I’ve been reading and thinking about the Pyramids.
You know the ones, pointy, crumbling, surrounded by desert, associated with dead kings and such, Yeah, those pyramids. Valley of the Kings type pyramids.
Scientists, archaeologists, engineers, architects, mystics, Egyptologists, and crackpots have been trying to figure out for literally centuries, how they did that. How the hell did a bunch of people without benefit of modern technology build these insanely huge monuments out of huge blocks of limestone within a single king’s lifetime – and they did it over and over and over! Aliens. Gotta be aliens.
The mathematical accuracy, the way they are perfectly, within a fraction of a degree, aligned with the the stars or with the cardinal directions, the way they channel and amplify sound … They are incredible achievements that we have never been able to replicate, with all the fabulous modern technology at our command.
But a retired chemical engineer from France spotted the solution, and once you hear his theory, you’ll be gobsmacked by how bloody stupid hundreds of years of the smartest people have been. Dr. Joseph Davidovits had no trouble coming up with the answer.
The Great Pyramids weren’t assembled from massive blocks Lego-style. They were poured.
Yep. Those clever Egyptians found a way to use the flooding of the Nile to break down chunks of limestone into a clay and lime mud; then they added natron salt, lime from palm ash, silt from the Nile, limestone rubble, and fossil shells, and all of that mess was poured into wooden forms onsite. Just like we do now to make sidewalks and highways and basements and concrete buildings.
Chemical analysis has confirmed Dr. Davidovits’ theory, and within those concrete blocks scientists also found bugs, some sand, animal bones, human hair, plant material, and the other detritus of typical outdoor construction sites.
Pouring concrete into wooden forms one row at a time meant, yes, there was no bloody way you could get even the finest knife blade between those blocks. However, for mathematical, magical, ritual, or ceremonial reasons there were a few actual limestone blocks that were somehow heaved whole onto the structure. You can immediately tell the difference because those blocks don’t fit nearly as well as the concrete blocks poured in situ. Yep, the blocks they carved out are not smoothly fitted to the edges of all the other blocks. They’re imperfect. The concrete blocks are flawless.
Holy shit. That’s just … too simple and obvious, and doesn’t require aliens at all.
Hugely disappointing to mad Egyptologists everywhere, of course. So that theory got hushed up immediately. Nope, we don’t want to admit that the simplest, most effective, actually physically possible solution is what they did. We want our aliens, or our strange mystic powers or hoards of slaves. Hoards I tell you!
Which there is not a single shred of archaeological evidence for. No slave villages. No midden heaps piled high with the detritus that thousands of people living there over thousands of years would create. No evidence either of any of the massive super-structures – the ridiculously enormous earthen ramps to haul the blocks up, for starters – and no evidence of any quarries that could have supported the volume of limestone needed in those kinds of monumental sizes and quantities. Never has any of that stuff been found, though that’s what we were taught in world history classes in elementary school.
“Alma, why the hell are you telling me this?”
I hear ya, I hear ya. Okay. I’m telling you this, because it’s one of those giant “ah-HA” things that can kick us into a higher level of consciousness. What problems in your life have you been pounding your head against, looking for the elegant solution that happens to fit your bias? We’ve all done it. “I want to solve this problem but it has to be on my terms, and reality doesn’t get to dictate what happens.”
But what if the most efficient, easiest, most cost-effective way wasn’t cool or awesome? At least on the surface – I mean, look at the world around you – it’s pretty much covered in concrete. The Egyptians invented that. Damn, that’s actually … kinda cool …
What I’m saying is, get off your high horse and look at this like a craftsman would. Beautiful pottery gets made from what is essentially dirt that’s no good for growing food. Diamonds are forged from dinosaur shit and dead trees and bones and other stuff that gets covered up with more and more dirt over uncountable centuries until the pressure is so intense that it breaks down into carbon and the heat of that process turns it into diamonds. Ugly process, but what a wonderful end result.
Part of the resistance to Dr. Davidovits’ theory is the sheer mundanity of it. It wasn’t magicians and high priests doing the logistics here. It was down-and-dirty dudes who knew how to build stuff. Knew how to break the rocks down into something manageable that would also be beautiful. And so much faster, and far less dangerous. So we have to adjust our vision to erase the presence of the rock star aliens and the wild magicians with their staffs raised on high, chanting while huge blocks of limestone rose into the air and were gently guided into place by a bevy of slave laborers.
So what? Was that really all that great? Is it better to believe that early humans weren’t smart enough to figure this stuff out on their own, and had to have off-world consultants? Or is it cooler to think, holy shit, we made that, all by ourselves. We figured out how to get it done, and we did it. And we did it without enslaving entire civilizations. Builders did this, regular janes and joes, following a blueprint, just like they do it today. Just like … well, me. Ho-lee shit. That’s awesome.
