Burns
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You trust Herodotus, eh? He also said 100,000+ men worked on the pyramids. Which is a little higher than the 10,000+ you scoffed at earlier.
Ancient Civilizations
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without iron or steel tools to carve the stones it would take at least 100k men sacrificing themselves to the blood gods to carve 2.3 million fucking stones, much less transport or stack them, whether it took 30 years or 300 years.
What's far more likely is that a civilization 10-15k years ago or older built the pyramids and the ancient-ancient Egyptians of 5k years ago discovered them, carved cuneiform and art into the pyramids, maybe even started replacing some of the top stones as they had been eroded, and they just claimed they built them for street cred, and spent 20-30 years drawing on them while they re-carved the head of the sphinx because they didn't realize there was a lion body buried under the sand when they discovered the weathered head.
What's far more likely is that a civilization 10-15k years ago or older built the pyramids and the ancient-ancient Egyptians of 5k years ago discovered them, carved cuneiform and art into the pyramids, maybe even started replacing some of the top stones as they had been eroded, and they just claimed they built them for street cred, and spent 20-30 years drawing on them while they re-carved the head of the sphinx because they didn't realize there was a lion body buried under the sand when they discovered the weathered head.
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Chukzombi
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Yes, this is the alternate and much more logical theory. The ancient Egyptians were all about the rebadging. Finding old structures in the sand and then crudely putting the current pharaohs name on it and taking credit for it. This is why countless structures have the names khufu, kafre or Rameses on them. Easier and more cost efficient to swindle someone elses work.
Uh no. There is no number of workers confirmed. I believed it was you who provided the 10k number to which I said only a fraction of the number of workers were actual skilled PAID artisans and the rest were slaves. Which is true. Herodotus lived closer to the timeline of the original construction or just the limestone facelift. Still he's still thousands of years removed.
Speaking of Herodotus
Burns
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lulz. That video's channel looks like it's an AI created channel if you sort by oldest; it's all over the place.
As for the age of the pyramid:
There are multiple ways of dating things using radiation decay. No clue what has been used on the pyramids. A newish type can date how long a stone has been sitting in the sun, which seems like it would be helpful for the surrounding structures, but not sure how accurate it is. I tried doing a quick search on it, as it was mentioned in the long ass Ice-Age flood lecture video in the geology thread (didn't want to go rewatch it, just for this post) and instead found this:
This reddit post says at least Luminescence Dating and Radiocarbon Dating have been used in multiple locations:
As for the age of the pyramid:
There are multiple ways of dating things using radiation decay. No clue what has been used on the pyramids. A newish type can date how long a stone has been sitting in the sun, which seems like it would be helpful for the surrounding structures, but not sure how accurate it is. I tried doing a quick search on it, as it was mentioned in the long ass Ice-Age flood lecture video in the geology thread (didn't want to go rewatch it, just for this post) and instead found this:
This reddit post says at least Luminescence Dating and Radiocarbon Dating have been used in multiple locations:
TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Strabo, a Roman explorer also records the Great Pyramid as having a door on it that swiveled.
Sylas
- For whatever reason. The Pyramids never had hieroglyphics on them. Or any writing at all in them. Which is part of the outlier theories about them. Additionally, while the Great Pyramid has stairs in the Grand Gallery today, it never had them at all for thousands of years. Leaving only a steep 30 or so degree ramp with no discernible hand holds or anything so you had to crawl up there with ropes in the dark. Place was also chock-full of bats and still is today along with the other sites.
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Rajaah
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North Atlantic glacial maximum ended 12,000 years ago. Glaciers that covered most of North America melted from the inside out until they shattered, causing a massive tidal wave in addition to the already-rising sea levels. Mauritania and everything else around it gets slammed. Almost everyone and everything there gets wiped off the map. This is followed by the Younger Dryas ice age which is then followed by the drying and onset of the Sahara Desert. Thousands of years later the descendants of the survivors of all of this shit manage to finally start to build new civilizations in Egypt and the Middle-East, thus beginning recorded history.
Rajaah
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In theory the stuff from 100,000 years ago would be buried under the surface. Surface-level stuff gets blasted away, stuff from 100,000 years ago is still there to be dug up.
If London got nuked right now and everything in the city got completely vaporized, future archaeologists would see it as a crater with some 50,000 year old stone tools buried in it if you go digging.
Not saying this is what happened but it's plausible if it is.
Rajaah
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Hypothetically, if humans came from somewhere else (or were put here), they might indeed have started at a much higher tech level than they ended up at, regressing quickly as they had to make their way on a new world with what was available (and knowledge of the advanced past quickly fading).
Wouldn't surprise me at all if both Venus and Mars had all kinds of life on them before Earth did, and as both fell apart, Earth became the new prime real estate to flee to.
I'm getting into some wild speculation now though.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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So it went from Canada to Mauritania, that's insane. Must be some evidence in Africa of that?
Chukzombi
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We don't do alien stuff here, my friend. There is no evidence that life of any kind other than microbial has ever existed outside of this planet.
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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"Wild", he says.
The trope of the humans "lost colony" or being dropped there for reason X was popular even in the early 90s, but advance in genetics put a bullet to that. We share too many genetics with other primates - you would need not only to transplant humans, but all of the primates at the very least. And do it in advance so that we have a long-running primate fossil record.
The glueing of chromosome 2 from the two that remain separate in chimps and bonobos is only the latest point of common evolution. We still share the same broken gene that prevent us from making our own vitamin C with FRUIT BATS (and it's estimated this happened 61 million years ago, when our long distant common ancestor started adding fruits to its diet and no longer needed to spend energy making the stuff).
Rajaah
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We do share a ton of genetics with other primates. What are the odds, though, that our extraterrestrial ancestors just cross-pollenated with the indigenous primates on this planet? Maybe to keep their lineage going out of desperation since there were so few of them left, I don't know.
What I'm wondering is, perhaps humans aren't from elsewhere specifically but do have elements from elsewhere mixed in with the indigenous genetics of Earth primates.
This is getting pretty off-topic but I'm guessing it's within the realm of possibility, and our shared genetics with other Earth life-forms doesn't totally negate that possibility.
Something set us apart from the rest of the life on Earth a while ago. Gave us free will, etc. Everybody's got their own idea of why this is, but at some point, a switch got flipped and some new element was introduced. That element could be something as basic as self-awareness slowly developing out of evolution, with different humans on different evolutionary levels having different and increasing degrees of self-awareness.
I don't know, I'm just some guy.
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Rajaah
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Super depressing episode from our favorite Youtuber. How's it relevant to Ancient Civs? Well, I gotta wonder how many other times throughout history there have been similar scenarios of power brokers wanting people under their thumb only to have it all collapse on them. The modern era has way more tools at the disposal of the ruling class than any previous authoritarian society ever had, though. Someday we'll be an ancient civ to somebody else and I wonder how much of this will even be on the historical record, if any of it.
Chukzombi
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Edaw
Parody
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On the possible use of hydraulic force to assist with building the step pyramid of saqqara
The Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt, is considered the oldest of the seven monumental pyramids built about 4,500 years ago. From transdisciplinary analysis, it was discovered that a hydraulic lift may have been used to build the pyramid. Based on our mapping of the nearby watersheds, we...