I love these videos. I watch them every couple years just to re-amaze myself at how very possible it was for like 2 people that simply understand how levers work to get 50 other people to do an amazing amount of stuff.
Now, if you want to accidentally turn yourself into a “conspiracy theorist,” you can also learn about geopolymers, and make the extremely reasonable jump to ancient people in places with the right combination of salts could make water glass and both dissolve and form granite. Granite is an aggregate, so if you just take sand from places where people mined monolithic granite objects, you can use water glass to chemically melt the quartz, turn the sand into a soft polymer that takes a week to fully cure back into what looks like granite from the same quarry.
Works for limestone as well. So when you consider the likelihood that pyramid blocks were likely simply cast in place with readily available materials, it sort of makes you angry at the traditionalists that say everything was carved, and the ancient aliens people.
While casting was possible, it has already been considered and dismissed. The reason in Egypt is that the quarry still exists with unfinished blocks, and they documented with pictures how they cut the blocks and the blocks show the cutting marks that are described in the pictures the Egyptians left. For all the pic of cutting and moving the blocks, there are no pic of casting.
Right? Leave it to the French to think “We’re doing this 100% authentic!” and mean how they dress for it.
For what it’s worth, I’ve made some natron bricks from dirt in the yard (natron you can make by cooking baking soda) just to see what I would get. Seemed like regular dirt at first, then after a week, they were shockingly solid. I expect with limestone gravel, it would work even better.
Cool video I found of a guy named Wally Wallington building some Stonehenge-style monoliths in his backyard - single-handedly with no modern tools.
I love these videos. I watch them every couple years just to re-amaze myself at how very possible it was for like 2 people that simply understand how levers work to get 50 other people to do an amazing amount of stuff.
Now, if you want to accidentally turn yourself into a “conspiracy theorist,” you can also learn about geopolymers, and make the extremely reasonable jump to ancient people in places with the right combination of salts could make water glass and both dissolve and form granite. Granite is an aggregate, so if you just take sand from places where people mined monolithic granite objects, you can use water glass to chemically melt the quartz, turn the sand into a soft polymer that takes a week to fully cure back into what looks like granite from the same quarry.
Works for limestone as well. So when you consider the likelihood that pyramid blocks were likely simply cast in place with readily available materials, it sort of makes you angry at the traditionalists that say everything was carved, and the ancient aliens people.
While casting was possible, it has already been considered and dismissed. The reason in Egypt is that the quarry still exists with unfinished blocks, and they documented with pictures how they cut the blocks and the blocks show the cutting marks that are described in the pictures the Egyptians left. For all the pic of cutting and moving the blocks, there are no pic of casting.
In the case of Stonehenge, core samples have been taken that show it wasn’t cast. A few of the stones weren’t moved but were already naturally there.
https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2018/04/12/parts-of-stonehenge-may-have-been-in-place-long-before-humans/
This is fascinating. I love that they’re wearing costumes.
Right? Leave it to the French to think “We’re doing this 100% authentic!” and mean how they dress for it.
For what it’s worth, I’ve made some natron bricks from dirt in the yard (natron you can make by cooking baking soda) just to see what I would get. Seemed like regular dirt at first, then after a week, they were shockingly solid. I expect with limestone gravel, it would work even better.