this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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As a Stonemason, this shit always bothers me. Recent example was an article on stone henge. "Scientists still mystified as to how the stones were stood so that to caps were level!"
Mfr! Give me a straight piece of wood, a length of string and a rock, I will make you a basic level. Don't want to lift the stone in and out multiple times to adjust the level? Get logs and cut them to the same length as the upright stones. It's not fucking rocket surgery!
Trying to picture how you do this with those. Brain is stuck on hanging rock from wood with string which feels like I'm going the wrong way
I swallowed my rock, can I be excused?
No you have to act as the string now so start dangling.
Drafting* class taught me that you can build any structure with just a T-square, a compass, a pencil, and some basic math.
*As in the precursor to Computer-Aided Drafting. My school was cheap and didn't let us use AutoCAD till the 2nd semester.
But anyway, place the straight piece of wood across a gap. One end of the string goes around the middle of the wood, the other end hangs down where you tie the rock. You can visually tell with decent enough accuracy if the rock is hanging closer to one side (not level) or just straight down (level). If you can't tell, get a longer string.
The pyramids at gizeh predate most of that. They predate algebra by some 800 years.
Of course, despite Pythagoras not being born for some 2000 years, they DID have Rope stretchers to create square angles. They also had square levels and plumb bobs for making straight blocks and level surfaces.
You don't even need maths, just rope and gravity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
"From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, followed closely by Ancient Egypt and the Levantine state of Ebla began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for purposes of taxation, commerce, trade and also in the patterns in nature, the field of astronomy and to record time and formulate calendars."
The first "true" pyramids were not built until ~2613. Prior to that it was all step pyramids, which are much less complex - just put a bunch of consecutively smaller squares in a stack. Even then, Djoser was started in ~2670, several hundred years after the "introduction" of basic math. Just because we don't have extant physical mathematical texts surviving from that time doesn't mean they didn't know how to do math.
Yeah dude, I took a drafting class way back in HS (really enjoyed it), yet have maybe seen three drafting tables since (and I'm in a field that would have previously had countless).
I know that stuff was basically immediately made obsolete by CAD and what not, but there was always something relaxing and meditative about sitting down at (or standing if you so choose) a drafting table, armed with nothing but a pencil, an eraser, a T-square, a protractor, and a couple plastic triangles, and coming up with some really impressive looking shit with perfect perspective.
If I had the room for one, I'd def get a drafting table... lol I'd probably end up using it to hang wet clothes on to dry.
Think your school was cheap? My school only had CAD on 3 machines and you had to take 4 YEARS of drafting courses to be allowed to use it, I graduated in 2012… this shit wasn’t new tech at that time lol
That's actually all there is to it.
Out the stick where you want the thing to be level, and hang a rock off it with string.
The rock hangs straight down. Adjust what the stick is sitting on until the stick is perpendicular to the string.
It's not the most accurate or easiest to use tool we have available today, but they're still used for vertical alignment.
It's one of the oldest tools we have. Hasn't really changed since they were used during the building of the pyramids.
And Wikipedia says they were used in ancient Egypt, so it's particularly relevant.
The rock and string, with help from gravity point down to the ground. If angle between the stick and string isn't 90°, then it's not level.
So I DID visualize it right, but forgot about angles
Hey, it was (I assume) Monday. You can be forgiven for forgetting about angles on a Monday.
I'm just imagining rocket surgery. It's dope.
Yeah people simply can't fathom that people in the past were just as intelligent as people are now. They just didn't have quite as much technology as we do now. Also people tend to think of technology as being magic and don't actually understand the underlying science that makes that technology work was the same in the past.
This results in weird ideas about how something isn't possible without a laser level or whatever.
And people tend not to think about skill being a factor. Probably many of the skills you have as a stone mason aren't too different from the skills people had in the past. Sure there's some technology you have available to help you now, but a larger part of it is just skill gained from experience working with stone that's completely independent of technology.
FUCKING THANK YOU!
For instance, yes I use grinders and saws to cut big pieces of stone into smaller pieces so they fit where I need them, but I was taught how to do all that by hand as well. Sometimes you don't have power or petrol, but the shit still needs to go up!
And the way we do things now is just a continuous evolution from how we did it then. I don't have to sharpen my chisels every 30mins because we have better materials. I don't have to break a giant billet of stone into manageable sizes(I can though) because a shop does it for me. And almost all of the old tech is still in use, albeit in a new form or in new materials.
Wire/string friction sawing has been around for millenia....here's an example of a new bit of kit.
Yeah a lot of technological improvements aren't really changers, they just make people more productive at their jobs.
My brother is a plumber and his biggest annoyance is people that think "if I had your tools I'd be able to do your job." Nope, that's not how things work at all. Weird how some people think technology makes skill obsolete.
Exactly! I used to do solo jobs, and it's shocking how many people balk at my (legit very reasonable) rates, and say things like: well you're just piling up some rocks.
Well axshually that's a plumb bob.
Right you are, but 99% of people would be all: don't you Bob for apple? Why Bob for plum?
I don't know, but why are we judging Bob for the fruit he likes?
Y'all seem to understand one another, but I'm lost
An apple bob is a children's party game where a bunch of apples are floating in a basin of water and you have to try to get one out only using your mouth.
It's really gross as all the kids are just slobbering over all these apples together. Terrible for germ spread.
Anyway it's not done with plums though, which are a kind of fruit and different from the word "plumb", which means vertical. So it's a play on words.
And a plumb bob is a very basic level where you attach a weight to a string, and that string to a flat thing. Wikipedia says they were used at least in ancient Egypt, so it's particularly relevant.
Oh, so that's plumbum, lead ? I should have guessed from the french fil à plomb ≈ string with lead Cheers !
Thanks ! I had no chance of unraveling that on my own. Appreciate it
I'm not bob, guy.
One day we'll find a way to stop making rockets out of human organs.
One day, but not today!
MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAAA!
I always took it to mean that organic rockets are harder than rocket science and brain surgery put together, which is why we don't have them yet.
The thing is, its not about a single rock being precise. Its a 2 million ton monument that we are told is a tomb that was built in like 20 years. Thats about 1.7 million pounds per day, every day. It would take our trucks a fucking insane amount of time just dragging it into position, how did they have the time to cut it as well? For a tomb??? Somehow I feel we are not being told the whole story here...
No, it's totally about a single rock being precise. That's the name of the game son. If you don't get the first stone precise, you can't get the second one in precise. And there's loads of different ways to move stone without trucks. I work in a conservation setting, and we use modern machinery as little as possible. If these scholars would bother asking anyone with actual experience in the field they'd get some answers to their questions.
Also what's with the Ancient Aliens bs at the end there?
From britishmuseum.org:
From Wikipedia:
Each stone weights around 25 tons and I found this helicopter that can carry 33 tons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_CH-53E_Super_Stallion#Specifications_(CH-53E). So we could easily build this today. Probably wouldn't take long at all.
What? First i am not arguing that we could not do it. Second stonehenge and the great pyramid are completely different levels of complexity. Third, i know machinery can lift heavy things, the point is even with machines its difficult to do this stuff. How'd they get by with zero machines? In the timeframe mentioned above? For what purpose
This fragment explains how they could have done it:
My point was that it's not difficult with modern machines at all. But it can also be done with the methods described above. Especially if you work on it for 1500 years.
Building a heli is easy? Also rolling 30 tons for the fun of it is not something people usually do
Maybe they did it to summon the aliens. Or maybe for the same reason we build expensive churches. Like this one that we have been building for 142 years and it's still unfinished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia