Jammer Wrote:
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> Or just as likely, the remaining footprint of
> traffic on an external ramp...
>
> When dirt roads are abandoned & grown over,
> you can still locate their course by the denser
> compacted soil beneath... I believe in the same
> way the fill sealed every seam & was
> compacted, leaving behind a denser footprint even
> after the ramp was removed...

However dirt roads form the hard cap over very long periods of use, I've seen donkey trails in the western desert which were left by trade routes and then lost to shifting sand...and then reappear. Rather than density by pounding foot weight I would prefer to see a structural pattern shift; if ramps were used each crossing point of a course by said ramp would be slightly irregular or shifted by the kind of weight your suggesting. I don't think it matters how they built the pyramids until the day the builders plan is unearthed...reality shows they did build them and the question of why they built them is more important in my view.

B.A.Hokom