Some Alternate Theories
of Pyramid Construction
There are many who feel that the theories of "mainstream" Egyptologists
on how the pyramids were built are in error, or perhaps even deceptive.
This is usually based on the supposition that it would have been
impossible for the ancient Egyptians to have built the pyramids
themselves with the primitive means that are generally ascribed to them.
Based on this premise, rather than on archaeological or historical
evidence, interesting theories on how the pyramids were built have been
proposed. Unfortunately, all of these theories are based on assumption
and speculation, and have little or no tangible support. Even so, many
of these theories have found some degree of popular support.
*Workmen pouring blocks.*
cement mixers
© Copyright Davidovits & Morris, /The Pyramids: An Enigma
Solved/, p. 72. Some details of the relief have been omitted and
altered by the authors to better suit their theory.
Perhaps the most prosaic of these theories was described in detail in
/The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved/ by Dr. Joseph Davidovits and Margie
Morris (Dorset Press, 1988; see also /Pyramid Illusions: A Journey to
the Truth/ by Moustafa Gadalla, 1997). Davidovits provides a brief
summation:
I will demonstrate that the pyramid blocks are actually
exceptionally high-quality limestone concrete -- synthetic stone --
cast directly in place. The blocks consist of about ninety to
ninety-five percent limestone rubble and five to ten percent cement.
They are imitations of natural limestone, made in the age-old
tradition of alchemical stonemaking. No stone cutting or heavy
hauling or hoisting was ever required for pyramid construction. [p. 68]
The blocks were not quarried but rather made of a geopolymeric cement.
Limestone blocks did not have to be cut, finished, or even moved at all.
Instead, buckets of slurry were simply toted up the pyramid by men who
poured it into a wooden mold. Davidovits writes:
One of the characteristics of geopolymeric concrete is that there is
no appreciable shrinkage, and blocks do not fuse when cast directly
against each other. Although it would have been impossible to
achieve the close fit (as close as 0.002 inch) of the 115,000 casing
stones originally on the Great Pyramid with primitive tools, such
joints are easily achieved when casting geopolymeric concrete. Once
cast, within hours or even less, depending on the formula (minutes
using today's formula), a block hardened. The mold was removed for
reuse while a block was still relatively soft. [p. 75]
The theory is very nice and well-described. Unfortunately, it totally
ignores a huge body of evidence. Davidovits works hard to explain away
the existing quarries, the abundance of tools found during the Third and
Fourth Dynasties, and the decrease in pyramid quality after the Fourth
Dynasty. He ultimately declares that "This issue, however, is a matter
of hard science, which must be confirmed or disputed by qualified
scientists. It is not ultimately for Egyptologists, who are specialized
historians, to approve or reject." (p. 239) He adds that he finds no
support for his thesis among other geologists for two reasons. One, his
sampling of pyramid limestone was very small. He used a single specimen
of questionable provenance: Jean-Phillipe Lauer /told/ him that it came
from the Great Pyramid at Giza. Two, some of Davidovits' information is
"highly confidential" thus preventing him from sharing certain of his
technical details with others. (These reasons are related on p. 239.)
The geological evidence against the geopolymeric concrete theory are too
complex for this forum; for details see a series of articles by R.L.
Folk and D.H. Campbell, J.A. Harrell and B.E. Penrod, and Margie Morris
in /Journal of Geological Education/, vols. 40 (1992), 41 (1993), and 42
(1994).
There are a few obvious questions that Davidovits and his theory cannot
answer. If wooden molds were used and reused, why are the dimensions of
the pyramid blocks so varied? Wouldn't they be expected to be of
somewhat uniform shape? Where is the evidence of the molds? None have
ever been found or depicted on reliefs (save the small molds used for
mud brick). The core stones of the pyramids are sloppily and roughly
finished, many with well-defined tool marks, as they were meant to be
hidden by the casing stones and never seen. They are loosely packed,
often with rubble in between them. These stones were obviously not
"cast." Why not? Why did the Egyptians bother to quarry and hoist these
stones to the height of the pyramid if they could have instead been
cast? Wouldn't ramps have had to have been built anyway for these
stones? The theory just does not conform to known details.
*Ron Wyatt's "machine"
used to raise pyramid blocks.*
pyramid-building machine
Photo © copyright Ron Wyatt, Wyatt Archaeological Research
In about 450 BC, the historian Herodotus wrote of the Great Pyramid:
This is how the pyramid was made: like a set of stairs, which some
call battlements and some altar steps. When they had first made this
base, they then lifted the remaining stones with levers [lit.
/machines/] made of short timbers, lifting them from the ground to
the first tier of steps, and, as soon as the stone was raised upon
this, it was placed on another lever, which stood on the first tier,
and from there it was dragged up to the second tier and on to
another lever. As many as there were the tiers, so many were the
levers; or it may have been that they transferred the same lever, if
they were easily handleable, to each tier in turn, once they had got
the stone out of it. I have offered these two different stories of
how they did it, for both ways were told me. [/History, /2.125]
The theory that levers were used to lift pyramid stones is perhaps the
most tenable of the alternate theories on how the pyramids were built
(see Martin Isler, "On Pyramid Building," /JARCE/ 22:129-142, 1985, and
"On Pyramid Building II," /JARCE/ 24:95-112, 1987; also Peter Hodges,
/How the Pyramids Were Built/, Element Books, 1989). That the Egyptians
used levers would be very difficult to refute. Large stone blocks had
recesses, or sometimes projecting bosses (that were later removed) built
into them to facilitate the use of levers. Even with the use of
construction ramps, blocks would have had to have been levered on and
off the sleds. But as a means of raising large numbers of blocks
vertically up tiers of stone in as short a time as possible, levers do
not appear to be as practical as ramps. Personally, I believe that ramps
were used to perhaps ½ or so of the pyramid's total vertical height,
after which levers may have been of more use for the smaller volume of
material.
*Two antennae between which a solitron
field (or "vortex") levitated pyramid stones.*
solitron field
© Copyright Hardy & Killick, /Pyramid Energy/, p. 165.
According to the authors of /Pyramid Energy: The Philosophy of God, the
Science of Man/ (Delta-K, 1987), the above pictured "Caduceus Coil" was
used to levitate the stone blocks that were used to build the pyramids.
Pathways were built, flanked by rows of sphinxes, along which a solitron
field spiraled, powered by coil generators. Priests used tuned coils
(misidentified by Egyptologists as djed pillars), one passive (on the
left, above) and one active (on the right, above). The active coil was
grounded to a "Sacred Spot" and tapped into the planetary energy grid.
The reason present-day scientists cannot duplicate this simple feat is
because "they have not studied the power source called the world grid."
Hardy & Killick further explain:
The ancient people used the grid to achieve levitation and worldwide
communication. This is why pyramids are found all over the world.
The Cheops pyramid in Egypt is a coil generator and was built to tap
into the grid. The main control panel for this grid was the Ark of
the Covenant. [p. 169]
This theory may sound silly but an amazing number of people propose
similar explanations. Andrew Collins, author of /Gods of Eden: Egypt's
lost legacy and the genesis of civilisation/ (Headline, 1998), cites a
10th-century Arab historian who recorded a folk tale about the origin of
the Great Pyramid. According to the story, the builders struck the stone
blocks with a special rod, causing them to levitate and float through
the air for the distance of "one bowshot." Collins insists that "the
ancient Egyptians were able to set up some kind of sustained sound
vibration that enabled the building blocks to defy gravity." He adds,
"Although simply a legend, there are traditions from all around the
world that speak of the movement of stone blocks and the construction of
walls and buildings by sonic levitation."
Of course, there is no archaeological or historical evidence that any of
this activity occurred at all. Such fancies are based on folk tales and
undisciplined speculation.
*Map of Atlantis.*
Atlantis
© Copyright Richard Ellis, /Imagining Atlantis/, p. 50.
If ancient Egyptians couldn't have built the pyramids, why not attribute
the feat to some advanced, but vanished, race? When Plato wrote
/Timaeus/ and /Critias/ in the fourth century BC, he made used of a
literary device called /allegory/ and invented an island nation to
illustrate his thesis of social ideals. He called this island
"Atlantis." Unfortunately, time has sanctified Plato's fiction in some
people's minds, and many read it as Gospel Truth. Had Jonathan Swift
been his contemporary, expeditions would be launched searching for
Brobdingnag, Luggnagg, and Glubbdubdrib.
Whether or not Plato's idea was inspired by a real event (such as the
volcanic catastrophe at Thera) is quite beside the point. Atlantis never
existed until it sprang forth from Plato's fertile imagination. This is
based on the material remains found in the area in which Atlantis was
supposed to have existed. One would expect an advanced civilization to
have left quite a noticeable mark, particularly in trade goods. Not a
single shard of "Atlantean" pottery has ever been found. There are no
ruins of an Atlantean outpost, there is no mention of Atlantis in the
historical record, there remains no hint of an Atlantean language. There
is no evidence at all of such a civilization until Plato wrote of it.
Yet for reasons unknown, there are those who would have had the
fictitious inhabitants of a fictitious continent sail to Africa to build
towering pyramidal structures of stone that had no contemporary
counterpart anywhere else in the world, only to mysteriously abandon
them and leave them for a primitive race of indigenous savages to drool
in wonder over.
*The face on Mars
(Viking 1 Orbiter).*
face
© Photo copyright NASA
If ancient Egyptians couldn't have built the pyramids, and if there was
no vanished, technologically superior /human/ race that could, then why
not attribute the feat to Martians or some other interplanetary
extraterrestrial beings? There has been a continuing abundance of books
that have put forth this very theory: /The Morning of the Magicians/ by
Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (Stein and Day, 1964), /Chariots of
the Gods?/ by Erich von Däniken (GP Putnam's Sons, 1970), /The Stairway
to Heaven/ by Zecharia Sitchin (St. Martin's Press, 1980), /Mars
Mystery: The Secret Connection Between Earth and the Red Planet/ by
Graham Hancock (Three Rivers Press, 1999), and /Gods of the New
Millennium: Scientific Proof of Flesh & Blood Gods/ by Alan F. Alford
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1999).
Again, these theories are not based on any scientific evidence or on the
known archaeological record, but rather on fantasy firmly grounded on
false supposition. Many of the above authors agree with von Däniken when
he wrote, "If we meekly accept the neat package of knowledge that the
Egyptologists serve up to us, ancient Egypt appears suddenly and without
transition with a fantastic ready-made civilization." (/Chariots of the
Gods?/, p. 74.) Obviously, Mr. von Däniken has never studied the
prehistory of Egypt, of which much has been written. "There are many
problems connected with the technology of the pyramid builders and no
genuine solutions," von Däniken added (p. 75), referring to what could
only have been the inferior knowledge of the natives of Africa. "With
what power, with what 'machines,' with what technical resources was the
rocky terrain leveled off at all?" he cried in wonder at the Giza
Plateau, awed at the thought of a level surface (p. 77-78). Then, as a
coup de grâce to conventional Egyptology, von Däniken proclaimed that
"Today, in the twentieth century, no architect could build a copy of the
pyramid of Cheops, even if the technical resources of every continent
were at his disposal." (p. 78) An absurd comment, of course, but he can
smugly rest assured that it can never be put to the test, and he likely
hopes that in consequence we will be naive enough to accept his words as
axiomatic. Unfortunately for von Däniken and others, most of us are
still capable of critical thought.
*The face on Mars
(Mars Global Surveyor).*
face?
© Photo copyright NASA
Catchpenny Mysteries © copyright 2000 by Larry Orcutt
.
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