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submitted 11 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] GBU_28@lemm.ee 55 points 11 months ago

It's fair to imagine the challenges a building team would face 2k plus years ago.

Like in this example, building levers that are strong enough to lift the load. I bet they broke a bunch of stuff.

But eventually they figured it out, via trial and error. Levers, ramps, etc. They probably couldn't describe why those things were inherently the best way, but more approached from the "we tried 9 other ways and they suck. This is the best way."

Next, the phrase "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is relevant here, but in a backwards way.

Since we struggle to imagine what it would take for an ancient society to master the techniques to build these things, we therefore begin to grasp for unrealistic conclusions (magic...read...aliens).

Same goes for Europeans building cathedrals and stuff, the trick is the history, the methods and the results were more documented and understood.

There are some racism concerns that I think go beyond and around what I've discussed, which is more abstract. I'm not discounting the other topics, just not covering them here.

[-] YoorWeb@lemmy.world 34 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Egyptians didn't just decide "hey, let's build a pyramid". Mastabas were first, the shape of a Pyramid evolved later.

Not to mention that there's a few faulty pyramids (e.g. Bent Pyramid which were finished quickly or all together abandoned before completion.

Merer forgot to mention aliens in his diary too.

But hey, aliens did it. They couldn't just land on Earth. Their ships were designed to land on a Pyramid because that's how intelligent race would build their spaceships. Don't question it, just trust the specialists (who wrote books!).

Anyway, for anyone interested in Ancient Egypt, the best thing out there (I think) are Bob Briers lectures also available on Audible.

[-] GBU_28@lemm.ee 15 points 11 months ago

Don't know why you replied this to me, but cool links.

I never suggested there's any validity in the alien-pyramid thing, only described how it could have entered the discussion in the first place.

("We don't know what they did, seems hard even for us, must have been magic". Pathway)

Not advocating anything, not arguing anything, no tinfoil on my frog's heads, they live naturally.

[-] SkinnyTimmy@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

Pretty sure they were just agreeing with you. It's like an argument you imagine in the shower, but co-op mode.

[-] GBU_28@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

Just covering my ass, cause Lemmy

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The bent pyramid may not have been faulty, but instead had a different internal layout because of it's use in cult worship rather than only burial.

Great video from History for Granite archeologist on the subject.

[-] Morphit@feddit.uk 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah, I was hoping someone mentioned that guy. He's doing great work actually gathering data.

He builds up his photographs a lot in that video, which is totally justified since seemingly no-one in history has ever bothered to (accurately) publish what's there before, but that's not his normal style. He's usually just gathering all the available published accounts and noting what makes sense and what doesn't.

It's great to see someone say they don't have all the answers but that there are answerable questions that can be posed. Even better when they go get the answers themselves - without breaking any rules.

[-] Meowoem@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago

I like the theories about them being ancient power stations or radio devices, using the water channels and gold cap stone to create enough pd to be useful in occult practices. It doesn't have to be aliens that helped make them but I think there's something the really resonates with the idea of aliens coming down and teaching ancient people how to make super complex and beautiful machines to synthesize small amounts of potent narcotics. Like none of the other reasons aliens would come make much sense but a tiktokable prank like that really does.

Imagine how fascinating it would be if we find loads of old alien stuff on Mars with like little model pyramids and pictures of them with the pharaoh. Or if when we meet aliens and have first contact they got us up with galactic tiktok and people are reposting all the old videos of pranks aliens have pulled on earth over the years.

Yeah they were probably just the biggest coolest looking thing that knew how to make so everyone wanted one, yeah they were probably just dragging rocks up sandy inclones and using water filled counter weights.. but we don't know aliens weren't there so I'm going to enjoy being open to that possibility.

[-] Morphit@feddit.uk 3 points 11 months ago

You should check out the youtube channel in the sibling comment. There's a good video on why the cap stones were unlikely to be special (and very unlikely to be gold): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZxmkNESTpM

[-] Meowoem@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

Ok but nothing I've ever experienced or witnessed has ever made sense, literally nothing ever fits any form of reason or logic - a thousand years from now if they write off all the things from our lives that make no sense or are absurd then the vision they come up with won't resemble reality at all, not one little bit.

So when someone says 'its unlikely they'd waste resources' or 'this would be totally unfeasible and require insane amounts of totally needless extra measures while providing no benefit what so ever' that just makes it feel even more likely to me, like yes of course that's what they did that's what we always do!

Sounds like an interesting video though, I'm going to watch it but I'll be thinking about aliens and trying to find cracks in the narrative where I can poke them in!