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

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

#51

Post by thewebguyd »

slg wrote: post #29
john_strinlai wrote: post #11

one piece of "evidence" some conspiracy believers cite to prove aliens is, roughly: a bunch of places around the world independently all built similar pyramid-like structures (egypt, machu picchu, etc.). so it must be aliens. the fact that the easiest way to pile up a bunch of big rocks without it crumbling down is to have a wide base and a narrow top is seemingly forgotten.

>without it crumbling down Which is an underappreciated part. They didn't only build pyramids, it's just pyramids had a much higher chance of actually surviving the millennia so it looks like early human civilizations were weirdly obsessed with pyramids. You never hear any theories about how aliens built the Colossus of Rhodes, but the pyramids get it because they're still around.

If there was ever a candidate for alien intervention its the roman aqueducts, and like you said, I never see any conspiracies for that either. The romans figured out water filtration, built a massive underground network, figured out hydraulic pressure, and created concrete that can set underwater and resisted cracking.

Far more impressive than a pyramid IMO.

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

#52

Post by evtothedev »

chadd wrote: 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 love that gmail was only 4 months old when this came out.

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

#53

Post by Hikikomori »

empath75 wrote: post #8
sscaryterry wrote: post #6

I can sympathise and understand why people don't believe this is within human capabilities. Look at how fractured the government and political systems of the west have become. Humans forget. We've forgotten how to build pyramids, we've forgotten the second world war and the lessons learned.

> We've forgotten how to build pyramids. Luxor in Vegas is way more complicated than the egyptian pyramids were.

The bass pro pyramid store was built by aliens.

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

#54

Post by kelseyfrog »

irishcoffee wrote: post #43
echelon_musk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Testament of Solomon indulges this craziness. > the text describes how Solomon was enabled to build his temple by commanding demons by means of a magical ring that was entrusted to him by the archangel Michael. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_of_Solomon

> The Testament of Solomon is a pseudepigraphical composite text ascribed to King Solomon but not regarded as canonical scripture by Jews or Christian groups. It was written in the Greek language, based on precedents dating back to the early 1st millennium AD, but was likely not completed in any meaningful textual sense until sometime in the Middle Ages. Yeah that’s super reliable…

Moreover cannonical and historical truth are orthogonal axes.

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

#55

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

Avshalom wrote: post #47
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #17

"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.

It's more specifically "I personally can't conceive of how one might built this, so non-white people definitely didn't build this"

My original comment was more along those lines, but then I did a quick Wiki refresher on Chariots of the Gods (possibly the origin of the popular "Ancient Aliens" push), and noted that the author included Stonehenge among his examples, so I changed course.

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

#56

Post by speak_plainly »

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 scale and precision of Giza creates blind spots.

There are major gaps in all explanations provided and there are a huge array of interesting but unprovable theories. People fill those gaps with whatever is compelling, but really, none are good enough to prove anything definitively and that includes the academic explanations.

It's entirely possible that we may never have the definitive answer for how they were built or even exactly why, and will have to live with the mystery. But humans rarely will accept that conclusion and we would rather invent certainty than put up with open questions.

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

#57

Post by crooked-v »

sscaryterry wrote: post #6

I can sympathise and understand why people don't believe this is within human capabilities. Look at how fractured the government and political systems of the west have become. Humans forget. We've forgotten how to build pyramids, we've forgotten the second world war and the lessons learned.

The Luxor Las Vegas was built in 1993. It even had a replica tomb for a while.

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

#58

Post by thewebguyd »

card_zero wrote: post #50
thewebguyd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Romans, huh? Many of them were slaves, they believed they could learn the future by looking at the patterns of birds in flight, a Roman's bloodline was very important to the Roman's importance. You can take "behaviorally identical" too far, ideas got better over time, people in the past had bad ideas.

Still sounds a lot like humans today. Many are still slaves, many believe they can learn the future by reading cards with funny pictures on them, for some bloodline is very important, as is race.

I don't think we are meaningfully different at all. The same types and groups of people and social structures all still exist today. I suppose the big difference is those of us who are well adjusted know that racism is not good, and tarot cards are meaningless woo woo. But there were also such skeptics back then too.

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

#59

Post by card_zero »

FLHerne wrote: post #45
jrmg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern construction firms would have no problem^ planning and building you a pyramid if you were willing to pay for it. ^ well, maybe some problems like any project, but they would overcome them.

Sure, but no-one on Earth today is willing to pay for a pyramid - or anything like it - even with the convenience of modern construction. I have a similar feeling looking at the great cathedrals. These structures took up a huge proportion of the community's money, labour and talent, for decades on end. They're orders of magnitude bigger than any 'normal' building of the time or for centuries later. All with no prospe…

Eiffel tower: 10,000 tons

Great pyramid: 5 or 6 million tons

So only around 500 times as much moving material around, feasible I guess. You might need a dedicated rail line built direct to the quarry.

Funny to mention cathedrals considering that they finished one in Spain just recently. There's also Guédelon Castle in France, still being slowly built.

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