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Technology

Update on the Kite-Obelisk Project 99

Posted by michael from the 30-lb-test dept.
pyramidiot writes: "A month or so ago a story from the LA Daily News about a group of people who are trying to prove that the Egyptians may have used kites to erect obelisks and build pyramids was posted on slashdot. Naturally, the article as a bit bland and left many questions unanswered, and some answered incorrectly. Well I'm the engineer of the project and I've been developing a website to answer everyone's questions. The URL is www.pyramidiots.com, and, although it is still under development, it may help to answer most of your questions."
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Update on the Kite-Obelisk Project More

Update on the Kite-Obelisk Project

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  • This is so stupid... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it has *NOTHING* to do with Linux

  • Obelisks (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have a giant obelisk in my pants. Please use your kite to raise it.

  • Re:Nice Theory (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, everyone knows slave labor was solely created by white europeans.

  • Re:Levers and pulleys (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Of course, there is already evidence showing that workers of the great pyramids were not slaves but willing workers who were enlisted much like members of the army were. According to recent finds workers were given proper medical attention and were paid, this was something they signed up for out of need for money as well as out of loyalty to the pharoah. Also supervisors were there as much to ensure worker safety as to see that plans were followed.

    Apparently, the first written record of slaves being used to build the pyramids is in a book about the seven wonders of the ancient world; and altough the author performed quite a bit of research, most of what he wrote was conjecture on his part or the part of those he interviewed.

    Also, IIRC, the was no pyramid being built while the Israelites were in Egypt.

    Many people fail to recognize Egypt for the great empire it was. It's government was the world's first bureucratic system and was run efficiently. It also made many scientific and medical discoveries: most of which have been lost to time.

  • Re:Uhm, yeah, rigth. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Indeed.

    The thing which I was least able to ignore, though, was the fact that they were pulling on a loop of rebar cast in the tip of the obelisk.

    Uhm, yeah, right.

    Other fun requirements:

    - pre-existing structure taller than the obelisk

    - hard, smooth surface along which to roll the base of the obelisk (steel in this case)

    All that said, its kinda cute, but it seems more like a confirmation of block-and-tackle theory than anything the Egyptians might have done.

  • What a goofy site. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 29, 2001 @09:26AM (#2184616)
    Enthusiasm for raising obelisks in interesting ways is fine, but suggesting that they were originally raised by the same means is, well, stupid. Pulleys? Carts? Steel plates? Kites? There are more anachronisms in this scheme than can be counted, and many of them are essential to it. Other attempts to reproduce ancient engineering feats have at least made some kind of effort to restrict themselves to the technology of the day; even then, many have been far more elaborate than techniques that would actually have been used, sometimes relying on modern maths even when the devices used could conceivably have been built.

    The real problem here is psychological (or maybe psychiatric). The Egyptians didn't have much trouble mobilizing labour and were not, generally, gadgeteers. The techniques they used were probably the simplest ones that could be used with the help of an army of peasants.

    I understand that the site is only half-serious and that it may be hoping just to raise debate on the subject, but it's about as helpful as trying to open an argument on whether or not space aliens lent a hand.
  • While that may be true, in fact the Book of Exodus does not claim that the Jews (Hebrews at that point actualy, the term Jew did not exist for about a 1000 more years) Built the pyramids. The book of Exodus says we built Pitom and Ramses , two cities or temple complexes. The Pyramids had existed for about a 1000 years at this point. The conventional dating for the Exodus is that it happened in 1314 BCE, or 3313 years ago

    Source Aish haTorah's Crash Course in Jewish History part 9: Moses [aish.com]

  • I think it would make more sense to have the pulleys on the kite; the major advantage of a kite over a ton of people is that the kite can pull upward, whereas people tend to be on the ground. This should be useful for avoiding the need for a taller existing structure capable of supporting the weight of your stone.

    A lot of the problems people have with the wind method wouldn't be different with people pulling: the rope does have to be sufficiently strong to lift the stone without being too heavy to be lifted itself; you need some sort of pulley system to convert the horizontal force into vertical; you need pulleys to lower the necessary force (because you can't actually put ten thousand people on a really long rope and have them pull it and get a useful effect).
  • Aren't you supposed to suggest making a cluster out of these things?
  • It's a known fact that maya civilization in tha andes [...]

    No, it's not, because the Maya, in the Gulf of Yucatán, didn't live anywhere near to Los Andes, mountain range in the south of the continent. You are thinking about the Inca. Don't you watch Disney movies?

  • I'm skeptical of the kite theory simply because we haven't run across any paintings or etchings of people using them to raise the stones.

    Except that there are no contemporary paintings or carvings of the pyramids being built and, in fact, relatively few representations of building construction in general. It is important to remember that it is only since the 17th century or so that mere toolmakers have been venerated as exemplars of society. Before that, like all manual laborers, they were considered to be a lower form of life.

    Now I'm by no means suggesting that these guys are correct about the kites -- it seems more likely to me, like an earlier poster suggested, that the clever use of pulleys might have been used, but they probably would have gotten a bunch of people to pull the rope instead of messing with kites. What I am saying is that it is foolish to expect that a culture with very different values than ours would choose to immortalize something they considered to be of little importance.

    --

  • There's absolutely no point having the pulleys on the kite. The only reason for the pulleys is to place the majority of the force on the tripod thingy that's holding them, and hence through to the ground.

    If you placed the pulleys on the kite, then you wouldn't get the force multiplying effect of the pulleys (ok, multiplying is probably not the most accurate term...). You might as well just have a single rope.

  • Careful -- pr0n! (Score:3)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @02:05PM (#2184623) Homepage
    Their page is obviously a cleverly designed porn attraction. You may not want to check it at work.

    Erect Your Own Obelisk! [pyramidiots.com]

    "Wonder how it works?

    Coming soon: interactive obelisk raising simulation!"

    I can hardly wait for the MPEG ... I have one question. Will this make my obelisk larger? Not that I have a small obelisk.
    ----
    lake effect [lakefx.nu] weblog

  • Uhm, yeah, rigth. (Score:5)

    by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Sunday July 29, 2001 @09:16AM (#2184624) Homepage
    So, this proves that if you use:
    • A big, modern nylon-kite
    • A dozen or soo modern low-friction pulleys.
    • A few hundred meters of pro low-friction super-strong syntetic rope. (locked like climbing-rope to me)
    Then you can raise a small obelisk on it's end.

    Big surprise there. I completely fail to see how this even indicates that the old egyptians /could/ have done this. To demonstrate that possibility you'd have to repeat the experiment with the materials available to the old Egyptians. (this means no nylon, no syntetical fibers, only the kinds of cloth the Egyptians had, no ball-bearing low-friction pulleys.)

    I wonder how much of a pull such a kite provides anyway. More than 8 people with an old-fashioned manual winch ? I doubt it. And much less manageable, since you need convenient wind.

  • As Snow Crash helpfully points out, most mundane Egyptian texts were written on papyrus, which doesn't last forever. Most all of what we have in writing from Egypt is what they wrote on walls, or what they kept in tombs. And this stuff is usually religious and rarely discusses day to day life. Or construction techniques. This is why we don't know for certain how the pyramids were built. All of their construction techniques would have been quite well documented, just not entombed.
    --
  • Umph. Maybe he was just amusing himself, like the way an 8 year old boy will torment ants.
  • Naw...you just climb the string, grab on to the kite, and steer it into a controlled glider-like descent.

  • Re:What a goofy site. (Score:3)

    by dillon_rinker ( 17944 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @11:58AM (#2184628) Homepage
    Yes. Sort of like backhoes, bulldozers, and cement trucks can today. Oops...I mean, the men driving the backhoes, etc. After all, the peasants weren't the brains; they were the power. They didn't decide where to put the stones or how to orient them. They merely did what the men with whips told them to. The men with whips, in turn, obeyed the men with swords, who obeyed the king with the army, who followed the advice of his court mathematicians and astronomers. Just as open source software can be used by non-programmers, stones can be emplaced by non-astronomers and non-mathematicians.
  • NOVA had a show on raising obelisks [pbs.org] awhile back.

    As usual for NOVA, it was a great show.
    My favorite was when one of the volunteers
    attempted a method noone on the site had tried yet.

    He filled a large box w/ sand and set the obelisk
    in it. Then slowly removed the sand from holes
    in the bottom of the box. It was a simple method,
    accurate, and used existing tools the Egyptians had in plenty.
  • The more I think about it, the more it seems obvious egyptians would have used kites and/or sails. Like, how long have ships been around for?
  • "You are a captain in charge of one sergeant and four enlisted men. Your task is to raise a 40 metre flagpole, sliding it into a hole 5 metres deep. You have 2 ropes - one 7 metres long and one 9 metres long - and 2 shovels and 2 buckets. How do you accomplish this?'

    Answer tomorrow
  • You say "Sergeant, get that flagpole up!"
  • this woman [fdsmail.com] claims that it was.

    use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
  • You don't necessarily need an eyeloop embedded in the obelisk. The Egyptians had hemp and its known that they could make hemp rope. All you'd need is a well built harnass to wrap around the obelisk.

    ----
  • The valves described are only kind of like one door on one pyramid. There are about 40 stone pyramids in Egypt and most don't have any features like their valves/doors.

    Also they mention the huge "paving stones" which implies they have never seen the pyramids up close because then they would have seen that the paving stones are the natural limestone and it was flattened and the natural cracks are rounded. You can take nice pictures to show these huge blocks but when you start following the cracks, its quite clear, its natural.

    The water table at Giza is quite high and the 'hidden chambers' under the Sphinx lead to water. I suspect the out cropping was used to mark a well and over the thousands of years, several people spent a great deal of time refining it till a king decided to do some major work.
  • Funny, In El Maddi there seems to be enough wind. Of course thats far enough away that the smog makes it hard to see the pyramids. The last sand storm I was in was blwoing around 2 gallon cans that were full of liquid.
  • Most people talk about the large stones on the pyramids but the obelisks are the interesting problems. Some of them weigh about 65 tons while the pyramid stones are typically the weight of a large car. In my studies of the assembly of stuff in Egypt, the main problem with finding out how they did things was they didn't write it down (the had less interesting things to write about) and the second problem is that they used wood tools that were recycled into firewood just as soon as they broke.

    There were theories that the boats pictured in the tombs could not be built and were just artistic drawings until they found the boat in the sand at Giza. That boat is about the same size as the Mayflower and it looked like it had hauled some heavy loads.

    The oldest storeys about building the pyramids said it was built using machines made of planks. This has been discounted because the source is known to stretch the truth and no one has found a machine in the sand (because it would become firewood!)

    While looking at the Red Pyramid, I found that some of the casing stones had rings on their bottoms as if they had been propped up with logs. The next time I go there, I intend to get a good tracing of the rings (I'm not sure how) and see if the age of the logs can be determined.

    We do know they used piles of mud bricks and sand as scaffolding. Some of it is still in place at Karnak.

    Remember that there is so much sand in Northern Africa that if you spread it all out, it would completely cover the Sarah Desert
  • I thought they used a sand box to lower the structure into position. I saw it on TLC after all. ;-)


    KC5UMA
  • Oopz! My bad. It is Nova.

    Thanks,
    -Craig


    KC5UMA
  • Who modded this funny? It is insightful, IMO.

    When I first heard about this project, I thought they used the kite to get the top of the obelisk up, but apparently they only use it for traction. Nothing that could not be done by x slaves and/or y horses at the time.

    I think the bigger problem would be to raise the supporting construction, make it strong enough (I suppose they would have made it in wood, not steel). And, indeed, the strong rope and efficient pulleys.

  • Where I think this might come into play (if at all) would be higher up on the pyramid where slaves could not go. By substituting a kite for slaves (or paid workers as some have suggested), they could establish the necessary force to lift the blocks into place while controlling the kites from the ground.

    While I doubt the ancients had nylon rope and low friction pulleys, they were quite adapt at making low friction surfaces. On a recent "Discovery" channel documentatary, the researchers places the slabs on wooden rails and then sprinkled the rails with water and used rolers of wood. This was sufficient lower the coefficient of friction and enable them to move the blocks.

    A suitable substitute for nylon could be silk. Silk is actually a very strong material and was used for parachutes during WWII.

    The science and techniques used by these engineers is not rocket science but simple leverage and pulley techniques. I could imagine the egyptians, a resourceful people, pulling off something like this using lower tech materials.

  • Ed Leedskalnin knows!

    He built his own coral castle using minimal second hand equipment. He only worked at night. In about 25 years he moved about 1100 tons of coral. All he would ever say is that he knows the secrets of leverage and magnetics, and that he knows how the pyramids were constructed.

    Try a Google search [google.com]
  • > Raising ships with ping-pong balls [tripod.com]

    Ah, those were the days! Not only did Kroyer save the Kuwaiti water supply, but he also saved the insurance lots of money. Nowadays, Disney would probably sue for a cut...

  • You don't need to pay/enslave the wind...
  • Is that "could" and "did" are two different things.

    Sure they "could" have used a kite, but they "could" have used Linux to raise the obelisk too.

  • Since the obelisk weighs 6500 pounds (from site) and there are 7 sets of movable pulleys (Judging from pictures) The rope would need about 465 lbs of force to lift the obelisk clean off the ground.
    Since the obelisk is not actually leaving the ground the amount of force involved is likely much smaller. Regardless, a force of 10 people could quite easily pull on a rope with 465 lbs of force. (Considering that the world weightlifting record is more like 900 lbs of force.)

    Some of the potential advantages of the kite are that the kite is better for pulling long distances. Since the mechanical nature of the pulley system requires that the rope travel many times the distance of the obelisk, one may want a labor force that can move rapidly, and that the kite requires less labor (Probably only one or two people instead of 10).

    The concerns about rope and pulley quality don't bother me so much since the amount of force involved is actually quite small. Good climbing rope can handle orders of magnitude more force.
    I'm much more concerned with the construction of the scaffold that would be used to lift the Obelisk since it still must hold the entire weight of the obelisk and the lateral forces from the kite.
    Unfortunately, although plausible this theory doesn't seem to make any predictions (or at least not on the web site) that can be verified against available data so it is difficult to conclude weather it is better or worse than existing theories.

  • Exactly. The only proof would be to do it the Kon-tiki way:

    http://www.kon-tiki.no/Expeditions/ [kon-tiki.no]

  • More to the point.... (Score:5)

    by John Miles ( 108215 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @11:26AM (#2184648) Homepage Journal
    ... they sound like a spectacular construction method. One that would have been immortalized in art.

    I'm skeptical of the kite theory simply because we haven't run across any paintings or etchings of people using them to raise the stones.
  • a largely unharnessed power, as far as alternative sources go. all that is involved is a startup cost... there's little maintenance or upkeep to them. we need more windmills, damnit.
  • is there any archeological evidence of this at all? has anyone found any pulleys or rope fragments or glyphs or anything that substantiates this possibility? I admit its clever that it could be done this way now but could it or would it have been done then? There appears to be plenty of info on how its done today but little to show that it was done then. I'm all for believing that the egyptians had some clever method for doing building but this seems the least likely way.
  • Hah! They're bluffing. Everybody knows it was the Aliens who built the pyramids.

  • Human ingenuity knows no boundaries (Score:4)

    by MotorMachineMercenar ( 124135 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @09:22AM (#2184652)

    Raising ships with ping-pong balls [tripod.com]

    Solar sails for spacecraft [planetary.org]

    Laser-powered spacecraft [space.com]

    Supersonic speeds underwater [sciam.com]

    Fake breastesses [britneyspears.com]

    Sometimes it feels so good to be a human being :)

    "Has sensational journalism gone too far? Find out at eleven!" - John Stewart

  • Re:Levers and pulleys (Score:3)

    by Lord Omlette ( 124579 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @09:51AM (#2184653) Homepage
    Basically the Egyptian government is worried that if someone somewhere can prove without a doubt that the Jews (slaves in Egypt waaaaaay back when) built the pyramids, then there's gonna be hell to pay when Israel wants to take back the pyramids that their blood built. In today's politically correct climate, they'd have a decent legal shot at it too. So they fund experiments like this to prove that their ancestors were much smarter and greater than we give them credit for.

    Even though you and I know that the easiest way to build pyramids would be to use slaves, for all we know aliens could have erected them as landing points for giant starships.

    Peace,
    Amit
    ICQ 77863057
  • Take a look at some of the reasoning for this Kite idea:
    http://www.fdsmail.com/archeologee/Discoveries.htm [fdsmail.com]

  • Levers and pulleys (Score:4)

    by mrdlinux ( 132182 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @09:09AM (#2184655)
    This looks like a clever assortment of levers and pulleys to allow a small amount of force to move a heavy object. Such machines are nothing strange; my question is, and I was unable to find a reason, why do you need a kite? Why not some people (they had plenty of slaves, no?) pull on the rope instead?

  • Best they could do is copper and bronze. I wouldn't trust a piece of copper to hold a several ton rock.

  • I just love seeing web trackers on the linked page :)
  • I seem to remember at least one other explanation to this whole question.. The norwegian professor Thor Heyerdahl (the man behind the Kon-Tiki, Ra, Easter Island etc. expeditions and associated theories) came up with a mechanical device that proved able to lift/transport/put in place the huge blocks of stone (ofcourse with the required accuracy). He didn't present it as _the_ answer, but as one of many proofs that aliens weren't responsible for the pyramids..

    Respect to anyone fighting those ideas, and to anyone in pursuit of the truth.

  • The techniques they used were probably the simplest ones that could be used with the help of an army of peasants.

    You mean to say an army of peasants were able to construct these huge masses of stone to mathmatically precise dimensions that are lined up perfectly with stars?

    Again? And Again?

  • Lets see here, assuming each obelisk weighs 1 ton, and considering how much the average, say, 3 sq. ft. kite pulls.... Those must have been *HUGE* kites... and if one got loose, well, whoever was holding the string would have to hope the wind dies down when the kite is near the ground...
  • I personally hit refresh about 10 times to see how fast the number climbed. Figure at least 1000s of othe idiots are doing the same and the meter ins't quite so accurate. Remember the Heisenberg principle?

  • One of the more interesting points made in the above article is about the construction of doors. What we think of as doors, they say, are really lousy examples of doors. You would think that the designers of the pyramid could also design some pretty good doors to keep tomb raiders out, but whats there (or rather, was there), doesn't really appear to have been designed to keep people out. However, if you view them as valves instead of doors, their effectivness becomes more apparent. There are also what appear to be one way valves, a stone ball sitting in a funnel-like structure in a vertical passageway. Water goes up, but not down.

    Additonally, there is no evidence that anyone was ever entombed in the structure, nor is there any treasure, as was found in other pyramids (which have a different structure from the Great Pyramid).

    They do make a plausable case, I'm curious to see how far they get with their scale model. I do wish they'd post a 3D animated model of the passageways in the Great Pyramid illistrating its functioning as a pump.

    The operating principle is similar to that of the Ragged Chute Compressed Air Plant [sympatico.ca] (no, as tempting as it sounds, thats not a goats.cx link, thats really what its called!) which has been in operation for over 70 years, generating highly compressed air using a very simple and clever method.

  • The valves described are only kind of like one door on one pyramid. There are about 40 stone pyramids in Egypt and most don't have any features like their valves/doors.

    Correct, they think that only the Great pyramid was a pump.

  • With all that hemp around, its suprising they ever did anything but raid the pantry.
  • One group is suggesting that they used water power for some of this stuff: The Pharaoh's Pump [thepump.org]
  • Ronin mentions that the egyptians could of have used silk - the egyptians had silk many times finer than what we can make today - in fact, supposedly the golden mummy cases (caskets?) looked brighter when they were dug up because several years/decades of delicate cleaning by museum staff has scratched the polished surface.
    I wouldn't discount the egyptians as backwards people.
  • Elephants probably could have been used, but probably were not for reasons just as valid as today:

    1. Elephants take a long time to raise. In India, wild elephant are captured because it just takes too much time and money to raise one for labor. It's just not cost effective. The ancient Egyptians would have had to have spent a lot of time hunting and capturing them (not a safe occupation).

    2. African elephants aren't as trainable as their Asian counterparts. True Hannibal used them, but they don't have the temperament for labor.

    Hippos are just too aggressive to train.

    Local horses (zebra) don't adapt well. Their social structure prevents that. The Egyptians did use horses for war, commerce and such, so that might have made them more valuable in those areas.

    Camels seem to function better as individuals, not as group workers.

    It may be that that type of animal labor just wasn't available. Think about it. Of all the potential species that can work, only a handful lend themselves to humans integrating themselves into their group instincts. Dogs(wolves) are a good example. Out of the 1/2 dozen or so horse species, only two have ever been domesticated. Only a few types of cows have ever been domesticated for labor.

    Lots of candidate animal species just don't allow humans within their social circle, or they are too aggressive with each other to be kept in close quarters.

  • archaeological evidence is better (Score:5)

    by chompz ( 180011 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @12:09PM (#2184668)
    Why does everyone think that everytime they come up with a creative way to move a large object that they have discovered the way the egyptians built the pyrimids and oblisks?

    I saw a very interesting thingie on PBS about this, the archelogical evidence suggests that the egyptians did everything with three elements, human labor, wood, and sand. Wood was the only one which they didn't have abundant supply nearby, but pieces of a giant wooden barge, large enough to carry many stones or a few oblisks, have been found, and a replica made.

    The Oblisks stand upon stone squares with what archaeologists call a turning groove. This turning groove they claim, kept the oblisk from sliding around as it was stood into place.

    A theory which will be difficult to prove by archaelogical evidence about the erection of the oblisks is that they used the most simple machine they could, gravity. A large box was made around the base for the oblisk and filled with sand. Several sand vents were cut in the sides of this box, allowing sand to run out when opened. The oblisk was dragged on top of the sand and the vents opened. This technique has been demonstrated, it gets the oblisk within a few degrees of vertical, the remainder can be pulled by fewer than 200 men.

    Why would they need to use kites when they could use sand and gravity?

    BTW, at first I thought you were saying that they used JEW's to construct thier stuff. Big shock, its in the bible...
  • Did the old egyptians even know about kites? Are there any preserved historical sources that describe what kinds of kites the egyptians did?

    As for the argument of using kites to build pyramids, I think it falls on Occams Razor.. Sloping planes, wheels, and a lot of slaves were available.

  • If they did use kites for their construction of the pyramids, it must have been one dangerous job. Imagine what would happen if a sudden gust of wind heaved this rock in the general direction of some workers. SPLAT! I suppose it is possible, but must have been quite an affair to get this all set-up. And even though the Egyptians were a very advanced society, how could they make rope that could withstand the pressures of a huge rock being thrown around in the wind?

  • Utilizing the most prevalent resource- (Score:5)

    by Mac Nazgul ( 196332 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @10:35AM (#2184671)
    Human labor.

    Why would Egyptian engineers bother developing such outlandish methods of construction when they could use the most available resource in any advanced society- human labor. Considering the influence of religion in their society and the intelligence levels of the common workers, when the Pharaoh (who was considered a God) gives the command for an oversized grave marker, people get to work.

    The most promising explanation on how the Pyramids were built I've seen was by an archeologist who discovered some wooden models. These models were 2 flat pieces of wood, each shaped into a half circle, and then attached together by wooden pillars. He theorized that these were models of the equipment used to move the 6,900 lb. blocks of stone. By standing the rectangular stone on its shorter end, and then attaching these half circle units to each longer side with thick rope, the stone block was now the shape of a circle. This could easily be done with enough human hands.

    Now, with enough human labor these mammoth blocks could now be rolled with relative ease to their position. To raise the blocks up to the top of the pyramid he suggested the ramp method which had been theorized by other scientists. This basically was a dirt ramp that was built around the sides of the pyramid as it got higher, which allowed the stones to be dragged in place, or in this case, rolled into place. Given enough slaves, every block could be moved into position in a timely manner- allowing the pyramid to be completed in the relatively short time of 20 years.

    All of this could be done with some of the most readily available resources: willing human labor, wood, rope and dirt.
  • Remember: the ancient Egyptians, for the most part, were about as intelligent as humans today. They lacked our level of technology, but they managed to do some really funky stuff with large stones, and that shows they had more than a bit of mechanical skill and raw labor to throw around.

    True, it's unlikely that they could build the equivalent of today's metal pulleys, ropes, and fabrics, but that's what we think of mainly because that's what we have available to us today.
    Perhaps they did use kites, and employed an alternate system to attach them? And built the kites out of whatever materials they had at hand?

    -John
  • You're ignorant - learn some history. African Americans were not the first, nor the last to be slaves. Get over it.
  • looks like YHBT not be buddy. HAND.
  • It's a neat theory, but perhaps they just used massive amounts of slave labor?
  • But they where backwards people, they had no linux!

  • isn't it obvious?
    Their project sounds interesting first, but the team is only a bunch of technology freaks [pyramidiots.com], say no historians in the team.
    They are fancy of kites... they proved that they could lever that obelisk (with todays techniques) ... let them play. This is a hobby. The only sad thing IMHO is that they try to raise money pretending to do serious research.

  • As strange as the theories that the pyramids were built by an advanced alien civilization.

    I don't believe the egyptians knew how to fly. If they did the'd probably would have used this to get closer to the sun, after all, our star were a god to them, and this wold be registered in hyerogliphs on their temples and/or pyramids.

    It's a known fact that maya civilization in tha andes had hot air baloons shaped as an iverted pyramid build with vegetable fiber, and a reproduction of this balloon flew 200 meters near lake titicaca. Detail, this ballon was registered in stone in a temple near the lake. The cientist who reproduced the machine copied the shape of it from this stone.


    --
  • Dead on about resources. Also demonstrated during a NOVA [pbs.org] special on just this topic was how simple application of basic physical principles (that would have been known to the Egyptians), would have allowed them to use a 'sand removal' technique to pivot the obelisks into place with fair ease. There were two attempts with this method in the show, the first was small scale and so-so, the second large scale and great success. Wish the link above had more info about the show itself, but at least you can see when it might be playing next...

    LEXX
  • We in the tech industry appreciate your efforts but we noticed your name-- www.piramidiots.com has our beloved ID10T in it. Can you expect us to really take it seriously ;)

    Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
  • Remember, he wasn't _REALLY_ a god - just an alien who was able to control a human body, and just happened to have a "rejuvinator" machine. "You have learned to harness the power of the atom" I believe was the quote regarding the Nukes. Neat idea though.
  • You're an ancient Egyptian whose job it is to
    raise an obelisk. You've built a 100+ foot
    derrick capable of supporting 50+ tons (not an
    easy feat in itself). You've arranged a bunch of
    pulleys and a lot of rope to get a large
    mechanical advantage (at least 100:1). You bring
    the rope out through a final pulley anchored to
    the ground. Now you have to decide how to pull on
    the rope. Do you get a bunch of guys to grab onto
    the rope and start pulling or do you rig up a huge
    kite and hope:
    a) the wind starts blowing
    b) you can control it
    c) it produces enough lift.

    Much is made in the aptly named pyramidiots web
    site about the fact that they raised their test
    obelisk in 25 seconds. If the ancient Egyptians
    were engaged in obelisk raising races, then maybe
    they would have chosen the kite method.
    Otherwise, it's a really dumb theory.
  • In any of the theories I've ever seen of how the
    Egyptians raised obelisks, pyramids, etc. I've
    never seen anyone mention animal power. They
    always seem to assume that multitudes of humans
    did all the work. It seems to me that animals
    would likely have done most of the heavy work.
    Surely cattle, oxen, or camels could have been
    used, at least. Perhaps elephants were used,
    though Egypt is (in modern times anyway) a bit far
    from elephant territory. Hippos would have likely
    been plentiful and are very powerful but I don't
    know how possible it is to train them for labor.

    Sometimes I get the feeling that the assumption of
    hundreds of people pulling on ropes got started in
    the film "The Ten Commandments" and no one ever
    went back to challange it.

    So what's the deal? Is there some good reason for
    ruling out animal power?
  • Oh, really? And I thought the Egyptians were descended from Alpha Centaurians, and moved the obelisks around with hooks suspended from the mother ship!
  • But it was space aliens! I heard it on the Art Shell show! All your base are belong to us!
  • remember the end?

    ----------
    www.shockthemonkey.org [shockthemonkey.org]
  • ...if you own thousands of slaves who can do the job for you without fiddling around with fragile constructions?
    And they could throw a big one onto your head in a riot
  • Well... it's a reference to a historical situation and has nothing to do with you or other African-American people.
  • Maybe he just *WANTED* them to build that pyramids.

    He's a god, and a god never dies.
    So he has no idea about what death is - so he doesn't care if ppl are dying during his little "exercises".
  • yeah.. but as a god he must have known about nukes. And I doubt that a single suitcase-nuke would have the power to blow a spacecraft with the size of roughly 3 pyramids. Maybe I'm wrong about that..

    Did they blow him to hell or where does a god go after death? err... god.. death???

    ;-)
  • The theory isn't even worth the interest it is generating. She has no evidence - doesn't even claim that she does. In fact, according to her website, her only attempt to tie her lame theory to historical evidence was to:

    "[research] how certain Egyptian symbols could in fact be tools. She succesfully demonstrated the ankh as a powerful rope-break - if a line is wound correctly through the ankh, a quick flick of the wrist could stop an unprecedented amount of pull from moving the line. She also demonstrated how a Seth's Head scepter is in fact a perfect pickaxe."

    Basically, they are saying that because something COULD (maybe) be done, it WAS done, with NOTHING supporting that conclusion.
  • On the other hand, if you discard Occam's razor, you end up in loo-loo land. If you apply the razor, and it gives you a conclusion which turns out to be false, in most cases it's because your data was a) corrupt, or b) not precise enough.

    Space aliens, Almighty space aliens. All of it.
  • Oh, so it was the almighty space aliens. Of course - it could have been. It could have been natural erosion. A late group of neanderthals, who mysteriously died out right after completion. Egyptian jet air planes. Instant rock: just add water. Antigrav units, imported from Atlantis. Sublimated cloud formations. (Hey - you come up with some, it's you who's claiming they are all on par with "a bunch of slaves".)
    And considering that all of the above, and a whole lot more are all possible, we'd better follow up on them, all at once. No sense in concentrating on what makes some kind of sense, given current knowledge, oh no. The world's a mad house. Computers were a coincidence. Science is bunk. /. is insane ... well, I might agree to the last one.

    And, by the way log in [slashdot.org]. It ain't that hard.
  • No flying until Wright brothers? Now I have heard everything... We didn't need Wright brothers to fly. Montgolfier brothers in France took people up much earlier. Of course, that was a hot air balloon... (No comment about French amount of hot air offered) Also otto Lilienthal (IIRC) built gliders before Wright brothers got their thing airborne. What we owe to Wrights is first flight under motorized power. That gave much more control to flying, but it doesn't mean that before them there was no way to fly...
  • Need slaves? Recruit DotBombers...
  • It seems to me that if the ancient Egyptians had used a method as unusual as a kite, that there would be more than a few hyerogliphs of it. I mean something that radical would certainly warrant some pictures.

    And for the record (which has probably been stated elsewhere here) - It is more than likely that they ancient Egyptians did NOT use slaves to build the pyramids, but instead employed workers. I've seen more than a few documentaries which support this, although I find it hard to believe that the Egyptians would have slaves, and not use them to do at least some of the work.
  • OK now where do we get enough slaves to test out it out?

  • Re:Kites sound like a dangerous construction metho (Score:3)

    by blang ( 450736 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @09:28AM (#2184698)
    And even though the Egyptians were a very advanced society, how could they make rope that could withstand the pressures of a huge rock being thrown around in the wind?

    Good point. Another thing to consider: If they used this method to raise huge rocks into the air, why didn't they also use it for warfare? Remember that most new technology usually ends up as weapons. A legion of obelisk kite-flyers would be a powerful force against besieged cities, or against armies that had advantage of higher terrain.

  • I thought they used a sand box to lower the structure into position. I saw it on TLC after all. ;-)

    Actually it was on NOVA [pbs.org]. While I think the kite idea is a fun and interesting idea, it really is a stretch to think kites were a likely or very reasonable solution. People powered the egyptian golden age and the only solutions proper;y using the available mass of people are the sand pit or wench theories.

  • "The moveable pulleys are attached to a loop re-bar built into the tip of the obelisk..."

    how is this possible? i am not 100% sure, but did the Egyptian's have steel?

    interesting idea as a whole though...

    .
  • just imagine... a beowulf cluster to raise an obelisk. did they have the know how to raise a big ass rock with a kite? we didnt get around to flying till the wright bothers. and flying or using uing that to move multi ton rock might have been a wee bit too radical idea at the time.. unless they bribed the aliens and signed a contract to build the pyramids for them in exchange to thousands of years of abductions.
  • The most reasonable explanation of how they created the blocks that constitute the pyramids is that they poured them into place, just as we do today with cement. The actual cement may be better described as a geopolymer [geopolymer.org].
  • Right. Let's settle this. I live so close to the pyramids I get a full view from the balcony. And take it from someone who lives that close that ther will never be enough wind to leverage the kind of force necessary to accomplish any pyramid building with wind power. If the pyramidiots want to persist, they will have to make a case for the ancient egyptians having invented electricity and monster fans.

  • Just because it can be done with kites... (Score:3)

    by schepers ( 462428 ) on Sunday July 29, 2001 @09:31AM (#2184704)
    ...it doesn't mean it *was* done with kites. This is a cool project, but I seriously question the claim to historical accuracy. There are no recorded instances of kites until around 200 BCE.

    It's not like the materials to build a kite are particularly rare or hard to manufacture--in ancient Egypt, they could have used reeds and papyrus. So if the technology was known, why haven't kids been flying kites in Egypt since the days of the pyramids?

    Ooo! I know; the priest cast must have kept this technology forbidden. And thus it was lost to the ages. The world's greatest mystery turns into the world's oldest conspiracy theory!

    So, if the theory that the Egyptians used kites is flawed (and I think it is), then why bother doing this project specifically to raise obelisks, instead of some other kind of engineering feat? I think that Clemmons is trying to evoke the mystery and majesty of the pyramids to raise money for what is otherwise merely an interesting engineering trick, increasing her salary to boot. The whole thing relies on the donations that she or people working for her can drum up, and the merchandising of overpriced goods.

    It's a Pyramid Scheme!
  • Everyone who watches X-Files would realize that Pyramids were built by Aliens. What a wacky and stupid Kite idea!
  • why would people waste 20 years building a useless pyramid, when they could have built 1000 more usefull buildings that actualy were beneficial. Its makes no sense.

    If i was a person in those times, i would say, stuff this, id rather build my self a cool house ,rather than a stupid temple of no use.

    There has to be another answer.
  • Yeah, but it looks like it is frozen on 11,000.

  • The URL is Pyramidiots.

    Pyram Idiots

    Does that seem odd to you?

  • I seriously doubt that egyptians used kites to build the pyramids. If i recall my ancient warfare correctly it over 10 years to make a single bow. A kite big and strong enough to do the job would not be cost effective when you consider all that free labor in slaves. But I seem to recall that the real purpose of this experiment was to be able to over kites as a viable construction option to poor countries.

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