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The newest theories on building the great pyramid (in 3d!)
What?! Pyramids?! On a gadget blog?!
Yes, here’s why. A French archaeologist Jean-Pierre Houdin teamed up with Dassault Systems (they make Solidworks, my favorite 3d modelling software) to showcase Houdin’s newest theories about how the pyramids were made. It tips a lot of the older theories of construction on their heads.
Houdin’s theories are rather impressive, simple, and direct at demonstrating how the great pyramid could actually have been completed. A combination with clever pulleys, counterweights, sledges, lifts, and internal ramps that protected workers from both the sun and loose debris from outside. Check out the 3d presentation over at Dassault Systems.
They have a great new browser plug-in as well (you’ll need it to view the animations) that allows you to both watch their presentations, and to interact and cruise around in their 3d animations. It’s a really sweet piece of digital kit.
It’s out there all over the web, but I’m shooting the thanks out to Reuters because they bothered to make the link available to view the findings. I’d really recommend reading their article too, it’s really something.
Join 5 Comments
Mike Says: April 1, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Awesome! A friend sent me a text-only article from a news site last week about this and after reading it, I was left thinking “I wish I could see this visualized.” Looks like I’ll be checking this out in a few minutes!
Mike
Animated theory on the construction of the pyramids « micsaund.com Says: April 6, 2007 at 2:55 pm
[...] to coolest-gadgets for the animated video [...]
Paul Hai Says: June 12, 2008 at 12:32 am
In 2006 I was doing research for a university study in Australia concerning the construction of the Pyramids at Giza. Working with real excavated artefacts and ancient documents I was able to discover an ancient type of pulley that is unknown in the modern world until now. I am a mechanical fitter and people consider that my knowledge of mechanics at a practical level assisted me with this discovery.
This ancient pulley walks up (or down) steps in a similar way to a three wheel step-trolley and I firmly believe that this is how the ancient Egyptians built their Pyramids. The Giza Pyramids have steps of course, which I have termed “racks” and of course there are four “racks” in a square based Pyramid. The wooden ancient Egyptian Pinion-Pulleys made positive engagements with the Pyramid’s stone “racks” carrying a stone block each, rotating as they were being hoisted with ropes. No ramps were required as the Pyramid itself was used.
This ancient pulley has a mechanical advantage of 2.8, thus is a simple machine and proves the Greek historian, Herodotus to be absolutely correct as he recorded wooden machines made of short wooden planks were used to raise the blocks of stone.
These planks only needed to be the side length of a Pyramid block which is about one metre and were easily carried also, as Herodotus also records. Well, Herodotus was only writing what Egyptian Priests told him and Egyptian Priests recorded history as part of their duties.
A working model has been made and a book about all of this has been published and I wish the World’s people to know of this. This book is dedicated to the Egyptian people to promote “new awareness of their intelligent and innovative glorious historical past”.
RAISING STONE 1 – Paul Hai’s racks & pinions theory. (121 pages)
ISBN 9780646476797
Please visit my website at http://www.haitheory.com
Paul Hai Says: December 26, 2009 at 8:37 am
Rampless Egyptian Pyramid construction has a definite AUSTRALIAN connection.
Captain Matthew Flinders navigated and mapped Australia’s coastline. His grandson became Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie who excavated ancient Egyptian artifacts. In 1895 as an employee of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) of London he was excavating artifacts at Deir el-Bahari and found a cache of ancient building equipment buried for preservation in a hewn out rock pit during Pharaonic times.
One of the wooden items is stated as being of “unidentified use” and has been named the “Petrie rocker” by Egyptologists.
Petrie considered the “rocker” was used to raise Pyramid blocks with a “rocking” motion and in 2006 he has been proven partly correct on the matter of raising Pyramid blocks using “rockers”.
The “rocker” is a component of an ancient Egyptian pulley which operates with a mechanical advantage of 2.8 and with CLASS 2 lever principle as a wheelbarrow does. (CLASS 2 lever: Pivot – Load – Effort).
The technical term for the “Petrie rocker” is “pinion-pulley lobe quadrant”. Four of these surround a Pyramid block and then the pulley is hoisted causing rotation and positive engagements of pulley lobes with Pyramid steps.
Consider the Pyramid as four RACKS of stone teeth on to which the PINION pulley lobes engage and here is the earliest form of RACK & PINION mechanics that we know of.
This is the ancient method of Pyramid construction as used on at least four large Pyramids: Sneferu’s RED Pyramid and those at Giza of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure.
This ancient method of construction DOES NOT REQUIRE RAMPS and uses the Pyramid under construction (using all four sides simultaneously) to complete the Pyramid, thus using a Pyramid to build a Pyramid.
Petrie died in Jerusalem in 1942 unknowing that “Petrie rockers” are components of an ancient pulley, unlike any pulley in the modern world, and his most important excavation.
More little gadget pics » Coolest Gadgets Says: April 1, 2007 at 3:34 pm
[...] The newest theories on building the great pyramid (in 3d!) [...]