Category Archives: Ancient Technology

Egypt, Light Bulbs, and Dim Bulbs

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I’m sure if you’re the kind of person that has a sustained interest in the sort of thing I cover on this blog you’ve heard about the “evidence” for “light bulbs” in ancient Egypt. Or perhaps you just watched the thousandth or so re-airing of Ancient Aliens on the Fantasy (er, History) Channel and you found me on the web in your erstwhile search to validate this amazing find. (If that describes you, you should hit the BACK button now).

Here’s a short treatment of the Egyptian light bulb nonsense. Comparing other depictions of (low and behold) other Egyptian materials shows they ain’t light bulbs.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, and knowing of its commitment to the truth, I expect the History Channel to contact me any time to appear in their next special.

Or maybe not.

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Building the Pyramids – It’s Not a Mystery

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Well, it’s that time of year again. The Ancient Egypt class that I teach at the local university is set to begin on Wednesday.  I devote a full week to pyramids.  The articles below are part of the readings.  Two of these have appeared on this blog before, but the ones by Isler and Lally are new.  I have students read these because I don’t want anyone leaving my classroom thinking aliens were needed for pyramid construction. Absolute paleobabble.

Fitchen, “Building Cheops’ Pyramid” – Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Mar., 1978), pp. 3-12

Isler, “On Pyramid Building” (Part 1) – Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 22 (1985), pp. 129-142

Isler, “On Pyramid Building” (Part 2) – Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 24 (1987), pp. 95-112

Lally, “Engineering a Pyramid” – Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 26 (1989), pp. 207-218

Isler, “Egyptian Methods of Raising Weights” – Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 13 (1976), pp. 31-42

Isler, “An Ancient Method of Finding and Extending Direction” – Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 26 (1989), pp. 191-206

And when someone asks, “well, how come those guys on NOVA couldn’t build a small one – huh?” the answer is simple: “that’s because they were inept.” These articles are written by people who actually understand ancient engineering, not NOVA scientists who want to be on TV.

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Using Google Books to Combat PaleoBabble

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I mentioned a while back that I was reading a book called Building in Egypt. It’s about construction and masonry techniques in ancient Egypt. I’m still hitting it (among other books) a few pages here and there. But the thought struck me today that I could share some of it with you all via Google Books. For those unfamiliar with Google Books, you can see a lot of the content of books on the site — even those under copyright. You can navigate to specific chapters, so it’s better than Amazon’s viewing (even though you may not always get all the pages). Let me suggest that you peruse Building in Egypt. You can see specific examples of ancient texts and artifacts that enlighten us as to how Egyptians did what they did, without the aid of aliens!  For example, if you go to chapter three the author discusses a mathematical text that deals with Egyptians moving large stones by water barges on the Nile. No UFO transport required for the long trip. There’s another such book that goes into these sorts of issues as well entitled Architecture and Mathematics in Ancient Egypt. Have a look!

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Alien Technology Not Needed in Britain, Either

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Boy, the ancient aliens just can’t catch a break. Now a researcher of Stonehenge and Britain’s other famous bluestones has discovered a workable technology for moving huge stones with the materials available to the prehistorical humans who erected megalithic sites.

2011 isn’t starting well for ancient astronaut acolytes.

Ancient Mayan Temples Designed as Giant Loudspeakers?

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I can hardly wait for the paleobabble-sphere gets hold of this one. No, archaeologists haven’t discovered ancient electronics in the Mayan temples. This article is about how the positioning and certain architectural features of Mayan temples may reflect a knowledge of good acoustics (as opposed to a good knowledge of acoustics). This shouldn’t be a surprise. Acoustics (the fact that the human voice carries better in certain places and under certain conditions) is something that can be learned by experience and experimentation.  But duplicating it takes some smarts. No aliens needed, just smart humans.

But just wait — I would bet my paleobabble library that talk shows that cater to this sort of thing will have “researchers” on that will tell us the temples were designed to communicate messages from the space gods. Or maybe they designed the temples that way so everyone could here “we’re all going to die tomorrow!” on December 20, 2012.

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Pyramid Building Blog

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I’m sure you’ll all want to check out the Em Hotep blog.  There is a series on how the pyramids were built that is just starting. If you go to the link for the latest entry, “Hemienu to Houdin,” to the right there is an earlier post or two to catch up.  Should be interesting, and looks well illustrated.

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New Evidence for Concrete Pyramid Blocks

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This is pretty cool. At the risk of repeating myself, my view is that there is no *one* theory that accounts for all the pyramid construction methods. I see no reason why Houdin’s internal ramp theory cannot be working alongside a counterweight method, alongside a concrete method.

Can’t wait until some internet “researcher” finds the recipe for concrete in tablets given to humans by extraterrestrials!  Those poor, stupid Egyptians. Can’t do anything without their alien nannies.

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