Skills of The Ancients

The Great Pyramid in Egypt. Built some 4,500 years ago for the pharaoh Khufu, it is the oldest and only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that has stood the test of time. It rises from the sun-baked Giza Plateau with awesome might and presence, built by the hands of more than 200,000 workers (who modern scientists think were actually not slave laborers as was previously thought, but highly trained and well-paid stone masons). It's 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite were placed at the rate of about 12 per hour, 24 hours a day, for about 20 years. For almost 4,000 years it was the tallest structure in the world.

Aside from being a testament to human muscle and ingenuity, the Great Pyramid is also an engineering and astronomical marvel. It is oriented very accurately (within 4 minutes of arc) to the four cardinal compass points, aligned with true north, not magnetic north. This orientation was even more accurate when the white casing stones were in place over the stepped foundation that can be seen today. The stone masonry is astounding, even for modern times. The four sides of the base have an average error of only 58 millimeters over their 756 foot lengths. Probably most amazing of all, the ratio of the perimeter of the pyramid to its height is 2 x pi to an accuracy of 0.05%. Seriously, think about that for a minute. These crushingly heavy stones were assembled to astounding precision some 4,500 years ago in the middle of a scorching hot desert. Oh, and just to top it off, the granite stones in the "King's Chamber" weigh up to 80 tons each and were transported from Aswan, more than 500 miles away from Giza.

It's no wonder that some people have suggested over the years that the pyramids were built by advanced aliens visiting our planet. Of course, that's almost certainly not true, and anyhow there is no proof for it. That conjecture also deprives our ancient ancestors of their rightful credit for such an amazing feat of planning and engineering.

Just this week a robot explorer specifically designed for the purpose was sent inside the pyramid to a secret chamber that has not been seen since the pyramid was built (it's at the end of a long stone passage that's only 20cm square and is thus completely inaccessible to human-sized explorers).

 

They found a series of red symbols that may have been religious in nature, but are more likely graffiti left by the stone masons who built the pyramid. That makes me smile. Even in ancient times there were "taggers", and that makes this little robot mission a very cool and very expensive example of UrbEx :)