Here’s a little article that explains that there is pretty solid new proof that, tho the lower stones were quarried and hauled for the bases of the Pyramids … on up a little higher they began setting molds and pouring slurry into them to complete the structures. Cheats!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2480751,00.html
nb
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Replies
That's fascinating and would be one more reason to admire the building skills of the ancient Egyptians.
But there's one statement in the article that caught my attention:
The stones, say the historians and archeologists, were all carved from nearby quarries, heaved up huge ramps and set in place by armies of workers. Some dissenters say that levers or pulleys were used, even though the wheel had not been invented at that time.
The wheel hadn't been invented?
First of all, the wheel, per se, was never "invented". Applying an observed physical characteristic doesn't create an invention. Even the dung beetle knows how to roll elephant turds into a ball to make it easier to move. It would be like saying hammers were invented when the first caveman used a rock to hit something.
Secondly, it's hard to believe that the Egyptians didn't know how to make a simple pulley. There are chariots (with spokes and axles) from 2000 BC and the Cheops pyramid is from around that time.
It's a pet peeve of mine when our forebears are regarded as lacking the same intelligence as us. Maybe they didn't actually USE wheels (and building with concrete may not have required them), but they certainly must have know HOW to.
Don,
I also took issue with that wheel statement. After a bit of googling I found one very interesting assertion in Wikipedia:
"The invention of the wheel thus falls in the late Neolithic and may be seen in conjunction with the other technological advances that gave rise to the early Bronze Age. Note that this implies the passage of several wheel-less millennia, even after the invention of agriculture. Looking back even further, it is of some interest that although paleoanthropologists now date the emergence of anatomically modern humans to ca. 150,000 years ago, 143,000 of those years were "wheel-less". That people with capacities fully equal to our own walked the earth for so long before conceiving of the wheel may be initially surprising, but populations were extremely small through most of this period and the wheel, which requires an axle and socket to be actually useful, is not so simple a device as it may seem."
I quote the above statement simply as food for thought. I really enjoyed reading your post and must say that agree with you.
Native Americans (northern and southern continents) did not have the use of the wheel after populating the region as long as 20,000 BPE. The use of the "travois" with dogs may have been their only way to transport goods besides their own backs.
There have been toys found in Yucatan dated to 2500 BPE having wheels.
Toy wheels, yes, but in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond asserts that wheels weren't used for work purpose in the Americas until Europeans showed up.Andy
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