So that’s how they did it?

Joe H

ENGINEERING
The secret of the Pyramids? Engineer does the heavy lifting with his mind
By ELMER PLOETZ
News Southtowns Bureau
12/6/2003

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Gerard Fonte grimaces as he puts his shoulder into the 4,200-pound block of concrete in front of him, rocking it.

Then, slowly, the big cube starts to move across the driveway until it crashes to a halt on a wooden pallet 20 feet away, splintering the pine boards.

Fonte is no power lifter. In fact, he’s about 5-foot-5, weighs about 135 pounds and will turn 53 next year – and says he has two fused vertebrae.

But he was demonstrating Friday afternoon how he says the Egyptians built the Great Pyramids with considerably less manpower and in much less time than was previously thought.

“Most archaeologists think it took 20 to 30 years to build a pyramid, with a work force of 20,000 to 30,000 people,” Fonte said. “But if you actually look at the evidence, it doesn’t support that.

“There weren’t that many people available to take off doing other things. And the fact that it was done says that they had a way of doing it that we’re not thinking about.”

The way, Fonte says, likely was the use of “quarter-circles,” which actually look close to half-circles. That’s what the engineer used to shove the 2-ton concrete block across his yard.

Essentially, a heavy block can be moved along a track made of trees that have been split lengthwise and set flat-side down. After the initial push, the block’s momentum lifts it up the next rise, where another light push keeps it going.

Though he was able to push the block along by himself, Fonte said it would be reasonable to believe a team of two or three people could roll the block along at walking speed.

Fonte says that using techniques such as these, the Egyptians could have raised a pyramid with a footprint as big as Ralph Wilson Stadium using 4,000 people and in four to six years.

“It’s a matter of working smarter,” he said.

But Fonte has had a difficult time finding an audience for his thesis. He said one academic responded that “the idea that three people could move a 5,000-pound block as easily as pushing a bicycle is not credible.”

“He’s not part of the “club,’ ” said Rick Reese, Fonte’s friend who was there to witness the demonstration. “But it’s a great thing to have a genius for a friend.”

Fonte is an electrical engineer by trade, running PAK Engineering and designing electronic products. He also writes for Nuts & Volts magazine and designed and built his home, a geodesic dome near Tonawanda Creek.

Andres Soom, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University at Buffalo, saw Fonte’s documentation later Friday and said, “I don’t know anything about what the Egyptians may have done, but as a means of reducing friction it certainly looks plausible to me.

“If this is in fact what the Egyptians did, I’m quite surprised that someone hasn’t figured it out by now,” Soom said. “But if this is what it takes, a consulting engineer from Tonawanda a few thousand years later, then so be it. That’s great.”

Fonte said that as far as he knows he’s the only one to have put forward this idea. He said he took up the challenge of figuring out how the Egyptians realistically could have built the Pyramids after watching a television show on the topic.

He said his ideas are feasible, particularly given that ancient quarter-wheels have been found near the pyramids. Scientists have suggested the quarter-wheels might have been attached to the blocks to effectively turn them into large wheels.

The problem with that is that wheels would sink into the sand or dirt, Fonte said.

“I think this is something that’s worthwhile, and it’s only one part of several,” Fonte said. “I’d like to open a few eyes and maybe a few minds.”

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