From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Subject: Re: Nov 3rd NOVA on pyramids
Date: 12 Nov 92 16:27:05 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

Iain Odlin writes

    [Devastating critique of my post re: impossibility of building 
     the pyramids today deleted]

>-- 
> --------------------------------- Iain Odlin ---------------------------------
>                  10 Crosby Street, Level 3, Portland ME 04103
>                                 odlin@reed.edu
>-------- Contraceptives should be used at every conceivable occasion! --------



Dear me.  I didn't mean to sound so vicious.  I didn't even mean
to denigrate modern technology and industry, which in its way is
vastly superior to anything the Egyptians did.  Just that they 
knew things about building massive stone structures that we no
longer know about -- or need to know about.  The problems of Hoover
Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge, or the space shuttle are enormous
and their solutions are awesome feats, but their difficulties 
and the materials and techniques of their solutions are of a
different kind than that of the pyramids.  Not to flame the
construction industry, but the very nature of steel and concrete
is that they can be adjusted and corrected in the process of
building.  Not that good modern construction is not precise. It
just is not and does not have to be as precise as that of the
pyramids done in stone.

They also stand on a foundation of a long history of technological 
development.  We could build the pyramids, but it would require, 
in my opinion, considerably more than applying known construction 
techniques to do it. So I might have been a little hasty in saying 
'unlimited time and money'.  But I think the eccentric tycoon
who decided to try it would be dismayed at how long it took.

Honest, I make my living from technology and tout its wonders all
the time to new age and other touchy feely types who spend a lot
of time moaning about modern civilization and the glories of the
past.  I must admit, I have not done much by way of enlightening
National Enquirer readers, whom I find harmless and beyond hope
anyway.

No, the ancient Egyptians were not "just like us", neither better
nor worse.  But they did have faculties and a form of consciousness
that we do not.  And vice versa.

I'll check out John Romer's "Ancient Lives".  It sounds interesting.
I should say that I believe the Egyptians of the New Kingdom couldn't
have built the pyramids either.

I'd like to know more about the Nova pyramid.  I must look that up too.
My point was that the difficulty of building a pyramid to the same 
degree of optical bench precision (as I have heard it characterized) 
grows geometrically if not logarithmically with the size.  And you have
to get all the tunnels right too and then do the facing (whatever that
involved).

Apology for flame accepted.  It's a little chilly this morning anyway
(for Dallas, that is).  I too apologize for the unintended flame at
modern technology (though I do sometimes feel that way about modern
project management).

By the way, in listing all those construction projects you could have
added another modern architectural feat that neither the Egyptians nor 
we today could duplicate, Chartres Cathedral. Even more astounding
in my mind is the modern microprocessor.  I find it fascinating that 
the design of computer hardware and software is called "architecture".

Cordially,
Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)