faithful_servant

Hey now, I love my screen name. See, my given name is Franklin, which in Medievel times was a person who served a Lord out of love and respect, not out of compulsion. It's very similar to the Old Testament term "bondservant", which the in the New Testament Greek is translated as faithful servant (as in "well done, oh, good and faithful servant").

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Rhapsody1447

It was a joke. A bit slow, aren't you?

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You aren't here to debate anything, just argue. -Caine

sasquatch666

I Gotta Laugh At You Clowns That Don't Think Teacher's Theory Would Work,as An Old Oilfield Worker I Have Moved Some Very Large And Heavy Objects Around Using Simple Machines,you Folks Are Living Proof You Can Draw An A$$hole On Paper But You Can't Make It $hit!and The Strength Of Wood?don't Make Me Laugh,oil Wells In The 1800's Were Drilled(some Over 2000' Deep) Using Wooden Drilling Rigs With Manilla Or Hemp Bull Rope(before The Invention Of Wire Rope)these Same Machines Were Used To Run Tons Of Casing And Rods And Tubing In The Wells,and When The Job Was Complete,they Were Torn Down And Moved To The Next Location By Men And Horses,where They Were Bolted Back Together And Used Again,there's Still One Sitting Up On The Hill Behind My House Where It Was Retired Not Due To The Wood Wearing Out But Due To The Invention Of The Rotary Drilling Rig Which Was Way Faster And Easier!,also There Are Literally Hundreds Of Miles Of Steel Pipelines Running Thru These Woods ,some As Large As 6" Diameter That Was Also Carried In On The Backs Of Teams Of Men And Screwed Together By Hand,and If You Coffee Cup Engineers Ever Moved Any Of This Stuff Around Let Me Tell Ya,it Ain't Light!in The Late 1800's Teams Of Men And Horses In A Period Of Approx.30 Years Had Managed To Strip The Hills Of Virgin Timber And Drill And Lay Pipelines For Thousands Of Oil Wells Here In Pennsylvania,mostly By Hand With Simple Tools.
Another Point Here, Is With All This Babble About Elephants And Such,have You Clowns Forgotten That The Egyptians Had The Horse?
The African Elephant Is Much Harder To Domesticate Than The Asian Species,and I Highly Doubt They Would Have Been Much Good For Pyramid Building,but If You Ever Seen Any Old Charlton Heston Movies You Would Know That Horse Driven War Chariots Were One Of The Things That Made Egypt Such A Great Military Power Back In The Day(this Is Also Documented In The Ancient Carvings And Paintings) The Pre-columbian Indians Of South And Central America Accomplished Similar Feats With Even Less To Work With,space Aliens? Lol Nah Just A Hard Working Dedicated Team Of Men With Some Truly Gifted Visionary Individuals In Charge

sasquatch666

Wooden Cranes?a Drilling Rig Is Nothing More Than A Stationary Crane And Many Were Made Of Wood,the Egyptians Knew Nothing Of Triangles?what Is A Pyramid? A 3 Dimensional Triangle,ultimately A Shrine To The Strength Of A Triangle, You People Are Hilarious,they May Have Even Used A Primitive Winch,if You Attach A Rope To An Axle With A Wheel Attached You Have A Winch,i Have Moved Some Rather Large Object Simply By Placing A Bar In A Doubled Piece Of Cable Or Chain,then Twisting The Bar When It Comes Around Anchoring It To The Ground By Gravity,then Grabbing It Again And Taking Another Turn,once The Rope Gets Too Twisted Shorten It Up And Start Over

Traveller

Teacher's system is just fine for moving and stepping up 2 or 3 ton blocks.
But he certainly hasn't figured out how to build a pyramid.
Sasquatch666 - your ideas are in the same zone - but tell me true, do you really think that what you know can move a 1000 ton granite block (trilithion, Baalek valley Lebanon) or 450 ton pieces from one cliff top , across a valley and up to the sumit of another (Peru).

Traveller

The great pyramid at Giza is the oldest, best built and most studied structure in the world.
Why is the possiblity that the ancients know - something that we don't or have forgotten - so hard to take.

sasquatch666

The great pyramid at Giza is the oldest, best built and most studied structure in
the world.
Why is the possiblity that the ancients know - something that we don't or have
forgotten - so hard to take.

Yeah we have forgotten how to move stuff around with simple machines,everything we do today requires bulldozers and cranes and tractors,how much did technology advance between the building of the pyramids or the great wall of China or the Meso-American walls and pyramids to the Roman era or even the middle ages and the construction of Notre Dame Cathedral?On the global scheme of things not a whole helluva lot,metallurgy had improved and the simple machines had been refined some but they still mainly relied upon simple machines and man and horsepower to build these structures,the key here is the meglomania of the leader or religious fervor of the cultures involved,Witness in our own times Ferdinand Marcos of having his likeness carved on a mountain in the Phillippines,all throughout history there have been meglomaniac despots and fanatical religious leaders decreeing that huge monuments be built honoring themselves or their gods or both.construction crews of the times had to rise to the occasion and do the "impossible" to satisfy these whackos!Up on a hill near here is a huge sandstone boulder that was deposited by the glaciers in the Ice Age,it's probably around the size of a 3 story building,give or take some,when the ice melted,it balanced on the other rocks so well that you can move it with one finger,this leaves no doubt in my mind that object this size can and were moved by balance and leverage,exactly as teacher describes in his diagrams,no voodoo or skyhooks,just intelligent application of simple machine principles,something we truly have forgotten!

Traveller

Don't disagree with a thing said, and I think teach is right on too.But it doesn't change the fact that there's a big difference between a 3 ton, or even a 70 ton
stone block and a block weighing in at 1000 tons.
Why are all the really big pieces granite, not limestone - this may seem a stupid question to some - but I find it of interest.
And when it comes to understanding how the great pyramid was built - teach is holed up somewhere figuring it out for us morons - but don't hold your breath - he isn't the first and he won't be the last.
I've snooped around the middle-east for years, and it's evident there were some very strange things going on in ancient times, far beyond the conventional
notions of our present beliefs - which quite frankly I don't buy.

sasquatch666

I would venture to say the larger pieces were made of granite due to the fact that granite is much stronger than limestone,a large piece of limestone with half of a pyramid sitting on top of it spanning a hollow chamber surely would have cracked and collapsed,like an unreinfoced piece of concrete spanning a river to make a bridge(concrete is essentially a man made limestone and displays similar characteristics(soft and brittle)this is why you never see anything really big made of concrete without some kind of steel or other reinforcements cast in it,pieces of limestone that large and heavy probably would have broken in transport,as an experiment go out in the driveway and select a piece of limestone and a piece of granite from the gravel,take a 3 pound sledge hammer and tell me which one is the easiest to smash,granite is very hard and tough,granite is basically sandstone which has been compressed and fused together under extreme heat and pressure until the porosity has mostly disappeared but the crystal structure is extremely fine and there are no real definite points of cleavage like there is in "pure" rocks like quartz or flint where the crystals basically line up along an axis,this is the same principle that makes a piece of composite wood like masonite or plywood much stronger than the wood it is made from,the grain doesn't align so it is much less likely to split or crack(yeah I know limestone is composed similarly but it is much softer,the calcium carbonate crystals that make up limestone are much weaker than the quartz crystals that make up granite,plus it hasn't had the benefit of being thermodynamically heat treated as the sandstone had in making the granite))One thing that has always mystified me,not being a stone mason myself,is how they cut these hard blocks without modern tools,I'm sure there's no voodoo in it but I have never had to address this issue in anything "I have ever done in life,and to theorize on it would put me in the coffee cup armchair engineer category.I have a friend that inherited his father's monument business,perhaps I should visit someday and see how slabs of granite are cut then reverse engineer the process to determine how this would be done with hand tools

Traveller

Actually limestone is stronger than granite.
Granite is harder, but beause limestone is softer and more flerxible, it is stronger.Confusing hardness with strenght is a common error, I've done it myself.