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How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

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Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#11

Post by readams »

mehrdadn wrote: post #6
obastani wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an answer to your question, but the Sagrada Famila [1] began construction in 1882, and is projected to be completed around 2030. It's an immense (and beautiful) structure. Just want to point out that it's not just a matter of the buildings being built a long time ago; this kind of long-term construction is still happening today.

I... just can't wrap my head around this. Is it that they actually take that long with enough people, or they have too few people working on them?

They're specifically using old-style techniques to build it, and doing a sort of fund-as-you-go structure where donations finance the construction. This is combined with the fact that the building is really complicated and every block has to be custom-carved into a unique shape.

There's also likely an element of not really wanting it to be done since the construction itself is a big part of the draw of the building for tourism.

Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#12

Post by teruakohatu »

mehrdadn wrote: post #6
obastani wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an answer to your question, but the Sagrada Famila [1] began construction in 1882, and is projected to be completed around 2030. It's an immense (and beautiful) structure. Just want to point out that it's not just a matter of the buildings being built a long time ago; this kind of long-term construction is still happening today.

I... just can't wrap my head around this. Is it that they actually take that long with enough people, or they have too few people working on them?

Funding but also they are to an extent a giant work of art, adding more people does not produce a better work of art.

Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#13

Post by blackrock »

It must’ve been built by aliens. Since we can’t figure out the math behind it.

Some inner chambers seems to point at the Osiris star cluster.

Kidding..

I wonder if an ancient engineer discovered a more useful purpose for the pyramids. Like channeling salt water into the chambers, to create a battery somehow, in order to create an electric field, which was used to power some kind of light bulb at the top. So the pyramid ended up becoming some type of light tower, to illuminate the darkness. This indeed, would be fascinating stone aged technology, that can last for a few millennia.

Note, we can’t find the light bulb at the top, to support this fictional theory, because it got looted at some point in history. Maybe it was a precious diamond or something. LOL..

Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#15

Post by soperj »

est31 wrote: post #9
burlesona wrote: post #2

This is very cool to see. The main takeaways for me were: 1. It's easy to underestimate what is possible when you limit thinking to a short timescale. I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. Or conversely, it's easy to overestimate the difficulty of someth…

There is a star trek episode where they encounter a civilization which has built a benevolent AI a long time ago and has since lost capabilities to do much more than give commands to the AI. Our society has managed to write down some things like math for example so our knowledge as species won't be lost if mathematicians suddenly died. But it's harder to find permanent storage for the more skills based human activiti…

Sometimes writing it down means very little. Like Perelman's Poincaré conjecture solution. It took some of the best mathematicians years to even prove it being correct.

Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#16

Post by rantwasp »

est31 wrote: post #9
burlesona wrote: post #2

This is very cool to see. The main takeaways for me were: 1. It's easy to underestimate what is possible when you limit thinking to a short timescale. I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. Or conversely, it's easy to overestimate the difficulty of someth…

There is a star trek episode where they encounter a civilization which has built a benevolent AI a long time ago and has since lost capabilities to do much more than give commands to the AI. Our society has managed to write down some things like math for example so our knowledge as species won't be lost if mathematicians suddenly died. But it's harder to find permanent storage for the more skills based human activiti…

enter Space X: hold my beer

Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#17

Post by downerending »

burlesona wrote: post #2

This is very cool to see. The main takeaways for me were: 1. It's easy to underestimate what is possible when you limit thinking to a short timescale. I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. Or conversely, it's easy to overestimate the difficulty of someth…

Not the same kind of scientific glasswork, but there were a couple (?) of guys at Harvard that produced a large number of educational models of various biological things, using glass. Worth visiting if you ever go there.

https://hmnh.harvard.edu/glass-flowers

Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#18

Post by Cactus2018 »

I recently learned about the highly polished white limestone 'cladding' or 'casing' stones

Wikipedia says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#Casing_s...

> Casing stones

> At completion, the Great Pyramid was surfaced with white "casing stones"—slant-faced, but flat-topped, blocks of highly polished white limestone.... Visibly, all that remains is the underlying stepped core structure seen today.[citation needed] In 1303 AD, a massive earthquake loosened many of the outer casing stones, which in 1356 were carted away by Bahri Sultan An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan to build mosques and fortresses in nearby Cairo.[citation needed] Many more casing stones were removed from the great pyramids by Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early 19th century to build the upper portion of his Alabaster Mosque in Cairo, not far from Giza.[citation needed] ...

Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#19

Post by blackrock »

soperj wrote: post #15
est31 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a star trek episode where they encounter a civilization which has built a benevolent AI a long time ago and has since lost capabilities to do much more than give commands to the AI. Our society has managed to write down some things like math for example so our knowledge as species won't be lost if mathematicians suddenly died. But it's harder to find permanent storage for the more skills based human activiti…

Sometimes writing it down means very little. Like Perelman's Poincaré conjecture solution. It took some of the best mathematicians years to even prove it being correct.

Didn’t the Egyptians write it down? But we still have no idea how to understand their hieroglyphics. Or how they even figured out their math.

Re: How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?

#20

Post by rrmm »

est31 wrote: post #9
burlesona wrote: post #2

This is very cool to see. The main takeaways for me were: 1. It's easy to underestimate what is possible when you limit thinking to a short timescale. I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. Or conversely, it's easy to overestimate the difficulty of someth…

There is a star trek episode where they encounter a civilization which has built a benevolent AI a long time ago and has since lost capabilities to do much more than give commands to the AI. Our society has managed to write down some things like math for example so our knowledge as species won't be lost if mathematicians suddenly died. But it's harder to find permanent storage for the more skills based human activiti…

I think you're correct about the importance of the context in which the expertise exists in.

But even so, I think it's clear that with more broad documentation, we are in a better position to pick up the expertise of the past.

So in the future, all the wonderful, nutty youtubers that keep alive old arts and give demos would be especially invaluable. Not just in clarifying specific techniques and knowledge, but by demonstrating a general approach to problems that existed at the current time.

I've been watching all sorts of things the past couple of months like this: People making vacuum tubes, repairing vacuum tube equipment, older mainframe technologies like ancient versions of MVS, machining parts on equipment from the '30's.

None of it is how-things-are-done in a cutting edge factory or step by step directions on how to reproduce an important cultural artifact, but from the perspective of future people, it will be a valuable aid to gathering that context.

One I'm particularly reminded of is Clickspring on youtube who is building an antikythera mechanism. Even though we have the partial artifact, so little is known concerning metal working technologies of the time that it seems to be an anachronism completely alien to its time of origin.

His approach is to explore what technologies would make sense to a working craftsman of any era (which also could be surmised to have existed in the era). It's interesting to watch and it has apparently born fruit in terms discovering academically important information about the device.

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