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The pyramids are a true testament to the ingenuity
of a people that lived long before any of
our precise, modern tools were invented.
Egyptologists are still in disagreement over
exactly how the six million ton structure
was built, and when we look at The Great Pyramid
it’s not just the millions of stones it
took to build it that makes it so mind boggling,
but the almost unearthly precision it possesses.
This has become an enduring question - was
it humanly possible to create these buildings,
or did something... otherworldly have a hand
in constructing these awe-inspiring tombs?
There are over 100 pyramids in Egypt alone,
not to mention the pyramids around the world
built by other civilizations, such as the
Mayans.
That these two cultures on different sides
of the globe were building such similar impressive
monoliths of the same shape has caused some
to ask if the civilizations had any connection.
Perhaps there was something that brought them
together whether it be that they both used
the same powerful hallucinogenic plants or
maybe even something supernatural.
Speaking to Psychology Today one archeologist
said quote, “The Maya and the Egyptians
had good architects, priests, technologists
but, there is no proof for contact.”
No proof yet, but that hasn’t stopped people
hypothesizing ways the Mayans and ancient
Egyptians might have had a connection.
However, we will stick with just Egypt today
though, and show you just how magnificent
and strangely advanced these things were.
The structure we’re focusing on is the largest
and most famous of all, The Great Pyramid
of Giza.
It was built over four thousand years ago
and that’s far from the only mind-blowing
fact.
Just as impressive as the age, is that the
tombs of the pyramid are aligned almost exactly
to true north, an astounding feat that seems
almost impossible for the time.
Ancient manuscripts give no clue how the engineers
managed this, although most experts have concluded
those industrious Egyptians must have used
the stars.
Not everyone agrees on exactly how they did
it, with some believing that the measurements
were too precise for humans of the time to
have calculated.
But one down to Earth hypothesis is that they
used a simple plumb bob, a tool that Egyptians
used in the construction of monuments for
thousands of years to plot the perfect direction
between two stars.
Even more impressive though, is the hypothesis
that the pyramid was built to the exact dimensions
of our planet.
This is too long and exhaustive of a theory
to explain in detail, but the gist of the
idea is that the “height and perimeter of
the Great Pyramid are in a ratio of 43,200
to the radius and circumference of the Earth.”
Pretty complex for a civilization working
four thousand years before Columbus sailed
across the Atlantic.
But it goes even further than that, with some
of the more far out pyramid theories saying
that the various dimensions of the pyramid
relate to the mass of the sun, the speed of
light, the orbital velocity of the moon, and
much, much more.
Skeptics state that if you play around with
numbers enough, as is the case with most mystical
numerology, that you can get any result you
want.
Nonetheless, there are still people who say
the entire structure is an encoded message
from the past.
But how would the Egyptians understand these
concepts long before the scientific revolution?
From a non-human source perhaps?
But, and this is a very big but, that hypothesis
only makes sense if you believe that these
numbers are contained in the various ratios
of the pyramid in the first place.
Let’s get down to brass tacks and the actual
construction of the pyramid.
The most accepted and mainstream view in academia
is that it took around 20 years to build with
construction finishing around 2560 BC.
And the result the Egyptians saw back then
wasn’t anything like what we see today.
There’s lots of evidence that the Pyramid
was originally encased in a breathtaking smooth,
polished limestone.
It would have looked almost futuristic at
the time, a sleek man-made mountain rather
than the weathered pile of squared off blocks
we see today.
The pyramid stands 481 feet (146.5 meters)
and each side of the base is 755.9 feet (230.4
meters) long, and weighs an unfathomable 5.9
million tons.
Notwithstanding all the great brains behind
the operation, there must have been an awful
lot of brawn put into the making the building.
For 20 years the work must have been non-stop,
with its 2.3 million blocks being moved around
and hoisted up to great heists at the rate
of about 12 blocks laid per hour around the
clock.
I hope those workers got overtime!
Joking aside, for a long time it was believed
that it took 100,000 workers to do the job,
and that they were all virtually or literally
slave labor.
It’s now believed by most historians that
it only took around 20,000 men and that they
were more like skilled workers, with a mix
more like a modern workforce with managers,
laborers, engineers, and support living and
working at the site.
Believe it or not, evidence has also been
found of a massive catering operation that
fed all those hungry workers who went on with
life as normal as they built a wonder of the
world, with documents being found that state
guys took days off for “having a fight with
the wife” or “working on my house.”
Now back to the possibility of a little help
from alien friends.
Let’s imagine you were told to get a bunch
of guys together and build a 481 foot pyramid
from stones you have to cut and drag from
a quarry.
Oh, and by the way, all you have to work with
are very basic tools like pickaxes and chisels.
You have no machinery to speak of and, get
this, the largest stones you’ll be using
weigh up to 80 tons (72,575kg).
For reference, an adult African elephant only
weighs around 7 tons, so just imagine pulling
about 11 elephants and you’ll have an idea
of what it was like to move those larger stones.
And while most of the blocks were smaller,
they still had to come from a quarry that’s
over 500 miles (800 km) away.
You are not only going to lay these stones
with the utmost precision, but your workmanship
and end product has to be absolutely beautiful
and fit for a god king.
Does this seem like something humans could
have accomplished in 2,500 BC?
Or did they require some help from above?
What about you?
Are you up to the job?
Great, get started today and we’ll give
you until 2039 to finish the job.
But how would humans accomplish a feat of
engineering so grand?
Now it might sound impossible, but there’s
evidence the ancient Egyptians used a kind
of algorithm to work out the best way to get
those stones to the buildsite and then get
them placed.
Newsweek has written that experts believe
a sled was pulled with ropes to move the heavy
stones.
But really?
Pulling that kind of weight on a sled?
Well, some experts now think that to pull
the stones across the desert they used a trick
that was much simpler than asking aliens for
help - adding a bit of water to the sand to
help them slide along.
A wall painting was found that looks to portray
men using a sled to drag a huge stone with
someone else pouring the water.
As for the height, it’s now generally agreed
that ta ramp system was used and that some
kind of grease or animal fat was used to ease
the path of the stones.
So, in all, we have stones being mined and
shaped in a quarry, loaded on boats, dragged
across sand, and then pulled up with ropes.
That all sounds pretty doable by humans to
me.
So, we have an almost, but not completely
impossible feat of precision and a job that’s
extremely labor intensive but possible for
humans to accomplish on their own.
Now we still don’t really know exactly how
they aligned the pyramid with true north,
or what the precise method of construction
was.
And as we speak, the idea that there are secret
codes hidden in the dimensions of the structure
is still being debated.
But does this mean aliens got in on the action,
and then perhaps traveled over to the other
side of the world and had a word with the
Mayans?
Not at all, in fact it just shows us that
ancient people were very intelligent and perhaps
more advanced than we have given them credit
for.
Maybe they had more sophisticated tools that
we haven’t yet discovered, and perhaps their
mastery of math and astronomy were more advanced
than we’ve considered.
But what if it wasn’t aliens?
But instead an advanced early civilization
that inspired the Egyptians?
We might add that while the existence of an
advanced early civilization on Earth is unlikely,
There is a theory called the “Silurian Hypothesis,”
which poses the question of if there was a
super advanced civilization that existed,
say, millions of years ago, would we even
be able to detect it today?
But the paper which first posed this question
stated “While we strongly doubt that any
previous industrial civilization existed before
our own, asking the question...
raises its own useful questions.”
So let’s make it clear the document in no
way proves such a civilization existed, it
only explores the potential for one.
There is clearly still a lot we don’t know
about the pyramids and their construction,
but there’s a lot of evidence that they
were built by supremely clever people and
a lot of hard work.
Those ancients might not have been given a
hand from aliens, but what they did is mind-blowingly
spectacular in its own right.
If you’re like us, you’re probably wanting
to know more about the Ancient Egyptians as
well as other ancient civilizations like the
Sumerians and the Akkadians.
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Now we’d like to hear your opinion about
this.
Tell us what you think in the comments.
Also, be sure to watch our other video What
Killed People Who Opened King Tut’s Tomb?
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
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See you next time.
