cladking Wrote:
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>There is no evidence that the Great Pyramid was
>built using extensive ramping.It is simply too
>close to the quarry to have had a ramp.

Ya, other than what Petrie observed in the quarries near the Giza Pyramids as being filled with millions of cubic meters of limestone chips, gypsum, sand, and tafla.... what ramp/ramps and other such constructions would have been apparently made of (Lehner 1997), etc. etc. etc.

Lehner, M. (1997) The Complete Pyramids: Solving the Ancient Mysteries. Thames and Hudson, London, 256 pp.

>Levering stones up the side of the pyramid is
>simply a ludicrous proposition. There is not
>nearly enough room for men to work and accidents
>would be more monumental than their goal.

There is absolutely nothing preventing the ancient Egyptians from lifting the 50-60 ton roofing beams to the Kings Chamber using the simple method I proposed... who knows if the ancient were so mentally impaired they could not come up with something that took me 2 min. to think up. The real mystery is why no Fringe-Book author has the common sense to pick the easiest way to do it first instead jumping to one of the hardest and then promulgating to their readers that the ancient Egyptians can't do it because it would take 2000 men.

> It is not known how it was built.

The point is that a variety of different techniques can be created using basic principles of engineering. Because ancient peoples can come up with a range of simple and innovative solutions to these types of engineering problems we will never know how it was exactly done. However, since anything is possible.... it could have been done by more advance methods, like for example, a gaggle of rock fairies that magically popped into existence from an alternate universe and levitated the blocks with a chorus of skillfully directed musical flatulence. Can't proof anything in empirical science.... However, since there is absolutely no credible evidence, at all, to support it was done with rock fairies, that puts "basic principles of engineering" and "simple and innovative solutions" many, many orders of magnitude above it in probability since there is actually credible evidence to support that.

>I would agree kites seem most improbable since
>even lifting the ropes necessary for the loads
>would be a huge challenge.

And parafoils were invented.... when?

Archae Solenhofen (solenhofen@hotmail.com)

> tempus fugit