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Did the Great Pyramids' builders use concrete? (2008)
- reify 2y agoYep! and rebar, According to: Chariots of The Gods by Erich von Däniken They had help from aliens too. A fabulous book by the way. I read it as a teenager in the early 70's.
- DemocracyFTW2 2y agoOK so I'll assume it's possible to crush limestone, add ingredients that act as mortar that the Egyptians knew and used anyhow (even our word "natron" seems to derive from ancient Egyptian), and then mix that with water either downstairs near or upstairs on a top layer of the pyramid, and cast it in place. BUT where's the evidence? Why do we see blocks all the way up, blocks with tiny gaps between them? Did they not cast them in situ but just nearby, in the customary one-to-two-ton size, and push them over to their final place? Because if I were tasked with constructing those upper layers (whose insides were likely not solid blocks, but very coarse rubble mixed with mortar, as evidenced by some mastabas), I sure would want to make those casting molds (formwork) as long as possible. So absent material proof (micro-structural analyses) it's a nice theory but not much more. Also the article suffers, like so very many, from not discussing Egyptian construction technology and not even how they built pyramids in general, but focusing on how they built specifically the Great Pyramid, as if there were not well over a hundred known pyramids in Egypt, not to speak of all the temples and uncounted mastabas.
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