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Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

mcsweeneys.net

161–170 of 194 posts

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#161
post #42

The classic Mcsweeney's for the HN crowd is "E-mail Addresses That Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone" https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...

I was considering changing my name to Mark Withasea because I keep getting asked so many times "Is that Mark with a K, or a C?"

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#162
post #42

The classic Mcsweeney's for the HN crowd is "E-mail Addresses That Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone" https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...

During the dot-com boom I registered dotcodotuk.co.uk and set up dotcodotuk@dotcodotuk.co.uk. Strangely the novelty of this wore off very quickly.

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#163

"I personally can't conceive of how one might built this, and I must be a million times smarter than people 4500 years ago, ergo people didn't build this." is how the Ancient Aliens theory always sounds to me.

Wait until you hear about "I don't remember leaving my phone in the toilets" ergo "There must be alternative parallel timelines we regularly jump to and from"

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple years ago I realized that I had somewhat subconsciously made the same assumption. The thing that snapped me out of it was my awe in watching Clickspring (YT) try to recreate the Antikythera Mechanism. That device's complexity and craftsmanship is proof to me that despite the lack of technology, there were some astonishingly smart and resourceful people living thousands of years ago.

The Obelisk at the Vatican weighs in at 360 tons. And was moved from Egypt to Rome by the Romans around 40AD. And then moved to it's present location in the 1586. The Romans moved at least 8 Egyptian Obelisks to Rome and also commissioned a couple. The only thing really amazing about the pyramids is how many couple of ton blocks they carved out and transported. It's around 250 blocks a day for 25 years.

A thing of note, the Nile banks have been one the most fertile arable land around the whole mediterranean, that's why it was invaluable to the roman empire. Why it matters is that only in a place where you have very fertile land can you afford to have sooooo many people not working in agriculture and feed them to work for your tyrannical pet project

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the manufacturing processes used to make the Apollo spacecraft were not followed in the production floor - and nobody wrote those changes down. That's one well-known example of Apollo-era knowledge lost, there are a few others if you seriously care to DDG them.

Can you see how far "some Apollo program last-minute production-floor manufacturing changes were not written down" is from "humans lost fundamental technology needed to land on the moon"?

1. You are correct it's not very far.

2. "Not far" is the difference between "land humans on the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth" and not doing that. Some of this stuff was unbelievably lucky, go read about the F1 engine baffles - getting that right was pure stupid luck as much as it was engineered.

And there were literally hundreds of these examples - across five different space vehicles and the interfaces between them.

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#166

"I personally can't conceive of how one might built this, and I must be a million times smarter than people 4500 years ago, ergo people didn't build this." is how the Ancient Aliens theory always sounds to me.

There's a ton of people that, for some reason, just can't grok that humans have been largely behaviorally and biologically identical for the past 200k years. The average ancient roman plebeian's life would not look dramatically different from ours today, minus technology of course. They worked a day job, ate at thermopoliums (basically fast food), lived in crowded apartment complexes with various forms of slum lords,…

I think the gap here variation. Yes, people living 50,000 years ago were likely quite similar to _some_ people alive today, just probably not very similar to the types of people who are able to peacefully sit around on the internet and read history books for pleasure, who would most likely ask that question.

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#167
post #42

The classic Mcsweeney's for the HN crowd is "E-mail Addresses That Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone" https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...

Occasionally on here is user fanf with email address dot@dotat.at

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#168
post #109
post #42

The classic Mcsweeney's for the HN crowd is "E-mail Addresses That Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone" https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...

lol, that's what I'd call a dense piece of text: (header) [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] (end article)

Is that being injected by an extension or something? It's perfectly readable to me.

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#169

I think people fall into two distinct camps here: the wildly exploratory, who chase everything from lost civilizations to aliens, and the hyper-rationalists, who refuse to budge from safe, conventional explanations. When it comes to Giza, It may be disingenuous to write all the banter off as either conspiracy or bona fide science. While we understand the general progression of pyramid-building in Egypt, the sheer sca…

We do know pretty much exactly when they pyramids were built though, (+/- a couple hundred years, which in this context is "Exact" enough) as there have been numerous carbon datings of organic material found in the mortar between the stones of the pyramids, which all broadly line up with the other textual evidence (Mehrer texts, etc.) and contextual evidence (Dating of the work camps surrounding the pyramids) and there really isn't any great mystery in how they were built either, just a lack of specificity in terms of what exact method was used (ie. was it an internal or external ramp, were pulleys used, etc.)

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you see how far "some Apollo program last-minute production-floor manufacturing changes were not written down" is from "humans lost fundamental technology needed to land on the moon"?

1. You are correct it's not very far. 2. "Not far" is the difference between "land humans on the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth" and not doing that. Some of this stuff was unbelievably lucky, go read about the F1 engine baffles - getting that right was pure stupid luck as much as it was engineered. And there were literally hundreds of these examples - across five different space vehicles and the…

Yes, it's absolutely a lot of work, cost, and risk to design and qualify a new rocket for human spaceflight from scratch. Especially if you've let all your institutional knowledge drift away in the meantime.

I just don't think that comes close to meeting the bar of "lost technology" in the sense that term is used by the extraterrestrial pyramid theorists (i.e., the manipulation of fundamental physical forces allowing the blocks to be levitated into place).

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