The Science of Conspiracy Theories

The Great Pyramid theory

The Great Pyramid theory

This conspiracy theory says that even with modern equipment and tools, we would have a rough time building the Great Pyramid of Giza. Theorists think that it was the work of an advanced alien civilization that came here to help humans do a lot of amazing things.

First of all, I think that this idea is disrespectful to the ancient Egyptians. In essence it's saying that they were not capable of building such an amazing structure.

The Great Pyramid was 146.5 meter high after it was built, but now it's only 138.8 meters high. The base is 230.4 meters. That's a big boy! The structure has a volume of 2,583,283 cubic meters, but it's not all that empty inside, and this is important. Today, we could build a structure like this that was nearly empty. The inside of the Great Pyramid consists of chambers and galleries, but it's far from empty.

The perimeter to height ratio equates to 2π to an accuracy of 0.05%. The mean opening between blocks is 0.5 millimeters. The lengths of the four sides are within 58 millimeters. That's phenomenal accuracy, but it was still within ancient abilities to do it. The ancient Egyptians were not dummies.
The pyramid was built as a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu in the Fourth Dynasty. It was constructed out of 2.3 million granite stone blocks that were quarried across the Nile River at various quarries. It was faced with white limestone casing stones, lots of them.

Estimates of what it would take to build this massive structure involve installing 800 tons of stone per day to build it in 20 years, which equates to 12 blocks being put in place every hour around the clock. That doesn't even address how they quarried and moved the stones to the building site.

There are plenty of theories on how the Egyptians did it. I don't know how many History Channel shows have been created about it, but there's no doubt that people have been fascinated with this subject for a long time.
The problem isn't how they dragged the stone blocks to the building site; it's how they got them up the structure. Most theories have them building ramps that would be very long by the time they reach the top. The reason that ramps are the most suggested method is that there is no evidence that the Egyptians had block and tackles lifting technology. I believe that the ramp theory makes sense even though it would require a lot of people to move the stones up the ramps.

One theory has the ramps circle around the pyramid, which would eliminate the need for long ramps. The only problem would be turning corners.
Some of the more creative theories involve Egyptians coming up with granite cement or creating internal ramps. These two ideas don't stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Some estimates indicate that it didn't take that many people to build the Great Pyramid. Maybe a total of 40,000 was involved. The construction occurred over the reigns of five pharaohs in less than 100 years. This was not a slave effort as it is usually pictured. These were skilled workers and support staff. There is a good deal of archeological evidence for this idea that has been revealed around the pyramid. The evidence suggests that a large well-designed colony of workers was created there with all of the things needed for life.

The Egyptians were not dumb. They knew mathematics and had lots of experience building pyramid tombs, learning from each effort and applying what they learned to the Great Pyramid construction project. They didn't need aliens.

And, as for the idea that we modern humans couldn't build the pyramid with our modern equipment, we not only could but we could do it in much less time, and we could probably make it much more hollow inside.

Thanks for reading.