The fuss is about those who insist on saying the pyramid builders subscribed to modern geomancy practices of "encoding" certain mathematical constants in their construction.

It's the epitome of ethnocentrism, whereby people of a certain culture, typically western European, try to overshadow the complexities and nuances of other cultures by insisting that they all developed the same way they did... thus demonstrating that their own culture and its achievements have some kind of "permanence" or "validity" to them, since other "great cultures" discovered the same things.

Pyramid Pi is just another example of how they try to superimpose their own beliefs and values onto ancient cultures. Well, it may work for the Druids who left no written records, but in the case of the Egyptians, they are not going to get away with it. We know too much about how and why they did things to run around superimposing Greek mathematics onto structures that were built long before the Greeks ever clumped balls of mud together. The Egyptians had invented writing before the first proto-Greek (Minoan) civilization appeared on Crete. Clearly this infuriates the ethnocentrists and they have to run around pretending they find Greek constants everywhere. "Look, there's Pi in that pyramid!" "Come see... I've found Phi in my bathroom!" It has a lot to do with the flawed concept of "cultural evolution" and the idea that European culture is the pinnacle, and somehow other great cultures were only great because they, too, discovered the same kinds of mathematics, sciences and often, religion.

Sad, really. The problem I personally have with it is that it distracts people who might otherwise make valuable contributions from ever getting started, because they have been so seriously misinformed by people who "have spent their whole lives studying the pyramids" and therefore must know SOMETHING about them... but clearly can't even tell eleven from twenty-two.

(/rant off)

Good to see you back, Bob.

Anthony

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2007 07:21PM by Anthony.