The Egyptian Pyramids

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Ilios said:
I've gone through it ad nauseum, it is all there in post 124 awaiting answers.
I'd rather you answer the question, of what evidence I could provide that prove you wrong - I've told you exactly what would change my mind - why can't you tell me what would change yours? Because you have an unfalsifiable proposition - and unfalsifiable propositions tell you nothing about the world, have no explanatory power, and are useless.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. If I said to you 'a deistic god exists', that would be a useless claim. Deism is the proposition that some prime mover exists that has no detectable impact on the universe at all, it just started everything in motion and then walked off. That is a useless, unfalsifiable proposition: Here are potential 'gods':

God A is a theistic god who created the world, and has at times intervened in some way (answered prayer, shagged babies into virgins, speaks to people through the wireless...etc). God A interferes within the universe, and is therefore, at least in priniciple, detectable.

God B is the deist god.

God C doesn't exist.

If we rule out God A, how do tell the difference in a universe where God B or C exists? You can't. A god that hides itself is indistinguishable from our point of view, from a god that doesn't exist. Therefore B is an utterly useless assertion, because it has no predictive power - essentially the universe would be identical under B and C.

Now, applying this to what you're doing. You said earlier that...'You're right that there is no physical evidence, but then again much of what is said in Plato's works does seem to tie in with geological and climatological fact...'

If you believe that Plato's Atlantis is real, as Plato describes and that he knew about it, and yet you state that there is no evidential basis for believing this - then you have an unfalsifiable belief, as no evidence could be presented to falsify it. Essentially, a universe in which Plato's Atlantis is true, and is not true, are indistinguishable; the world appears thew same in both scenarios, if there is no evidence. What you're doing, is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, having undoubtedly read some buffoons like Graham Hancock.

A post hoc fallacy is an error in attributing connections without warrant. 'Every morning before the sun comes up, my rooster makes a noise. Therefore the rooster's noise causes the sun to come up'.

Replace 'rooster' with 'geological data', and 'sun' with 'Plato', and you have your argument.
Geological data appears to correlate with Plato, therefore this data is the cause of Plato's Atlantis. That is a straight-laced, clear as day, fallacy. Correlation does not equate to causation.
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Don't get me wrong, I do see your argument but you are looking at things from a very blinkered point of view.
  • You insist that im convinced Atlantis is fact, when all I've said is that I've got an open mind.
  • You talk of a post hoc fallacy when I have merely pointed out that things said went beyond the scientific knowledge of the time.
  • You insist that everything you have been taught is correct as if your knowledge is complete e.g. "there definitely was no Athens then".
  • You ask for evidence to prove you wrong (I have none as per my first reply) but just because you cannot see something does not mean it has not been there.
  • You seem to assume all ancient text would still exist whilst ignoring the fact that much text has been deliberately destroyed. Look what the Conquistadors did in the Americas or Nazis did regarding book burning. I'm sure you're also aware of Egyptian attempts to erase certain people from their history.
  • Do you believe Socrates existed, as he left no work? Or perhaps he was a figment of Plato's imagination.
 
Ilios said:
I care only about the evidence leading the conclusions, and not the conclusions leading the evidence. That and making rational inferences, not assertions and speculations. If you can't show it, you don't know it ;) The problem I have, is that I understand philosophy, epistemology and the burden of proof, and I encounter frighteningly few people in the general public, who actually understand the importance of avoiding logical fallacies and making assertions from intuition or incredulity. I've essentially had these same conversations about Gods, aliens, ghosts, the supernatural - you name it. The arguments always fall into the same half-dozen fallacies.

This is not a critique of you btw, I'm making a broader point. I want as many people as possible to come to rational conclusions, based on the evidence available - whatever the topic. It just happens that on this thread especially, I have some fairly considerable knowledge about the subject matter, and therefore maybe get a tad 'over-zealous' ;)
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You're making it harder for me to believe you own your own masters. How many examples should I list of things that were 'known' before they were 'shown'? There's a reason history/classics/archaeology is known as the study of achievements of greater men.

The problem you have is irrelevant, at least in this discussion because I'm not referring to the supernatural. It's quite possible for the whole of society to regress and a significant amount of knowledge and information to be lost over time, surely at some point in your study you will have realized this?

You need to make your mind up. Whilst recognizing earlier in the thread your strength isn't Egypt you can't then say "I have some fairly considerable knowledge about the subject matter". You don't, you have a masters in archaeology which was probably spent up Vindolanda digging mud in pissing November. You're over-zealousness, not me using that word, isn't that but seems to be stubbornness born from a lack of breadth.

Ilios said:
How do you know that is true? What evidence do you have, outside of Plato, that Solon visited Egypt (that part is perfectly plausible) and was shown records that date back 9000 years of Atlantis? And yet we see no mention of this in the Egyptian records. You know is in the earliest Egyptian king lists? Gods, ruling for thousands of years at a time. Do you believe that, simply because somebody wrote it down?

You're misreading Plato, as a literalist historian, and placing an enormous amount of confidence on the accuracy of information that we have no idea how he came about it - or whether, like much of his work, is allegorical and doesn't concern itself with historical accuracy? Why have you decided that of the many mythical elements in Plato, that he some how 'knew of, and deliberately got Atlantis right?'
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Greatest library fire in recorded history?
 
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theinediblebulk said:
I told you you wouldn't like myth being used as evidence.;). Nah, it's some Morrocan folk tale about the Atlas mountains being named after him, came across it at uni. The idea he was a king rather than a god is mine, but I put that down to to a sort of mythologising process. Say a great king from a civ with technological marvels that's been destroyed becomes a great god with supernatural powers a fair few generations down the line as the people can no longer conceive of technology and all evidence of it is gone. All that remain are the stories. There's mad folk tales from all over the place so while I can value the oral tradition, I'm not taking it as gospel. Having said that, when you come across commonalities across different cultures, then the theory that some oral tradition contains history becomes viable to me so I do see it as a relevant source material.

Without digging around for a book, I understand it to be Solon told the account to his great grandson who then told it to Plato. But regardless of it's actual source, the two positions i think you could take consist of it's all made up or it's not all made up. And it was the information regarding it's location, it's size, the islands beyond and the great continent beyond that, it sinking, the sea being impassable, returning to see it as a broken spine that got me. Not the rest of the book about the wars, or anything else for that matter, just the geography. And the bit about the sea being impassable that really caught my attention as that is exactly what happens to the sea with a volcanic eruption. So either Plato, or whoever originated the story, knew how the sea looked and behaved after a volcanic eruption or it was an uncanny coincidence, that in making everything up this one piece of geological fact just happens to pop up in it. Always been an attraction for my curiosity, no idea why.

Egyptian King list? Now you've gone and done it man, tin foil bomber command at the ready. :lol: Similar story in the Sumerian king list, massive longevity and length of reigns in a pre human pre flood world. That all sounds canny mental, even for me. I'd probably say that if there was any truth in the king lists, it's done the same mythologising process I like so well, people with tech become supernatural gods. Find it interesting that both texts have roughly the same period of time for the pre flood civilisations, about 250,000 years. And humans have been around for 300,000 but I wouldn't be giving it a high degree of probability.
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At the time of Plato, the locals living around the Atlas mountains called it "Douris". Further, the Berber for mountain is "ádrār" which has been suggested as a possible root for Atlas.
 
I do love things like this but I always think in this case it is a bit of a jump to say aliens built the pyramids as there are plenty of lost technologies like Damascus steel and Greek fire which we still cannot replicate today I think a more likely explanation for the pyramids is the Egyptians has some form of advanced engineering which has become one of these lost technologies
 
crombie88 said:
I do love things like this but I always think in this case it is a bit of a jump to say aliens built the pyramids as there are plenty of lost technologies like Damascus steel and Greek fire which we still cannot replicate today I think a more likely explanation for the pyramids is the Egyptians has some form of advanced engineering which has become one of these lost technologies
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By the time Egypt turns up in history, they had already forgotten some of the mathematics they had previously known.

But I do wonder why these friendly aliens of theirs didn't bother to give them a better approximation of π ...
 
theinediblebulk said:
the only thing I have ever come across about using a copper saw to cut granite used sand as an abrasive and had a cutting rate of 4 mm an hour. Which is a f***ing joke if you're having to lay a cut stone every two and a half minutes.
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Surely this makes the assumption that they're only cutting one slab at a time? With a large enough workforce it is surely possible to cut enough of them at once using your method to supply the slab layers?

I know the grand total of fuck all about the structure of granite or the cutting thereof, so this is a genuine question...

If you have a piece of roughly-cut granite that is much larger than you need, scored a line all the way around it where you wanted to cut it, positioned it on a hard fulcrum (possibly also made of granite but sunk into the ground at 45 degrees so that there's effectively a "mountain ridge" elongated triangle shape sticking out of the ground) so that the scored line slots onto the top of the fulcrum, and then dropped two more sufficiently heavy blocks of granite onto each end of the one one you're trying to cut simultaneously, so that in effect you have a giant granite seesaw that you're dropping two more granite blocks onto, would the target block snap perfectly along the scored line or would it just fall apart or snap randomly in the wrong shape?
 
fyl2u said:
Surely this makes the assumption that they're only cutting one slab at a time? With a large enough workforce it is surely possible to cut enough of them at once using your method to supply the slab layers?

I know the grand total of fuck all about the structure of granite or the cutting thereof, so this is a genuine question...

If you have a piece of roughly-cut granite that is much larger than you need, scored a line all the way around it where you wanted to cut it, positioned it on a hard fulcrum (possibly also made of granite but sunk into the ground at 45 degrees so that there's effectively a "mountain ridge" elongated triangle shape sticking out of the ground) so that the scored line slots onto the top of the fulcrum, and then dropped two more sufficiently heavy blocks of granite onto each end of the one one you're trying to cut simultaneously, so that in effect you have a giant granite seesaw that you're dropping two more granite blocks onto, would the target block snap perfectly along the scored line or would it just fall apart or snap randomly in the wrong shape?
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You're definitely going to have a large workforce but the numbers who can work the quarry will be determined by how big the quarry is, say a 200 foot stretch compared to a 500 foot stretch. And that workforce still has to able to produce enough limestone blocks that on average weigh 2 ton being laid every 2 and a half minutes to achieve a 20 year build time, which is a phenomenal rate.

That technique certainly sounds feasible for splitting stone but not sure about it's practical application to granite slabs that weigh from 25 to 80 tonne. They're perfectly flat, perfect edges, perfect 90 degree corners. If you get a laser cut ruler and place it on the surface of one and then shine a torch from behind it, no light shows through between the ruler and the granite. That's how flat they are. I'd say whatever technique used was a precision one whereas the one you've outlined seems too random. You'd be dropping stone and needing to get perfect splits every time. And they weigh up to 80 tonne so what ever you dropped it in I'd guess would probably be damaged as well.

The technique I thought of that might be a possibility is to simply use mirrors, but not in a Tommy Cooper type way. About 200 BC Archimedes torched a load of Roman boats (go on lad) using a heat death ray thing simply reflecting the sun from mirror's. I know mythbusters had a shot of this and failed but MIT didn't.

http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_ArchimedesResult.html

When it comes to mirrors, there's evidence of some seriously advanced work. Namely this obsidian bracelet from 7500BC.

https://phys.org/news/2011-12-oldest-obsidian-bracelet-reveals-amazing.html

The surface finish of the bracelet (which is very regular, resembling a mirror) required the use of complex polishing techniques capable of obtaining a nanometer-scale surface quality worthy of today's telescope lenses.

So, evidence in story form of using mirrors to harness the sun and evidence in archeological form of the ability to produce high precision mirrors. Put the two together and you get this.


Could they have built some sort of portable solar furnace to such a high degree of precision (not out the question with the high degree of precision of the pyramid itself) that it effectively acted like a laser beam, thereby giving you the accuracy you need? This would be quicker than cutting with copper or bronze, massively reduces the amount of physical exertion that's needed to quarry the blocks, reduces the need for a pretty much constant supply of replacement tools (those chisels and saws wear down), and has a free source of reliable power.
 
AlpineExile said:
By the time Egypt turns up in history, they had already forgotten some of the mathematics they had previously known.

But I do wonder why these friendly aliens of theirs didn't bother to give them a better approximation of π ...
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

The ratio of the perimeter to height of 1760/280 royal cubits equates to 2π to an accuracy of better than 0.05% (corresponding to the well-known approximation of π as 22/7). Some Egyptologists consider this to have been the result of deliberate design proportion. Verner wrote, "We can conclude that although the ancient Egyptians could not precisely define the value of π, in practice they used it".[13] Petrie, author of Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh concluded: "but these relations of areas and of circular ratio are so systematic that we should grant that they were in the builder's design".[14]

AlpineExile said:
Limestone, not granite. FFS.
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The Tura limestone used for the casing was quarried across the river. The largest granite stones in the pyramid, found in the "King's" chamber, weigh 25 to 80 tonnes and were transported from Aswan, more than 800 km (500 mi) away.
 
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