4 ms·

Well, the graph in the article says 3600 men for 20 years. 900 to lift the stones 900 to place and finish them (horizontal movement?) 1500 to cut the stone 330

• haihaibye 6y ago
  There's no accounting for inefficiencies applying human labor to moving massive stone blocks into a really high pile. Has the author ever done physical labor?
• close04 6y ago
  I'm talking about the details of the real work. The details of his results are irrelevant since they're built from oversimplified assumptions. I mean the author didn't even include friction in his calculations. Or placing blocks with special shapes in exceptional positions. Or any setbacks, logistics, infrastructure, trial and error, design revisions, human inefficiency, illness, accidents, etc. His calculations just say it probably couldn't have taken less. But more? Just add a few more of those variables that he completely overlooked and the effort easily increases by one order of magnitude. The worst project managers I've met made better assumptions that this author. You make bad assumptions you get bad conclusions. And saying them "with certainty" just makes one sound even more ignorant. Imagine what his calculations would say about La Sagrada Familia. Certainly not 150 years.
• peeters 6y ago
  Except everything besides the 900 estimate is made up out of thin air as far as the "details" go. The "appeal to simple physics" is useful as far as providing a reasonable lower bound ("it must by conservation of energy have been at least 900 workers"). But that's not the assertion of the author, the assertion is that all greater estimates are overestimates, but provides zero evidence for why.