History Stories

[Milsap]

Same way we could ask how the hell the Romans built all those aquaducts. They probably used something similar to bamboo for scaffolding.

[Kpyna]

You have a point there, Kypna. However, the elevation still is a problem. If the ramps circled the area, 1. Where are they now? and 2. What would the ramps be made of to support the 1000+ pounds of stone?

It's assumed that they were made of mudbrick, which was the weak structure a lot of homes were built off of. Stacked up, there would be a lot of strength, but I'd think adding water would easily weaken the structure and that's how they got rid of it.

[Kitt]

One last question. Who would be the one to push the stones up the ramp? There were no slaves as often dictated in movies and stuff during the construction of the pyramids.

[Kpyna]

All historical evidence (minus one book written after the fact) states that they actually hired people to build the structures a lot like what happened with post-depression work. They'd set up paid laborers in labor camps by the pyramids to work. The laborers got salary and even benefits.

Also, for the question of how the stone was moved (since if you're ever tried to drag something through the sand you understand it sucks), some paintings have been found in the past few years that show people pouring water on the sand which makes the rocks slide on the top layer of wet sand better. They seriously had that building stuff insanely figured out. Best part? The average pyramid supposedly only took about 22 years to build.

We like to think of ancient man as being a bit primitive but most successful early civilizations managed to devise some pretty crazy stuff. Now, a lot of this stuff is just historians using their thinkers and coming to accepted conclusions, besides the workers and the throwing water on the sand, the building of the pyramids is just widely accepted conjecture. They all make a whole load of sense though.

[Kitt]

Weird, because my World History professor said that Egypt was completely isolated during the time of the pyramids and they weren't very populated during that time.

[That Girl in the 'Roo Suit]

^Egypt already had an extensive trade network by that point, and had done for a /very/ long time. It had been unified for about 600 years by this point. The people who built the pyramids were not slaves, although some of them may have been captured from wars etc. They were commissioned to do so, and they are not the first pyramids either. Case in point, the Red, Step, and Bent pyramids. Before then they had burial chambers, but it was very much a solar thing. They were initially aligned North to South, but with the emphasis of the solar cults this changed from East to West.

The stone was moved by a combination of pulleys and cranes (because they did actually have cranes, if not in the sense we see them) past a certain point. They have found diagonal shafts in the pyramids with no known function and it has been assumed that these were where a pulley system was installed to build them from the inside out. Mudbrick ramps would have had to be at a ridiculous length to effectively get stones up to those heights, and the cost/effort to do that would have been insane.

One of my favourite things about Ancient Egypt is that people even back then would write "x was here [insert date]" on things... They've also drawn rather lewd sketches in a tomb depicting what is supposedly Hashepsut, reflecting on the politics of the time. Because construction workers. In Karnak there's a little inscription/hymn from a massive storm too.


(I have both a degree and a postgrad degree in Egyptology, literally all I get asked when people find this out is how were the pyramids built...)

[Turner]

Anything involving Vlad the Impaler is just crazy. I think it's quite easy to take some of the bloodthirsty historical figures for granted, but when you really try and picture in your mind some of the things Vlad did it really defies belief.

One of my favorite periods of history has to be anything involving the palace of Versailles and Louis XIV, it's more of a 'bigger picture' thing but I find that all the glory, opulence, decadence and scandal to be amazing, I like the way that from Louis XIV to Louis XV Versailles and the royal variety performance that revolved around it went from being the talk of France to the palace ground being desolate, and nobody being around when Louis XV was declared dead. I find that there's just such a weird tragic sadness about the fact that the place was so lively and then just became something that nobody really cared about.

[Kpyna]

(I have both a degree and a postgrad degree in Egyptology, literally all I get asked when people find this out is how were the pyramids built...)

I really enjoyed reading that -- I guess that theories have become a bit more comprehensive since my history teacher made his lesson plan :p

[Milsap]

They've also drawn rather lewd sketches in a tomb depicting what is supposedly Hashepsut, reflecting on the politics of the time.

Like some sort of Egyptian Banksy?

[Kitt]

That makes sense, Roo. I learned something new. i love learning.

Anyways, I love stories I always took as fiction that turned out to be real. Like the second 300 movie, the Ghost of Sparta. All those events happened. The Persian King Xerses, King Leonidas founding the Greek Legion, the battle of Thessopolis (forgive my spelling) which was a turning point in the second Persian War, Leonidas killing the first Persian general in the Battle of Marothon. All of it is true. Of course, like most movies, there are one or two minor falses, like no records say Leonidas and a Persian female soldier fell in love. There were no females in Xerxes's huge army of slaves and volunteers from all around his empire.

[That Girl in the 'Roo Suit]

Like some sort of Egyptian Banksy?

Kind of, but a little more... sexual

[Milsap]

I've taken an interest in the Falklands Conflict recently (mostly due to Top Gear going to Argentina) and it strikes me as to how much of a sore issue that still is in the country- Many people (particularly in Tierra Del Fuego) still reckon the islands are Argentine, not British.

The Belgrano (Argentina's most prized ship) sailed out of Ushaia before we sank her, which might add to the bitterness as we killed one of their generals in the process. But for us to get the bombers, the harriers and the marines there in the time we did to take the islands back... It's typical Britain.