this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

You have a point, but consider:

  1. Wood doesn’t preserve well.
  2. It’s unlikely they used anything more than a crude raft to transport them.
  3. The wood from the raft was likely reused after they were done using it anyway.
[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also, they recently discovered a written record from a crew that was transporting some of the stone by boat using artificial waterways that were dug near Giza and filled during the yearly flood of the Nile.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That’s promising! Got a link?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I think this is the one, the Merer diary about Akhet Khufu (their name for the pyramid) and the transport of stones by boat from known quarries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_Merer

The diary was found a good decade ago, it's not even recent. This particular diary anyway, I don't know about more recent discoveries about the waterways. I mean, beside OP's article.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I have a hard time seeing a raft as having the necessary water displacement capability to handle that kind of weight, thought. And they left a written record regarding much smaller craft; so one obvious question, where's the record of any more advanced ship building?

I guess it's just the fact that it's actually really not easy at all to get such enormous chunks of stone to float. But, I also cannot offer any other explanation, so take that as you will...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I thought about these two factors too, and they bug me.

Clearly there is a way to build a boat that can carry the equivalent of one of those massive blocks. It would have a massive amount of wood and some clever engineering. Whether they knew how or even if the waterways were deep enough for them to go through…

Could it be this was the technological leap that allowed the the big pyramids to be built, and why they stand so much taller than the others? Could it be the knowledge didn’t last long and whatever written record got lost to time? It’s a lot of conjecture.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Oh, I totally agree with your views here, I think. I guess it just bothers me whenever I see some "obvious" solution on some article or headline. The ones who built these monuments achieved something truly incredible, and we still can't explain how they did so.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Ancient Aliens, duh :p