On Fri, 29 Jul 2005 02:03:40 GMT, Doug Miller wrote:
In article , Dave Hinz wrote:

Did the people building them know that? We don't even know what the
mechanism was for moving the blocks, and you claim we know the
motivation?

I read an interesting theory a number of years ago. If memory serves, it was a
letter to the editor of Omni magazine, from a chemical engineer. Seems that
the guy went to Egypt on vacation with his wife, and while climbing the
pyramids he examined the blocks and concluded that it's _not_natural_stone_.
He says it's actually _concrete_ and they were cast in place.

Well, couple of thoughts. (1) Omni Magazine. Nuff said. (2) If it was
concrete, I _think_ that someone might have noticed that over the last
few thousand years.

Not so far-fetched as it might seem, either: somewhere around 400 AD, the
ancient Romans developed a concrete that would harden under water; when Rome
fell, the secret of making it was lost. Care to guess when it was
rediscovered? Not until 1789. And to this day, nobody knows for sure just
*what* Greek fire really was.

That is a fascinating tidbit, isn't it? Was the description accurate,
and if so, why can't we reverse-engineer it? We know what materials
they had access to, after all. Maybe it's actions were overstated.

It's easy to forget that the ancients were just
as smart as we are. Maybe smarter - they didn't have modern technology as a
crutch, and were forced to use their heads.

Sure, but I just think that concrete could be distinguished from natural
rock, and that theory doesn't change the fact that you still have to get
that mass up to the casting location, which doesn't change the problem
very much.

Dave Hinz