RE: Giza pyramids
November 12, 2011 at 11:10 pm
(This post was last modified: November 12, 2011 at 11:12 pm by Justtristo.)
(November 12, 2011 at 11:13 am)Chuck Wrote:(November 11, 2011 at 7:33 pm)orogenicman Wrote:minimalist Wrote: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.
It all boils down to manpower. The pyramids were the Apollo moon shot of their day,and I have no doubt that people came from far and wide to work on them.
I did a back of the envelope estimate once, and concluded something on the order of magnitude of ten thousand men directly working daylight shifts year round can quarry, transport, and erect the great pyramid in 20 years, or it takes less than a million man-years to build the pyramid.
It would be interesting to establish Egyptian population during old kingdom, and estimate the surplus productivity available from its agriculture, to estimate just how much surplus man years of labor the kingdom can marshal for this sort of projects.
There was plenty of Labor in Egypt during the flood season, when the agricultural workforce was idle. So at least for half the year, a labor force of that size could be recruited.
Old Kingdom Egypt had a population of 2 million if I remember right.
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