How Egypt's Pyramids Work

improv class? Jerry? Yes, she keeps going and she says it's not a comedy improv class, so it's a business improv class, just to make her sharper in meanings, you know, and they have gotten much more enjoyable and shorter. Yeah. Her power point presentations are like one third jokes now. Yeah, but our equipment rental has gone up purchases because she drops the mic a little too hard. Yeah, just keep her place in those mics. Yeah. So, Chuck, everybody knows

about the pyramids, great Pyramids at Giza. Turns out there's pyramids all over the world, and there's a a distinct thread on the Internet that suggests that all these pyramids are connected in Mesoamerica, China, Egypt, Memphis, Greece, Memphis in Egypt, not Memphis, Tennessee. Is there, Well, it's one of these new pyramids, a neo pyramid. It's a basketball Colisseum, okay, oh yeah, yeah, the pyramid. Sure? What is that a mud island or something? Is that a different island in Memphis. Well?

The the idea is that all of these cultures, ancient cultures, were visited by the same aliens that said, built some pyramids, here's how to do it, we'll help you out. And um, that's just almost certainly not sure. Yeah, I feel safe in saying, as much as I like to believe in cookie things, I don't believe that the aliens built the pyramids. I don't believe that either. And one there's a couple

of good arguments against it. For for one, it really diminishes the incredible skill of the ancient engineers who came up with us and the workers who constructed them. It's like the architecture the Yeah, surely they would need some advanced alien civilization to come down and tell these dumb

dumbs what to do. And then another point that I ran across That kind of explains against that is that if you I think it was unlike rational wiki or something like that, they basically said, go out in your garden and try to build a waste high mound of dirt. He said, you're going to just naturally after even one or two attempts, start forming a pyramid of mound shape, and their whole jam. The whole idea is that pyramids

evolved independently just from trying to build a massive earthen structure. Yeah, and there you go. That's where pyramids evolved separately around the world. I was laughing because as soon as you said that, for some reason, I pictured you in your backyard, like covered in dirt, just screaming like you it's not going well, call somebody check the wrong besought the list doesn't hold up, and you mean he's like on her phone like what you Okay, you're cute, keep it up.

Uh So a pyramid um who wrote this one? Is this some Craig Freud and Rich PhD? Yeah, he's written some good ones for us. I've learned to not second guess his articles. You know, Yeah, No, he's he's good. And you throw a PhD at the end of your name, right, you're not allowed to second guess that. After that, how might just start doing that? Nobody checks, you know, call

me doctor Chuck Charles Bryant, PhD. Yeah, um, alright. A pyramid is a geometrical solid with a square basse, not necessarily and for equal our old triangular sides, the most structurally stable shape for projects involving large amounts of stone or masonry. Exactly, it's a very very stable shape. Yeah. And one thing I read that said why did the Egyptians build pyramids? The very easy answer is is because

that's what they knew how to build. Yeah, Well, they were good at it, and if they would have been better at building something else, they probably would have built something else. Well. Yeah, I think Also it took until um the well about the twentieth century before we started using materials and developed materials that you you could build a very tall structure out of that didn't require you build a pyramid, because you have to have a pyramid

to build something very high. When you're using something like stone blocks or something like that, you keep setting stuff on top of each other and it's going to become structurally unsound once it's all leaning in on each other, and the prevailing um sentiment among archaeologists and anthrop copologists to study this kind of stuff is that pyramids are ultimately the natural um conclusion evolution from just earthen mounds that they think originally were the first stabs at what

ultimately became pyramids, peaking basically at the Pyramid of Cufu. Yeah, and they I think there's also probably symbolic, uh, some symbolism going on with pyramids coming to a point towards the sky. Uh. In the case of Uh, let's say Central America with the minds and the Aztecs, there were more religious imples, so that it's okay for that, and if in case of Egypt, with being a tomb, it also makes sense that it would point toward the heavens well.

With each specifically, they believe that the symbols, the symbolism behind the pyramid is that it symbolized this mound that the earth was created from in Egyptian cosmology. Yeah, that

makes sense. Yeah. Um. So the other are a couple of other distinctions between Egyptian pyramids and let's say Central American is Central American pyramids were generally wider but smaller as I guess not as tall and um they built those over hundreds of years, whereas the Great Pyramids and Egypt were built over the course of you don't know for sure, but probably twenty or thirty years. So I

think that that's true in some cases. But I ran across something that that suggested that at umtan Um they would build pairs of pyramids like every twenty years. Yeah, So I don't know if it's the case across the board, but I think that they weren't quite the massive public works that Egyptian Pyramids came to be. Yeah. Well, in Central America, they were also more located in Aztec in mind cities, whereas the Egyptian Pyramids originally we're located away

from cities. And I remember, I think it was just last year that I saw that mind blowing picture of the other side of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. How the city runs right up to the front door basically, and if you ever look at an aerial of view, I've just never seen one until a year ago. I was like, Wow, I just thought it was literally in the middle of nowhere and there's a huge city just

right in front of them. Yeah, and well it makes sense though, if you think about it, especially if saying Mesoamerica, they were temples. Well, temples were for like public use, so you'd want it kind of convenient if you're pyramid was used as like a tomb. Humans traditionally bury their people slightly away from, you know, their city center, so it makes sense that it would be on the outskirts of Cairo rather than in it. Yeah, that makes sense.

The first tombs in Egypt for the pharaohs were just flat, boxy buildings. They called them mustabas, which is Arabic for bench, and then they started building those on top of each other sort of in the uh, you know, they get a little smaller, but they still remained flat on top. They didn't come to a point like a pyramid. Yeah, those were step pyramids, and they were the first attempt

at pyramids. And it's um, it's really strange because the whole thing was so these pyramids are so so old that you think of them just like being you know, spanning thousands of years in the way of construction and planning and all this stuff, and all the number of pharaohs that must have been involved when actually um, Egypt's Egypt's pyramids were built within a seven year period and basically just for like five pharaohs or so. Yeah, it's

not too bad. Yeah, it was like there's a burst and then nothing, and then another little bit and then nothing after that because it's hard labor. It was hard. Yeah, it was hard getting labor there. It was hard. Um, it was very expensive. It's hard getting those rocks there. And they also think, remember I said that um Cufu's pyramid the most famous pyramid in the world, the one as of the tallest one, Um that that was the

pinnacle of pyramid building. And they think that after that, as pyramids started to get smaller and something like that, totally unintentioned, they think that as pyramids started to get smaller, it actually represents a shift in Egyptian thought where worship went from worshiping the pharaoh to worshiping raw and other gods Um, so that the deification of the pharaoh diminished in size, and you can see that reflected in the smaller size of the literally. Yeah, interesting, that makes sense.

I never heard of that. Love it. I love it too. So the Great Pyramid of Cufu, which you just mentioned, is the biggest at a hundred and forty six ms high with a two d and thirty meter square base and oh, just about six and a half tons of rock six and a half million tons. What did I say, just six and a half Yeah, that would be that'd just be a couple of the rocks. Yeah. I think the average side rocks were two point five tons each.

The model was six point five tons, right, Um, And these things have stood at the test of time, to say the least. They have worn away some obviously, but look at them. They still look great. Yeah. And they were built like four to five thousand years ago. Yeah. What's really interesting that I didn't realize before was that when you saw these things, like in the first year that they were completed, or right when they were completed, um, they were blinding white. Oh really yeah, So you can

see like this, the step, the steppy outline. They used to be covered so that the sides and the pinnacle were smooth, totally smooth, covered in polished limestone. So it was like a gleaming white standing out against like the bright blue sky, which there were photographs of that. Yeah, it would have been pretty neat. But over time that limestone is eroded away or being removed or whatever. Um, And so now you can kind of see the substructure. But what we see is like the external sides of

the pyramid were actually meant to be covered with polished limestone. Wow. Yeah, but that was something else. And again we're talking about like how spectacular feet this this was engineering wise. Things were built, you know, forty years ago. Let's say, Um, the Cufu Pyramid, Cufoo's pyramid. He was a pharaoh. Um his pyramid was the tallest building in the world until the twentieth century. That's crazy. Yeah, I mean that just shows you that it was hard to build things tall. Yeah.

It's not like people didn't want to know. They wanted to. I think man is always uh. Striven Strove stroded Strove did strid to build things super tall, you know, uh, to really reach up to the heavens and punch God in the eye. Yeah, that's right, that's the that's why they want to build it tall. That's right. Uh. The very first stepped pyramid, Uh, the Sakara was completed in and that was for the pharaoh. Jo's Er not Gozer. It seems pretty close to that. It's so close. I

wanted to be Gozer. He would have been almost contemporaneous that gozer, I would guess. So this one had six levels and they tried, um, they attempted another one, another six level step pyramid, but that one didn't work out so well. So like you know, we're going to talk about a couple of that, you know, learning projects basically. Yeah, and you know you've heard a very famous um Egyptian

mathematician m Hotep. Yeah, he's actually credited with coming up with the idea of taking those mastabas, those bench like squat buildings and stacking smaller and diminishing versions of themselves to create that first step pyramid, that first zigaratte that that was his idea, and um Bubba Hotep, No, not that that was a good movie, m Hotel, m Hotep, I had no idea. By the way, that Bruce Campbell was doing an Evil Dead TV show. Is it on? Yeah, it's coming like it's super soon. I have no idea

how this escaped me. I had no idea either. Yeah, I'm pretty excited though it's just back. The only way it could be better is if it came on right after the Muppets up Pretty good Night. That'd be like the A Team Night Writer pairing. M hmm, was that well, I was back to back. I think they might have been. I was never in the night Rider, so I turned it off after it. I wasn't the Soups night Rider fan. But all right, let's go with Love Boat Fancy Island,

maybe the best two hour pairing in TV history. I never really watched the Fantasy Island. I loved Love both. I wasn't allowed to watch Fantasy Island. Well, no, I had the word fantasy in the title. We don't want that. Um No, I think it was. It was dark and it wasn't necessarily for kids. But now when I look back at it was so silly, Like, I can't believe I wasn't allowed to watch this. Well, the whole premise

of it is just fairly unbelievable. But at Mike Family they were probably like, no, it's it's all about sex. Everyone's fantasy will be about sex. And Ricardo montebon is clearly playing the devil. Yeah with this little, uh smaller minion. All right, uh? Where were we? Oh, we were talking about pyramids. It didn't work out so well. Another one was the I want to say medium, but it's the me edam pyramid or the medium. I've also seen it spelled emmy y do you m, which makes it easier.

It's like made him made him made um that was constructed seventy and it had seven steps, uh, heading towards eight, but it collapsed. It collap And then there's the bent pyramid, which didn't collapse, but they they basically just miscalculated the angle and it started to They basically had to change the angle after like the first third of it was built or two thirds was built. Yeah, So first we have dozers Gozer's um step pyramid in Sakara. That's the

first real inkling of that pyramids are coming. After that, we had the pharaoh um oh what his name, Snifferu Snifferu and Snifferi was the one who kept having really bad luck with pyramids, and it was because he was very ambitious, but he was also um dealing with architects and engineers who were still figuring this out as they were going along. So he had to put up with them. The one that collapsed the meat made him yep, and then he had to put up with the bent pyramid,

which still looks good. Did you look it up? Yeah, it's it's great, but you can tell, like it's not the way it's supposed to look perfect like, and I can imagine like a lot of engineers probably lost their lives with these failed projects because sniff Uru or snaff Au he was fine with like capturing people and forcing them to work, and he did a lot of underhanded things to build himself a tomb, and the problem was this failed attempt one how many decades did that take?

Failed attempt to how many decades did that take? Finally, and they're like really freaking out at this point, like if this guy dies and we don't have him a tomb, like like this is about as bad as it could get because I remember, we haven't converted to worshiping raw yet. This guy's are raw, so we're dis pleasing our god and we can see his expression just all I want is a straight pyramid like everybody else. So finally they

hit on it. They build him the Red Pyramid, and it is the first genuinely successful pyramid, and he died happy. I guess, yeah, And I assume wasn't tombed there, Yes, I think so, I don't know. I didn't run across that where he is. I Belu was otherwise that would have been I mean, what a waste of time. Well, that's the thing with these pyramids, we still um have very little understanding about some really important stuff. Yeah, and one of the reasons why is because they like in

Cufou's pyramid, Couper has never been found in there. They think it's Coufu's pyramid, but his body's gone. And I would guess probably the same thing for sniff sniff Au man, he's got a tough name to say, Tom Rador's buddy. Yeah, possibly probably. All right, Well, I think that you seriously wet the listeners appetite with that tease. So let's take a little break and come back and really get into Cufu. Al Right, buddy, we might as well just go to

the big daddy and break it down. Cufu, break it down for me, fellas k h u f U also known as Cheops. Oh yeah, yeah, that's what the Greeks called them. H So that's why the pyramids also called the Pyramid of Cheops. I've never heard that um part of the Giza pyramid complex. And like we mentioned, the big daddy of them all, uh, it was built for sniff AU's son Cufu and the other two little guys were built for Cafu son uh cofre and the grandson. Uh minkow ray. I'll bet it's manka manka ray. Yeah.

I think usually those vowels are split to like a different part of the word man Making any sense you are to me, But I know what you're trying to say, I speak chuck, that's right. Uh So it is um the largest and most elaborate in the one, you know, where we've learned the most from basically in its construction. Still has a lot of secrets, man, a lot of secrets, including how they built it. Yeah, no idea. Well, let's talk about the insides first. Let's sorry the guts. Uh. First,

you have your primary burial chamber. That's the King's chamber, and that's where the tomb is. That's where the sarcophagus is. Body in there. No, nope, What else is inside? Chuck? Um hieroglyphics that say tell stories of life at that time, right, you know, like little TV shows on the wall. Um. The queen's chamber a little smaller, but not for the queen.

Is that right? That's right? They call that a misnomer. Yeah, Um, Apparently people who stumbled upon it or entered it years and years on after the Faronic dynasties had died out um misinterpreted it and that when they were building this

they were worried that Cufu was going to die. So some of the first things they did were building burial chambers, and then as he lived in the pyramid kept going under construction, they built a newer, better burial chamber, and so there's ultimately three burial chambers, and he's in the king's chamber supposedly that's where a psychophagus is. That's right. Uh, you have weight relieving chambers. These are above the king's chambers and their structural um basically to distribute weight and

to keep everything from collapsing in on the king. Yeah, because that would be bad too. Yeah. They're like these long slabs and then there's a gable. So there's like long rectangular slabs. I think there's four or five of them maybe, and then a wooden gable is it wouldn't I thought it was rock. And the whole thing is it's like all that pressure that's pushing down towards the center of the triangle, it takes it and just kind of deflects it outward away from that hole in the inside.

The um, the pyramid, the feat of engineering. Um. The gallery is a big passageway with a vaulted ceiling. Um. Do you understand what the corbelled ceiling is? Yeah? So you know, like if you have a like a breakfast bar, those two things that come out and hold it up, those are corbells. So they had these things that are like corbell's going up and basically it says here that

forms like a primitive arch. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Um, you have passageways connecting everything because you have to get around. You have an air shaft where they think the uh, the spirit of those into him there would rise through to the heavens. I guess the ideas you don't want to fully enclose a tomb or a pyramid, gotta let the soul out, sure, but creep out what else? Well?

Of course the exterior rocks that have eroded away. Sure, and apparently the reason why we're quite sure that all these things were aligned with limestone rocks is because Cafres tomb uh Sneferus Snifferu's great grandson, there's still some limestone rock on the top. Oh nice, that hasn't fully eroded, man,

after all these years. Yeah, so these are the things that have been found over the over the years of exploring these pyramids, right, But what really kind of surprised me was that there's a lot of stuff that is still being found. There's a lot of parts inside of the pyramids that they're like, what is this or why is there a door in this passage with some copper handles? What's beyond it? Now? Is this because they haven't fully

excavated Yeah, okay, so they're still doing this. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The um I can't remember his name, but the former head of Egypt's antiquities before the revolution, um I can't remember. He's like super like science educator guy. They call him India Egypt's Indiana Jones. Okay, I thought you gonna say Neil the grass Tyson. He's like Egypt's Neil de grass Tyson. He could host Cosmos if you wanted to. He um he is. He's been walking around lately saying, hey, there's

plenty of undiscovered stuff in these pyramids. We have a very loose grasp the structure of them so far. Well, and it's tough to get in there to do the work. Um, I know the permitting process and is rigorous obviously, so it's it's it's hard to know. This guy we're gonna talk about later that has a new theory on how they're built, he's having a hard time getting in there to prove it. Yeah, but luckily they're starting to use robots more and more to explore it, and that's starting

to yield some some interesting stuff. Did not know that either. All right, well let's um, if you're gonna build a pyramid, Uh, you don't just say let's get a bunch of rocks and start going. Um. First, like any building, you need to do a survey and excavate the land. Because they learned pretty early on that you're the land that it's on, and the foundation is super super duper important. Yeah, that's I think one of the reasons the first one collapse

is because they didn't do the foundation right. It's got to be level and again it's kind of in part how impressive the cufu's pyramid is. What did you say, it's um it's base was it is a two hundred and thirty meter square base. Yeah, it's level within less than an inch. Yeah, that's remarkable. So you get the busier, the master builder involved. And they do have some theories

on how they did this leveling. UM. One was that they poured water onto the site, and water is the great leveler, and they would level the material above it, above that water line, wait for the water level to drain, I guess, and then just continue removing material until it was flat. Great idea. Yeah, and it's like, you know, self leveling concrete is way more soupy than uh, like regular concrete, because it's gonna find if it's watery, it's

gonna find its own level, right all right. Uh. And then another way that they may have done it is so they found that um their post holes at regular intervals of I think ten cubits, and a cubit is the distance from the your elbow inside your arm to the tip of your middle finger, so every ten of those there would be a post hole. And they think that possibly they laid out the foundation site as they were excavating, into a grid pattern and hung plumb bobs

from these lines. And that's just like a weight that looks like um, like an elongated brass top and it hangs down and where it hangs is the level point, and then you can excavate down to that that reference point, and then you know everything's level if all of your plumb bobs are touching the same ground. Yeah, and that's still like if you go to build a backyard fence yourself, you're gonna use these same techniques today. Right, it's pretty neat.

My money's on the water excavation. They they we already know that they dug canals from the Nile toward the Giza pyramid sites. Why not just built a little further and flood the area as needed to excavate. You know, that makes sense. That's that's a minus. But first, Chuck, they had to figure out because these pyramids are all oriented along um north south east west right. Yeah, they run parallel to these xs, so like they're there, I believe they're facing true north. This is pre compass, its

pre north star. Yeah, the north star wasn't even the sky there then. Um. Instead, they had to follow some of the circumpolar star and they were doing things like measuring shadows to calculate where true north was. And then once they calculated true north, they could use right angles to determine where uh, southeast and west were that's amazing. And then once they had that, then they had to start doing the planning out the site in a grid

and excavating everything down. That's right. Uh. Using cubits and hands was the other unit of measurement, which is, uh, you say something so many hands wide, it's the width of your hand with your thumb along the side. Yeah, And they still use that to um measure horses or to describe horse heights, like twenty hands high. That's a that's decent height with it's at a big horse or small horse hands. I think that might be like a giant freak of nature horse. Yeah. I usually here like

fourteen or sixteen. Hey, that's off to the triple ground winner, right, Yeah. American Pharaoh whoa which, by the way, Pharaoh was misspelled in his name, and they knew it early on, but they were like, well, we're just gonna leave it like that. Um so pharaoh. Yeah, pretty neat history. That was pretty great. Yeah.

I watched Um, I did watch that, and you know, I'm not into horse racing, but I knew what was coming on and I was like, well, it's only a few minutes, so I just don't watch any of the other stuff of the two hour podcast, and I just turned it on to hear that call. You know, it's always great here in a good horse racing call. That thing led the whole way. Yeah, there was really no doubt. And I love that jockey. Yeah, because he had he

had had several attempts right at the time. He raced California Chrome last year, so we had a shot at the Triple Crown and I couldn't pull it out. And this year he did good for him, all right, So I guess we should talk about how they actually build these things. Now, you gotta get rocks there, that's the first step. Yeah, and some of the rock did come from Giza, like the rocks. The pyramid structure itself is made largely of limes stone, and there was limestone quarries

around the Giza site. But they also had to get rocks from elsewhere. Yeah. The granite they think came up the river from a swan. They have alabaster from lux or basalt from the Phioum Depression, which I didn't see where the basil was used, however, it's pronounced by salt is it? I don't know, um, And of course you know they don't have iron at this point, so they're not using iron to cut. They're using copper and stone

cutting tools to shape these things. But you have to get them there, which is you know, I think of the neatest thing about the Pyramids is over the years is trying to figure out how they did it all because they didn't leave a record. Um, you know, it's just been this great mystery for architecture and archaeological nerds to try and figure out. Yeah. So the first step is like, all right, well, how did they get all

these rocks here to begin with? So? Um Again, these rocks were on average about two and a half tons per rock. Yeah, so they didn't just lift them and carry them. No, the Gypsies were familiar with the wheel, but the wheel would have been totally useless in the sand at Giza. Um, so they figure. I think the general sentiment of how they moved rocks, especially once from

local quarries at Giza was by sled and rope. And they had um, maybe ten men or fewer if they could um pull these uh two and a half ton rocks on sleds towards the site. So that's how they would have moved them from the quarry. If they were moving them from like lux Or or elsewhere, they would have put them on rafts. And again they dug canals from the Nile towards the Giza construction site. I bet

people loved being on that duty. Like the raft one well, yeah, like just get it on this barge and then float it. And the other guys were like, are you kidding me? I have to pull this thing on the sand sled. And then there's another way that um that they think. They may have put them on little quarter circle sleds, strapped them around it and just kind of twisted them like you would twist a beer keg. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense too. I would guess flat sleds. Although why

does it have to just be one or the other? Well, that was what I was wondering when I was reading this. It could have been a combination of methods. Yeah, Like these guys are sled masters, so let them do that, right. These guys have rolled a beer keg or two in their day, so they can try that method. They've also theorized about wooden rollers like logs and things. Makes sense. The only problem is is um Timber was not a

local commodity. Yeah, that would that would have been widespread enough to supply this thing, and it would have been very expensive well, which is another reason, because they have some super weighty timber on the interior of these pyramids, and they also have wondered about that. I think it's probably cedar from Lebanon. That's what I kept coming across that the would that they were known to have used was from Lebanon and it was cedar an e seater.

I bet that's good stuff. It was expensive back in the day. Um. So when it comes to actually building the pyramid itself, you've got so you've managed to get all the rocks here. Um, you know what, we'll take a break and we will talk a little bit about some of the competing theories right after this. All right, you got all your rocks. You're the foreman, you're the what's it called, the the visier. You're the visier on

site who, by the way, Cufu's visier was his brother. Yeah. Yeah, And if you were a visier, like you were pretty well respecting, you've got your own little step pyramid tomb yourself. Sure, So let's say you're that person. You've got your little hard head on. You've got all these rocks, how do you What are the theories they use like a pulley, they use a crane. Uh well, there are a lot of competing theories and they do involve cranes, they involve ramps, um,

and none of them have been proven. So let's talk about like the ramp. One man, they figured out that with a ramp you can't have when you're dealing with two and a half ton of stones. And this is from how to Build a Pyramid, which is from I think a two thousand seven article in Archaeology magazine. Yeah, Bob Bryer, it's really good article, it is. It's a great article. Um. But he points out that you really can't have a grade of more than about eight percent.

So if you're using a straight ramp leading up to the pyramid site, as this thing gets taller and taller and you eventually hit a hundred and forty six meters, to maintain just an eight percent slope, you would have to have a mile long ramp at that point. And they said that's not very likely because that would have

been just as big of an undertaking is building a pyramid. Yeah, it would have taken up about as along the build and the timber, like you mentioned a lot of timber, which they didn't have tons of, and they would have built built it up over time, because you can't just have a hundred and forty six ramp to start off with and then drop the blocks in place below. You would just slowly build up the ramp, but eventually it would just become too unwieldy to have a mile long ramp. Yeah.

And we're not the first people to question this. I mean, thousands of years ago, um people, historians were trying to figure it out as well. He wrote. He wrote it us Uh in four fifty b c. Said that they use machines, but no one really knows what he meant by machines a lot, but it could be a crane. Uh. And then three hundred years after that, Deodorus of Sicily said the construction was affected by mounds, which would be ramps. So that's why these are the two the two longest

standing competing theories. The problem is is these Greeks came along thousands of years after the pyramids had already been built. It's not like they witnessed the construction. They were just there their Yeah. Um, so with Herodotus or Herodotus, you know, I don't know. I've seen his name in print so many times, but I don't think i've ever heard it. I'd say Herodotus sounds good. Say that, um his idea of these machines that have been taken to mean cranes.

We know that the Egyptians were familiar with cranes and use cranes, and that you could use cranes to build a substantial portion of the pyramids. The problem is, as you got closer and closer to the top, the leads you were dealing with is say about eighteen inches, and you can't support a crane like that. So the they thought potentially that if they did use cranes, they use series of small cranes that would just kind of hand off like basically a bucket brigade of cranes handing off

one rock after the other. They were like levers, and they were called they use these are called shadoofs um and if you look up chadoof and image it there. They would use it to get water out of the river and stuff. And it's basically like just a lever that someone would pull on one end or will be waited and dip down into the water and then pull up a bunch of stuff with a bucket. I guess, yeah,

a bunch of good Nile River water. Yes. So, like you said, that theory is not very well excepted these days. The crane Yeah, well, oh not for completion at least. Yeah, and again like why just use one method if something makes this part faster and then you have to switch to this other part faster. Clearly these people had the

smarts to pull off this incredible feet of engineering. Um, So I would think that they wouldn't have tunnel vision and that they would probably be willing to use different techniques. So it's it's possible that the cranes were used to build the base. They'd have pyramid vision, right. Uh so with the ramp, so the big long ramp is probably out. Um, they had another theory that well, maybe it was like, um, a ramp that just wound up and around the pyramid like a mountain road is cut into the side of

the mountain. That sort of makes sense too. It is the big problem with that is that the mound outside of the pyramid covers up the corners as you're building it, and as you're building it. You really need to be able to measure the corners pretty frequently, because if you don't, then those corners may not come together at a point at top and SNIFFERU is going to be very mad, right, So that one, to me is probably the least likely

the external um ramps. That and co enclose the site agreed. Um. And maybe I'm a bandwagon ear, but I just read this article that you sent, and so I'm going with Jean Pierre Udine's theory that there were ramps, but there were an external ramp that was the need to be that long, and then once they got to the point where the grade was too much, they used that ramp, cannibalized it, and then had an interior ramp, yeah, to

finish it off, right. So Um, the thing about an interior ramp is that you would be able to leave the exterior corners exposed, You'd be able to build inside, You'll be able to keep it at an eight percent grade tops um, and you wouldn't have to build this huge, massive public work that was as big as the pyramid itself,

like a hundred and forty six mile long ramp. It would explain how you would build the whole thing without cranes, because you're just getting closer and closer and closer to the to the inside the interior of it as you're building up right. Yeah. Um, the only problem is, Chuck, is if there's an interior ramp, how would you possibly remove that? You wouldn't it would being closed in the site.

So obviously this has been debunked right, well now it hasn't, um, he believes and others have gotten on board that there is still an interior ramp in there. What But that was my question. Have they not explored enough of this to find this thing? No? Okay, And actually there was an nineteen six survey, but I think a French team, um, and there they found some anomaly that they couldn't explain,

so they just ignored it basically. And it wasn't until two thousand that Jean Pierre hu Dan's father, Henri hu Dan, who was an engineer himself, just happened to be chatting with one of these guys from the nineteen eighties six survey and um, the guy said like, yeah, there's this anomaly and he described it to him and basically what he described as far as the Udans are concerned, is this internal ramp. They're like, what is it? It's anomally, it's like a big looks like a big, well worn

ramp right seven degree slope. Who cares. But supposedly the way that they first discovered this was that a fox popped out of an undiscovered crevice or previously undiscovered crevice toward the top of the pyramid or halfway up, and they're like, how did this desert fox get up there? Probably did not climb all this way up. They think he probably went into an other undiscovered hole towards the bottom and then use the ramp and came out the top.

And that is further evidence that there's a ramp in there. Yeah, there is another little piece of evidence that they point to. Um there was a notch, a corner notch from the ramp used for turning the blocks, and it is exactly where two thirds of the way up on the northeast corner, right where Udine predicted there would be one if you were to use this kind of ramp piece, like, there should be a notch right there, And there was a notch,

but yeah, I think where the inside right, Yeah, pretty neat. Uh. And then finally they used um, something called micro uh grab immetry. It's a it's a I don't even understand how it works. Do you know? It's a surveying method. Yeah, it's magic, right, um. And basically what it does is it enables them to measure density. Yeah. So like if if you're measuring a part of the pyramid and it's

just solid rock, it's going to be very dense. If you find a part of the pyramid that's kind of this open tunnel like a ramp, it's going to be less tense. So I think that's where that's from that survey where they turned up the anomaly that they ignored. That's the impression. I have one other thing that um it was a very long standing myth thanks to our friends the Greeks, who just made stuff up apparently two thousand years after the fact, was that um, it took

about a hundred thousand slaves to build the pyramids at Giza. Yeah, mistreated um slaves, forced into labor, and it took a hundred thousand of them. Probably not true. No, Supposedly, thanks to h Harvard archaeologist Mark Laner, he conducted a two thousand to survey and he found evidence to quite the contrary. Yeah.

And then later on in two thousand and ten, um, just a few years ago, they found tombs of workers discovered, um, and they basically said, like the way that they were buried and entombed, like slaves would never have been honored in this way. There's lots of evidence they were really well fed. Yeah. They said that um, twenty one cows and twenty three sheep per day, um was what these

people were eating. So a lot of bread. They found evidence of, like basically industrial scale bakeries to bake bread for the workers. Oh huh. And there was evidence of basically permanent occupation there that said that there were probably between two thousand and four thousand workers on hand at any time, but that maybe thirty thousand total over the like the twenty years constructed the pyramid. Yeah. I saw the word. They had worked out somewhere between ten and

thirty thousand that worked in three month shifts. Uh. And they said, you know, while they weren't slaves, they said it was tough stuff, Like there was evidence of arthritis and bad backs and all the things inherent in pyramid building. Um. So it wasn't like, you know, it was easy going. But it makes sense that you know you, if you want these things built, you have to have a strong workforce, which means you have to take care of them and feed them. You know, ye, pay them, pay the payment

fish pay me. Yeah, that's what they said, ye at the end of every shift. That's right. So anything else? No, man, that's Egyptian pyramids. Uh. Yeah. If you want to know more about pyramids, type that word in a search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I said search bars, time for a listener, Mayo. I'm gonna call this Australian radio show. I was just talking about us. Did you see this? No? So that there's a show apparently the biggest radio show in Sydney called the Kyle

and Jackie oh Show. Did you see this or hear it? No? I haven't been to I flew through Sydney once for like ten minutes. I have a chance to listen to the radio. I mean, did you see the email? No? I didn't. Okay, that's the second time you made me admit that. Sorry. Hey guys, I've been listening to you for years and I adore you both. I also listened to the Kyle and Jackie Oshow, which is the biggest radio show in Sydney. That was a good thanks. I

love them too. I have to say that I'm quite disappointed in them because the female co host, Jackie, found out about your podcasts and took the piss on the air. And I think that's Australian for gave us a hard time. Um, gave us the business, gave us a business, and then proceeded to share the information you gave in a podcast if you want to hear it from the June eighth episode. Um, and it is a podcast as well, about twelve minutes in. It's actually about nine minutes in, and they talked about

us for about six minutes. What did they say, Well, Um, here's here's I hope JACKIEO was listening. You seem awesome, Jackie Oh, because she seems she's sort of made fun of us, you know that when nds and stuff like that, and that we just ramble. But she you could tell she was getting to the show because she even said, I'm starting to get addicted and she starts reciting facts from the show. Too late for you, JACKIEO. This Kyle guy is the equivalent of one of our morning radio

show hosts here in States. Does he have like one of those bike horns that he squeaks a lot? He might as well. He's he's like asking about the show, and she's like, well, you know, like how color works, and he's like, how cat I wax, Like, what do you mean? He said, pencil's yella, I want to buy a yellow pencil? Podcast over Oh yeah. That was like, clearly this guy's not on our team. Well, I don't want to he's I don't know, team Chuck. Okay, I

don't want to insult the guy. He insulted us. He certainly didn't seem to get it that there could be more to color than as a yellow pencil. That was a pretty good uh oh man, what was the guy? What was the band manager from Fly of the concordse name? Mary? Yeah, doesn't good Murray. I love that show. Kyle equals Murray, so h Kyle's just doesn't get it. Um he said it sounded awful. They played a bit of it, oh yeah, and talked about it a lot. I don't remember licensing

that to them. Well, and at the end she she basically said, you know what I'll do is keep listening. And then what they say in forty five minutes I can just break down for you, guys, and three or four minutes of bullet points. Okay, I'm pretty sure that Kyle and Jackie have just started in international flame war with us. Uh, so to continue the email. Oh yeah, they clearly don't get it, guys, So let me apologize

on behalf of your other Aussie fans. Uh. You guys have added so much to the quality of my life, and I credit you both forgetting me through periods of intense anxiety where I could not function without having you both in my head distracting me from my own thoughts. I can guarantee you Kyle has never been told that. No, I still adore you now that I'm better, and I can safely press pause sometimes without even hyperventilating. Thank you for all you do. Please never stop doing it. And

that is Laura. Thank you Laura. And she said, PS, I went on a date with a guy last week. You looked exactly like Chuck, and I have to admit that is the main reason I agreed to go. Did he sound like Chuck? Wink wink? Three? X is is that hugs your kisses? Uh? That is up for debate, But I say xes or kisses and ohs are hugs Yeah, asked her how the date went. She was like, well, I'm not going on a date number two, so it's like, well they can all be me right. We had a

good ill be chuck. We need a T shirt that says that they can all. Hats off to you, Jackie O, because you seem to get it, um clearly, my lady. Oh wait, Jackie Oh, I thought you were talking about no Laura. Laura definitely gets it right. Jackie O seems to get it. She's starting to it. Does not get it. I don't think Kyle ever will Man and I'm okay

with that me too. Uh. If you want to tell us about how somebody in your locality is talking smack about us or not getting us or whatever, or you just want to say hi, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff podcasts at how stuff works dot com and has always joined us her home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com