A Theory on Egypt...

[alexander]

So i have mentioned this in the egyptian rations thread, today i was discussing this with a friend, so i decided to post up my side of the conversation, figuring that we may get either a good discussion, or a eye-opener going here

lets start here:

"here would be some preface to my theory

i have read a fair amount about egypt

especially about egyptian engineering, and stone working techniques, i have read about monuments, i have read about quarrying, stones, and how modern science thinks that it was all put together

i have to say that i have also not been to egypt, yet, but i have a hunch that would just completely up my theory status by providing concrete evidence...

here is the thing too, you see, most egyptian monuments and statues and "achevements" fall into 2 general types of rock: smaller soft rock, such as the one used in the pyramids, and many temples (smaller is a relative term, smaller means that the rocks are merely tens or hundreds of tons). The second rock is the one that interest me the most, its the hard granite, grey granite, quartz and other really, really hard rock

the interesting thing is that many of things that are made of that hard rock, are made with pieces much bigger, and much more precise then the rock used in say the great pyramid

and although to most people, pyramid is a great achievement, and that it is, it requires less technology to build then something made out of a much larger slab of rock, like say a sarcophagus..."
after making some tea, i'm back
"
questions, so far?

Ok, so here is the thing, i understand that with perseverance may come near perfection, problem is, perseverance takes a lot of time, and it takes even more time with simple tools, and both quarrying with simple tools, and cutting perfect shapes out of hard rock, is not something that is either simple, nor fast.

I must now make a distinction, between near perfection and perfection. A rock is a hard material that, back in those days, most historical engineers claim that was done by using dimple stone on stone grinding and stone on stone chipping
"
at this point my friend had to go, so here is the continuation of the thought:

the problem is, there is no way to putty any kind of an imperfection in a hard rock, thus the work that had been done to that point, would have to have been redone, if the perfection had to be achieved, and the problem is that too many things made of this hard grey granite was perfect, not nearly perfect, 100% perfect, to this day, 100% perfect, so perfect, it would take months to do on the modern machinery, if some of that was even possible on the modern machinery... If it took 10 times longer to do it with the Egyptian technology, at this point stretching work to many years, a simple grumpy work attitude, or a disagreement with your wife, and you would have to restart work, and in 5-7 years, there is plenty of opportunity to have something go wrong, and there are too many artifacts in egypt to make up for redoing good work.

Lastly i have to say that while there is a way to date the stone, and remains of people, there is no way to find out when a particular stone was cut, thus making an intreaguing thought pop in my head one day, and that is my theory on ancient Egypt.

So one day thinking about various aspects of egypt that did not make any sense to me, possibility-wise, because too much things did not stick, for example, modern rock saws that can cut a piece of grey granite into a top for a sarcophagus, 3 by 4.5 meters in size, would have the thickness of the blade nearing 15-17mm, thats with modern day carbonated steel, ceramics and diamond powder. Ancients had no mention of any such technology, i mean at some point they were excited to make bronze, and that discovery is far too late, and the metal is still far too brittle to cut this type of hard stones, which brings an interesting question, on the unfinished sarcophagi, where the gap of the cut is sometimes less then 3-5mm, there is no way that an ancient with a giant round stone could have banged that through, and created a flawless surface on top of all of this. The sarcophagi with the lids that have a curved face on them, the face is perfect perfectly round all the way, like they took a giant saw (talking 6-7 meters across) and just let it loose and then finished it all off with a polishing wheel to a smoothness that takes literaly weeks of polishing with a hydraulic or pneumatic machine and diamond dust polishes and heads, a technology far out of the reach of the ancients. When you see holes boared through some granite, with obvious cut groves on the sides, a couple of inches across, and several feet high. You look at test holes, maybe 2 feet wide, and 6-7 feet high, that the current construction theories say "were made by a man with a round stone, chipping away for a long time... But the surface is cut perfect, all the way down, all the sides are perfect, and a man with a round stone could barely stand in the "manhole" never mind hitting a large boulder against a big ass mountain.

After being confuzzled by all of this, nonsense, i think that only two logical answers may be found (and please correct me if you think that it may be something else):

Theory one: Egyptians were actually smarter then we think, and were using advanced technologies that none of them could have conceived at the time. Thus pushing us to believe of an intervention of a much more advances beings...

Theory two: Perhaps egypt built their monuments, cities, statues, etc, around things they themselves could not explain, around giant statues cut out of a rock, weighing thousands of tons, build their toumbes around the areas of sarcophagi that they found themselves, and worshiped a more advanced race (and scriptures that refer to this, some may have heard of atlantians) that went extinct prior to egyptians occupying the land...

tis it for now, i want some tea, so, you guys have at it, ask questions, or argue the opposite, find evidence to crush the theories, and with any luck, something cool may come out of this

[lawcat]

yeah,

It's interesting how they cleaned up nicely behind themselves; so that no one can find any evidence of advanced tools or technology--except for the pyramids and sarcophagi.

They cleaned up real nice.

[alexander]

that does not make any sense to me either, if a civilization exists, there must be archeological proof of it's existance, homes, tools, bones, something, but there are certainly none of that found yet for this "advanced civilization theory", problem is, there are no tools remaining from the cutting of the hard rock, anyways. No tools, no techniques, no references in the scriptures or even folklore... like they were never even processed or cut, and they, as far as the pictures show, were cut, not flint-napped, or chiseled, the edges are too perfect, sometimes even rather sharp, and the way the lid fits on the sarcophagus too, light does not penetrate that seal... and the fact that they exist proves that the stones were processed, thus cut, and technology for cutting stone has not existed for a very long time at all, polished, but if you are thinking sand and water, sand is softer then grey granite, fitted, and as i described, perfectly fitted at that, and installed, unless all the giant statues in egyptian cities were cut out of rock that does not even appear in the local region geologically, someone had to move a 1000ton rock, with smooth polished surfaces and delicate details, thing that we still can't do with today's tools...

I'll give an example of moving a big rock. In order to deliver the base for a monument to Marshall Zhukov, weighing approximately 100 ton (in Moscow), required the help of a dozen of tanks...

[alexander]

also after some asking around, i found that a 3 meter wide cutting disk is 15mm thick, the unfinished sarcophagus has a 5mm gap, and the cutting disc would have to be a lot larger in diameter.....

[lawcat]

I have to disagree with you. Not too long after the egyptians, the greeks used very refined techinques to create perfect art from stone, marble and granite.

Stone craft is one of the oldest. If you reasearch today's techniques, you will find some artists who use ancient techniqes in sculpture, quite effectively. This is more of an art technology subject.

[Eclogite]

A few random thoughts on your speculations:

1. Sarcophagi are not especially large when compared with some of the stones used in portions of some temples and pyramids.

2. You mention grey granite is harder than sand. Not so. Granite consists of mainly quartz, feldspar and mica. Most sand - and certainly the sand you would use for grinding an polishing, consists of quartz. Feldspar and mica are both softer than quartz. Therefore we can certainly grind and polish a block of granite with sand, especially if we have a lot of sand. (What would be need as a source for sand? Let's see - a desert might be quite useful.)

3. You mention the possibility that the Egyptians built their monuments around pre-existing granites blocks. I don't see how that would work for the Great Pyramid, where the Grand Gallery, rising high in the pyramid towards the King's chamber, with both lined with granite yet surrounded by limestone blocks. (In passing, my recollection - having stood inside the Great Pyramid many times - is that the granite here is red.)

[alexander]

actually i think its the weird way of explaining that i use that caused some of those units above, so let me explain myself here a little more:

3.
I should specify what i mean when i say "built around preexisting monuments", when i say built around preexisting monuments, i am referring to temples, and towns that have the exceedingly large statues made out of a single stone, polished to perfection, etc. Certainly the sarcophagi in the pyramids were put there after the construction of the pyramids, but they are different from the grey granite ones found in the underground tombs that i am referring to, different in structure, different in size, different in the stone used.

I use grey granite as an example, in all reality there are things cut out of many really hard stones, including pink granite, marble and others, i use grey granite as a softer example of the harder rocks used in construction (thats what most of the sarcophagi were made of anyways)

2.
Agreed, grey granite is not harder then sand, problem is, you still can't polish it to the level it was polished to using sand, it's too course for he job, we are talking about surfaces that would take 1500 grit diamond polishing pads, i dont believe you can find sand anywhere near the right coarseness, and am not sure if you can make it...?

1.
one of many examples, as i said, some sculptures are estimated to weigh well over 1000tons, infact the unfinished obelisk in aswan would weigh close to 1160tons, the largest stone used in the building of the Gret pyramid, by comparison, weigs 70, and most of them are much, much smaller, average weight of a stones used in building the Khafre's pyramid is around 2.5tons.

Interestingly enough, largest stones used in buildings at the time were used in temples, the temple just by the pyramid has a block that is estimated to be 400tons, which ads to my theory again...

Before i run, i have to say that i am my own critic, i would like to find out i am wrong but have so far not found enough convincing factors to do so...

[Moontanman]

Probably the best reason why there wasn't a more advanced civilization the Egyptians used for some of their monuments is the lack of any trace of them. no throw away tools or pottery or anything. Having said that there is indeed some indication of a civilization that preceded Egyptians, there are some traces of cities drowned by about 100 feet or more of water in several places around the world. these places would have been coastal river mouths and other coastal areas around 10 to 15 thousand years ago, just before the big thaw of the last ice age. Now if these cities prove to be real then you might have a basis for a civilization but the time differences would be pretty far out of sync.

[alexander]

Probably the best reason why there wasn't a more advanced civilization the Egyptians used for some of their monuments is the lack of any trace of them.

i am the first to say that, except for the unexplainable methods of stone carving, and traces of tools that can not be matched by even modern technology. no traces of the civilization have been found, yet...

So for now, you don't have to prove that there was someone and they bit the apple with their teeth, if you have an apple with tooth marks on it, its self-conclusionatory, such as either advanced or so far unknown tools/techniques or people who built some of the statues and monuments in Egypt...

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by alexander

i am the first to say that, except for the unexplainable methods of stone carving, and traces of tools that can not be matched by even modern technology. no traces of the civilization have been found, yet...

So for now, you don't have to prove that there was someone and they bit the apple with their teeth, if you have an apple with tooth marks on it, its self-conclusionatory, such as either advanced or so far unknown tools/techniques or people who built some of the statues and monuments in Egypt...

Well, maybe the Egyptians plundered the remnants of a earlier civilization that was swept away by the great flood when the ice caps melted and huge chunks of ice fell into the ocean causing titanic tsunamis that swept around the globe drowning the coastal cities of this seafaring culture? This could also be the source of the all the great flood myths of the ancient cultures.