Theories about how the ancient pyramids were built are 'wrong'

A Newport engineer says his discovery about how the Egyptian pyramids were built threatens to shake up the world of archaeology. Peter James revealed to Sarah Dickins how he thinks the accepted theories about pyramid building are wrong.

Cast your mind back to images in school books about the building of the ancient pyramids and you probably remember images of hundreds of workers in loin cloths heaving massive stones up ramps.

Peter James and his team have been restoring the Egyptian pyramids for 18 years. As his company Cintec worked deep inside the iconic structures.

He began to question how they were really built, up to 4,000 years ago. He says the traditional view, that hundreds of workers manoeuvred two million stone blocks, laying one every three minutes is impossible.

'Too steep to move'
He says the pyramids are so tall that the ramps would have had to have been at least a quarter of a mile long or they would be too steep to move the blocks along. He adds that had that happened there would still be signs that the ramps had been there.

Instead, Peter James says, from what he has seen working deep inside the pyramids, he believes they were built from the inside out, with large stones on the outside and small material inside - a bit like a modern builder would construct a stone wall.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-25412540



I love all the theories of how the pyramids were built, some very crackpot but at least this does sound plausible and would give more credible backing to an engineer than an archaeologist on the matter.

Outside in or inside out -- doesn't the problem of moving large blocks to great heights remain?

Ben_Reilly wrote:Outside in or inside out -- doesn't the problem of moving large blocks to great heights remain?

Hi Ben

Good point, but looking at the diagram this does show a method how to on the link, though again I am no expert on this, but does fascinate me

@ben,
if you have layers of you are only ever havingto move one block up one step at a time.


Personally i think we under estimate how well they used the nile river. with there complex canal systems and the way they utilised the annual floods I think they would have used the strength of the river to help move the blocks.

veya_victaous wrote:@ben,
if you have layers of you are only ever havingto move one block up one step at a time.

Well, I don't think anybody was saying the constructors didn't lay blocks one atop the other. It's still an awful lot of effort to raise a 1-ton block 10 meters, whether or not steps are leading to that height -- right?

the bigger blocks are about 1.5m by 1.5 m by 2.3m (about 5 tonne)
most are only are 2 cubit by 2 cubit by 2 cubit, a Cubit is the eygption measure it is about 21 inches.

so you are not putting one block on top of another you are laying a whole floor then laying another slighly smaller floor (leaving a step on the edge) you continune this process you are only every moving a block up 1 step at a time. so only have to move 1.5m up in a go.

http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/koslow.htm

well it's certainly another theory to add to the many others
but there is one thing we can be completely sure of aliens didn't build them

and we know that slaves didn't build them in fact the technology that was in use was Considerably more advanced than we give them credit for

whole villages complete with doctors Bakeries shops have been found in the area around pyramids evidence of brain Surgery and medical knowledge not normally assosiated with the era
until we find a scroll or a tableau that specifically describes how to build a pyramid then how they did it is pretty much lost to history

Stonehenge the pyramids Machu Picchu
Enigmas for ever I suspect

The problem with a floor by floor hypotheses is the combined weight of the floors
also within the body of the pyramid there are chambers and one of the problems they found was the weight above the chambers cveing them in  
it's quite an engineering cheat how they solved it

there are examples of pyramids are have failed during construction and you can actually trace the evolution of the pyramid design
from the simple mastaba from the old kingdom to the  great Pyramids

A more advanced civilization would have discovered a method of reorganising the carbon elements of the stone itself, making it lighter. Simple.