Quote:In addition, it has been determined unambiguously where the stones came from (they came from the quarry that is located behind the pyramids, a quarry that was not discovered until relatively recently because it had been infilled with the rubble that was used to make the ramps used to place the stones in their respective positions).
Correct. One of the problems with the Japanese tests was that they were assuming the stones were brought in by boat. They found that off loading them up the muddy banks was an impossibility. The discovery of the quarries solves that problem. BUT, the Tura limestone which was used for the casing blocks did come from the east side of the Nile which raises the loading/unloading question again and the huge granite blocks from the inner chambers came from Aswan, far up river. This could all be resolved if there were some sort of harbor/roadway built to facilitate the loading process. All we have to do is find the harbors/roads. Egyptians do not seem to have been big on building either but one cannot rule out the possibility.
Quote:So it is not unreasonable to assume that they were working long hours with little interruption
Agreed, I would accept from dawn to dusk but you still lose on average half the day that way. And it still complicates the math of placing the blocks in the 20 year time frame.
Quote:It has been suggested that the stones were moved using manual human labor, but others have shown that pack animals such as camels and possibly oxen, likely had a major hand in it as well.
Oxen are depicted in tomb art for the Old Kingdom so that is possible but archaeologists have determined that camels were not domesticated until the first millenium.... which upsets the fundies endlessly because they do so want their "Abraham" to have been a camel jockey. We have no representations of pyramid building in Egyptian art. We do have a carving of a New Kingdom obelisk being pulled on a sled by manual labor. More than that is speculation. We have no evidence.
Quote:Finally, the limestone that was used to make the pyramids was relatively soft and so wasn't as hard to process as some have suggested.
Absolutely true, but what is equally true is that their copper tools were soft too. I've seen demonstrations in documentaries of smoothing limestone blocks with hand tools ( even flint scrapers were used) and it does work. But it took a long time to do and it is precision work. And there is no way in hell that you get that kind of performance when it comes to copper tools on the harder stone.
Lastly, there is still the mystery of the ramp system which one engineer called a project even more massive than the pyramid itself. I have a thought but without evidence it is no more valid than the spaceman idea.
