no mythical man month problem here, because each one could be responsible for say doing a linear foot or two of it, and the tasks are not interdependent. In other words all they had to do was parallelize it which was easy with the cheap labor.

As for fitting the stones, same issue. It seems crazy to us to have odd sized blocks that fit so well, but why not when you have thousands to throw at it. Finally, for how close they fit, I imagine they just rocked the blocks back and forth, rubbing a common interface together until the fit. That's what I'd do, just do a rough cut and then final fit by rubbing them together, the common grit providing a grinding paste which in short order, considering the heavy weight involved would create an airtight interface.

Regardless they do all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory ... with mysterious hints to "the theory that CHANGED the world", and blinking text, and how "mainstream archeologists" (it's always us against the status quo) won't accept blah blah blah.

Mildly entertaining though, and somewhat educational.

 

[redbaron]

Couldn't actually watch video because I'm at work, but I get this vibe:

 

[Valentas]

Nice reasoning Architect but second half is a lot more interesting. When someone recommends me a movie or a book, I found that stopping in the middle just because it seems uninteresting left me without a bang in the end.

When I first watched the video, my thoughts were exactly as yours such as "all these big words on the screen seems like conspiracy movie" but when I watched the second half, my first thought was this: if professional engineers and experts say that such work is not possible using chisels and stones, then it is plausible to assume that either Egyptians had sophisticated tools or pyramids were not built by them. Maybe by even more ancient people. I liked the mathematics part in the end. There conspiracy-like stuff ends and only numbers talk. Which is nice.

 

[NullPointer]

Even if 99.9% of the worlds "experts and professional engineers" disagree with something, you're still left with hundreds and hundreds of "experts and professional engineers" who might back you up.

"If you draw a circle with diameter 1, then the circumference of the circle is pie. Divide this by six, and you get a number surprisingly close to the cubit's length" ... in metres, a modern French measurement. But no, maybe the Egyptians went forward in time, multiplied a measurement from the future by pi/6, and went back to the past. In fact, the rest of the video is in metres too. How is that a reasonable unit to suppose they had access to, if you simultaneously assert that they didn't have the advanced technology of a right angle, or the ability to make a straightedge?

Did you also know that e^pi - pi is "surprisingly close" to 20? In fact, using e, pi, and phi, you can make all sorts of numbers that seem "too close to be coincidence". http://xkcd.com/1047/ Ooh, mystical.

Also, a lot of the ratios mentioned in the video as being "the golden number" or "pi" are close, but no cigar. Any number between about 1.5 and 1.7 they're happy to say is "the golden ratio", and given that the golden ratio is supposedly a number we *naturally* gravitate towards when picking proportions, why not merely suppose that the architect decided it *looked* right?

EDIT: Haha, I see they addressed the metres thing. "My theory only works if something absurd is true, therefore the absurd thing is true, because it's not possible for my theory to be false" - that's roughly the logic being applied.

Actually, I'll stop there. All of those were taken from about 10 minutes in the middle of the video, but it's fair to say that I disagree with almost everything that is said in that video.

 

[Hadoblado]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PSueHOY-Jk

It was actually a very enjoyable video. I fell asleep near the end, but it was very interesting over all.

 

[Architect]

Nice reasoning Architect but second half is a lot more interesting. When someone recommends me a movie or a book, I found that stopping in the middle just because it seems uninteresting left me without a bang in the end.

I'll watch the rest of it later but my fundamental point is still

any set of facts can be strung together in many different ways to create the appearance of intelligence where there is none

Example. I've never been to the ocean, so I go for a walk on the beach and leave tracks. The next day I go back and they're gone! Further, there is a beautiful pattern in the sand. This can't happen on it's own, some active agent must have done it. It looks too beautiful to happen overnight by itself, it has to be intelligence. I go to a beach in the Caribbean and the same thing happens! Who is doing this?

Or another example, beat a drum everytime there is an eclipse of the sun. I 100% guarantee that the sun will come back. How could this be? Beating a drum makes the sun come back? There must be a sun spirit which is appeased by the drum beating.

All a fallacy, and gives rise to religions, mysterious causes (aliens) and conspiracies alike. The fallacy is not seeing that correlation is not causation.

People across the world using similiar construction techniques thousands of years ago means nothing. It could be different people solving the same engineering problems as they noted. Or it could be communication, not direct but through intermediaries. We do see this, science and engineering ideas (especially construction and warfare) spread across the globe back then as neighboring tribes adopt them, then pass them on to their neighbors. Or it could be just paradigm shift. Read Thomas Kuhn on the nature of engineering and scientific development. The same idea occurs to different people at the same time across the globe, who aren't communicating with each other. Again, common ways to solve common problems.

Wild and fantastic causes do exist in the world, just look at QM and GR, but you never jump to them without direct proof.

 

[Cognisant]

Rubbing the stones together makes perfect sense, I mean if I had that problem to solve it would seem the obvious solution, especially if I'm already using sandstone rocks like sandpaper to smooth down the surfaces of my statues, also the ancient Egyptians didn't just have chisels, that's an outright lie.

 

[Hadoblado]

I find it interesting that both the affirmative and negative position could be accused of a lack of imagination. The prior because they lack the creativity to explore all the options available within typical human parameters, and the latter because they refuse to leave the experiential. Does anyone know of a model that expresses this dichotomy more elegantly? It reminds me of the evolution vs creationism debate.

How do you propose to rub such massive objects against one another? Wouldn't that require a lot more effort than rubbing them down with a sand-paper equivalent? (genuinely curious).

 

[Cherry Cola]

99% of the worlds experts being wrong about construction techniques thousands of years ago kinda seems more plausible than Aliens or whatever the conspiracy theory is about.

Bah I almost started watching it not knowing what it was, but then decided that there being no description of it in the original post was reason enough not to.

 

[Hadoblado]

IMO it's worth a gander, if just to exercise your rational faculties.

 

[Valentas]

Cherry Cola,

this documentary gave you many options to believe what you choose by using maths and common sense. Also experts engineers could not replicate this very easily. This is why I liked this: it shown many possibilities and it is your choice. Some couch potato will think it is aliens while in my opinion, it is more ancient civilization. Overall, history does not know anything before certain date(it was mentioned) about Egyptians so I assume that we can only guess what capabilities Egyptians had in building.

Yet, it is interesting that greatest miracles ever built have beautiful nature and universe constants in it. I remember reading one book about golden ratio and it instructed to measure your arm and something else and take a ratio. It was surprisingly close to 1.618 because I tried it

I choose to watch such things and relax from programming. It is better to get some stuff to chew on instead of watching TV like most others "relax" :}

Hadoblado, yes, this was an interesting watch and while first part made me to think "yet another conspiracy", second part was a lot of fun and interesting because I know a lot about all these constants and the proposal that Egyptians used meter as a measurement unit seems plausible. If they didn't, then why scientists found these constants in-built in pyramids?

Also remember that statue's face with perfect symmetry. They said that no one could replicate this using stones which means that it is impossible for human hand to craft perfect symmetry curves and faces. They must have used something more sophisticated.

Overall, 8/10 from me for good time I spent

 

[Hadoblado]

I am not learned in any of the equations used, nor am I an expert on exactly what a skilled artisan is capable of. In my mind I see no contradiction in having a surprisingly skilled mathematician guide the hands of his workers, but I'm really not fit to judge, so I sorta skip over that part.

 

[Cognisant]

It reminds me of the evolution vs creationism debate.

It's not a debate when the vast majority of avalible evidence indicates that one theory is overwhelmingly more valid than another, it's a divide between people who use evidence to prove their arguments and people who stand for whatever theory they find most appealing.

There is nothing to debate.

How do you propose to rub such massive objects against one another? Wouldn't that require a lot more effort than rubbing them down with a sand-paper equivalent? (genuinely curious).

Rope I assume, if you want to tear down a building without machinery it's common practice to tie ropes to the structure and have a number of people pull them, twenty people pulling at 20kg (in short synchronous pulls) generates about 400kg of force, with more ropes and more people it's quite concieveable that even the largest stones could be moved and rubbed against each other.

 

[Hadoblado]

It's not a debate when the vast majority of avalible evidence indicates that one theory is overwhelmingly more valid than another, it's a divide between people who use evidence to prove their arguments and people who stand for whatever theory they find most appealing.

There is nothing to debate.

Our views differ on what constitutes a debate, though not on what defines this one in particular.

Rope I assume, if you want to tear down a building without machinery it's common practice to tie ropes to the structure and have a number of people pull them, twenty people pulling at 20kg (in short synchronous pulls) generates about 400kg of force, with more ropes and more people it's quite concieveable that even the largest stones could be moved and rubbed against each other.

That still seems very difficult for something that was achieved in such a short period of time. My gut tells me there's been a mistake with how they've calculated the time it took to build, but a quick wiki search leads me to believe there is little controversy over this (obvious) point.

 

[BigApplePi]

Valentas. Admittedly interesting but I will have to watch the rest of it later having gotten in only 15 minutes. I believe I watched a Nova TV program or something explaining how they might have done it but I forget how. I do recall they loaded boats and floated down the Nile. I think they explained the block fittings too although people here have volunteered theories.

Sometimes a new theory has to be thought of. Just because we can't think of it doesn't mean there isn't one. The 20 year figure seems the most likely by today's reasoning, that doesn't prove anything. Take a 100 year job and multiply the number of workers estimated by say six and you have it.

 

[Valentas]

BigApplePi, I posted this video for others to watch and then discuss. Why? Because we saw only experts say that it is not possible to build the Great Pyramid in 20 years.

Maybe we can reason this thing out somehow and this forum is full of clever people

I'll check out your TV program you mentioned.

To be honest, Architect provided good point about cheap labor because from history lessons about Egypt it was proven that pharaohs had many servants and many people working. Also if most of them were religious and brainwashed that the pharaoh's grave must be really glorious to please Gods, then if most of them were religious, they could actually take many volunteers and slaves lol...but what do we know? All of this is just trying to explain this miracle and no one will ever know about this.

Yet, in the end of the movie, you will see that tomb theory is discarded and instead pyramid is used for time measurement. They proved it using maths. How much truth is in this, I don't know.

 

[Architect]

To be honest, Architect provided good point about cheap labor because from history lessons about Egypt it was proven that pharaohs had many servants and many people working. Also if most of them were religious and brainwashed that the pharaoh's grave must be really glorious to please Gods, then if most of them were religious, they could actually take many volunteers and slaves lol...but what do we know? All of this is just trying to explain this miracle and no one will ever know about this.

Mostly slaves, except the craftsmen (carvers and painters) were highly regarded Egyptians. They were continually at war and Nubia (part of Africa) was their biggest enemy. They had lots of slaves from the wars. All of their neighbors were jealous of their granaries (they had lots of grain from the Nile flooding, and bread was a staple of their diet) but the desert made mounting campaigns against the home country impossible due to logistical issues (the Greeks (Alexander) eventually pulled it off). This unchanging nature plus the rhythm of the yearly Nile flood led to their whole stagnant philosophy and society, with its obsession of "un-change" going on forever after death.

I don't know where they got the 20 years number, that would be important to know how accurate it might be. Regardless it is possible, they could have four teams for each side, with thousands per team to cut, transport and lay out the stones. The key is that this is a highly parallel task. In the modern world we think low manpower, high machine power and so leveraged serial (one controlling mind). Back then they had cheap manpower, no machine power and so highly parallel (many controlling minds).

 

[Hadoblado]

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/mystery-how-egyptians-moved-pyramid-stones-solved

Relevant, though not a cure-all.