Egyptologists insist on this equation for the Great Pyramid.
4th Dynasty Egyptians + Bronze Age technology + 20 years = Pyramid.
Obviously any term of the equation can be attacked. The "Ancient Aliens" crowd invents spacemen to do the job!
I prefer to consider the time factor.
There are an estimated 2.5 million stones in the GP.
2.5 million divided by 20 years = 125,000 stones per year.
125,000 stones divided by 365 days per year = roughly 342.5 stones per day that need to be placed.
342 stones per day divided by 24 hours per day = 14.25 stones per hour or roughly one stone every 4 minutes or so. Such a schedule is preposterous but it gets worse.
That's working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year for 20 years. It never gets dark. There is never an accident. There is never a sandstorm. No one ever has to take a dump and the workers go around the clock without sleep or food. If you hypothesize multiple shifts of workers you merely increase the logistical problems involved in supporting such a workforce and you haven't done anything about the darkness.
Now, Rhythm as you correctly point out the general idea is that the bulk of the labor force was drawn from the peasant force during the flood which lasts, let's say half the year just for the sake of argument. The Egyptologists are willing to stipulate a force of perhaps 8,000 permanent workers, masons and such who work all year round producing stones for the peasants to move when they show up. Fine, that will help some but you are still moving one stone every 2 minutes because you are only working six months per year. Then, you do have to account for the darkness so half of your work day is lost which means 1 stone every minute.
And we haven't remotely discussed building some kind of ramp system to move the stones to the top which one engineer noted would have been a bigger project than the pyramid itself!
T'is a problem because the pyramid is there. It is not a figment of someone's imagination.
4th Dynasty Egyptians + Bronze Age technology + 20 years = Pyramid.
Obviously any term of the equation can be attacked. The "Ancient Aliens" crowd invents spacemen to do the job!
I prefer to consider the time factor.
There are an estimated 2.5 million stones in the GP.
2.5 million divided by 20 years = 125,000 stones per year.
125,000 stones divided by 365 days per year = roughly 342.5 stones per day that need to be placed.
342 stones per day divided by 24 hours per day = 14.25 stones per hour or roughly one stone every 4 minutes or so. Such a schedule is preposterous but it gets worse.
That's working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year for 20 years. It never gets dark. There is never an accident. There is never a sandstorm. No one ever has to take a dump and the workers go around the clock without sleep or food. If you hypothesize multiple shifts of workers you merely increase the logistical problems involved in supporting such a workforce and you haven't done anything about the darkness.
Now, Rhythm as you correctly point out the general idea is that the bulk of the labor force was drawn from the peasant force during the flood which lasts, let's say half the year just for the sake of argument. The Egyptologists are willing to stipulate a force of perhaps 8,000 permanent workers, masons and such who work all year round producing stones for the peasants to move when they show up. Fine, that will help some but you are still moving one stone every 2 minutes because you are only working six months per year. Then, you do have to account for the darkness so half of your work day is lost which means 1 stone every minute.
And we haven't remotely discussed building some kind of ramp system to move the stones to the top which one engineer noted would have been a bigger project than the pyramid itself!
T'is a problem because the pyramid is there. It is not a figment of someone's imagination.
