Re: Scientist Says Concrete Was Used in Pyramids

This entire thread seems to be a waste of time.
Limestone and concrete are very different things. They are easy to
distinguish.
If they cannot find examples of a particular limestone's composition
then they have not looked far enough. This is NO reason to attribute it
as concrete.

I can understand, if Egyptians had the know-how, that they might have
used concrete to infill, or block-off, BUT the thread suggests that
some of the "blocks" might have been concrete. Why on earth would they
make discete concrete blocks rather than shutter existing structures?
There is something fishy about this suggestion. It has the smell of an
attempt to credit Egytians with the invention of concrete long before
the Romans.




prd wrote:
In sci.archaeology message news:1hptr9z.1wa7yrk5lnywjN%
firstname@xxxxxxxxxxxx by firstname@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Florian) . . . :

chazwin <chazwyman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The whole thing seems fishy to me.
If the Egypians were happy with nearly all of their stones being
limestone why have a few concrete blocks included? Is there any design
morphological reason why this could have been useful. Where are these
particular "stones" found?


I can imagine that using concrete for unusual shaped/size gaps might
have been useful.

Barsoum thinks that the outer casing, backing blocks - i. e. outer skin
- inner casing and architecture and the top half are probably cast. I
guess that at a certain height, it was easier to move up the
reconstituted limestone in bucket than hauling 2-tons blocks.

Concrete is different from limestone how is it that he cannot tell by
looking.

Actually he says the opposite in his presentation available from Drexel
university (55 MB ouch!):

http://www.drexel.edu/univrel/media/pyramid.pdf

That presentation is full of picture of the stones. They are very
telling. It does also show the mineralogic proofs that some of the
stones were casted.

i precise that is not concrete based on sand. It is reconstituted
limestone from soft limestone riched in kaolin clay (easily disaggregate
in water). Therefore it is hard to make the difference between the
natural and artificial stone just by looking.


Just becasue the compostion ratio does not match other
limestone deposits is not a reason to say a bit of "limestone" is
concrete.


The difference in composition ration concerns the artificial cement
between the nummulites shells for details I suggest you to read the
presentation linked above.


He will need to find a bubble. Without vibration machines it is very
difficult to remove all bubbles from concrete. Show me the bubbles!

He actually found bubbles :-)
But it does not seem to be a valid proof since prd, in this thread, said
that soft limestone is not tighly compressed and contain bubbles. I
quote him from message
<IjMch.419212$QZ1.195813@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

"It is because soft limestone is the product of non-compression, take a
look at soft limestone the next time you get a chance, you will see
shells and air pockets between shells, etc. It is not compressed if you
look at honey-comb stone or cave stone you will notice a major
difference, there is almost no visible shells and no visible cavities.
This has result because one set of limestones was compressed over much
of the geological time frame, whereas the other was not. Because soft
limestone is full of air pockets. "


Anyway, that battle reminds me the fight between Cleland and Raushel in
the Enzymology field :-)
You have two opposed "schools" with radical point of view fighting
eachother. But most of the time the battle is pointless because the
truth is a mix of both views.

Well, I am not denying they may have used wet mortars. look at the distance
between stones, that is an awful lot of 'chaff' that chaff could have been
heated, treated, and used a mortar, mortar does not have to be strong. You
said the blocks were fragile an broke, also possible, but when they broke
they may have been recut for other uses or used for mortar. Nobody said
that the egyptians did not make 'cements' for use in their pyramid. The
argument is over the logic of grinding down "Obvious" attempts to make
stone blocks, and then to convert those blocks into a cement as a base
for a pourable concrete. I am not arguming about the egyptian fear of
making cements, I am arguing about your compulsion to interject unneccesary
diverticulations into the construction process when:

1. It is clear they identified a soft limestone they could could, dispite
its fragile nature at times.
2. A light limestone that was easy to carry and set.
3. The shape of the stones was such as to minimize cut energy, why do
you care if you are going to bash and wash the stone to aggregate.

You have avoided these issues like they are the plaque, and instead
focused on 'alternative' chemistry as your explanation.

That is excusive and evasive, now you are arguing I am an extremist.
Let me put it to you clearly, within the hypothesis testing there are two
key facts.

1. One theory is based on cubic structures with mortar infills.

2. one theory is based on reconstitution and the logic of filling
or internal (foirmative) design is not defined.

Therefore comparing hypothesis means energy minimization of
cubic production and construction. Reconstitution means energy minimization
of the disintegration and synthesis. Then we compare energies.
Making a mortar once a material has already, as a byproduct of something
else, formed is not the same as arguing that making an entire structure
of that byproduct is equally as feasible. Since the internal design of the
second is not designed by the hypothesis former, except by saying the
concrete was poured in place, leaves an open ended energy minimization
scheme. When you define the logic as to why they would have poured cubes
instead of slabs,etc and show evidence that support a formative nature
of the structure as opposed to a assemblative nature then we can have a
better energy debate.

Finally, anyone who works with concrete knows one basic fact, concrete is
poured into forms, the forms leave a tell-tale obvious marks on the
concrete, and includes air pockets at the margins and the visual appearance
of the grains of wood in the concrete itself and leaves a glassy appearance
in the edge, cut stone results an a granular or sandy appearance and no
wood grain markings and no formative airpockets (air pockets in soft lime
stoner are border by shell and other geological markers). IOW any fool
looking at afew stones would quickly be able to distinquish a poured stone
from a carved stone.

You have not addressed this basic issue.


In this case you have Lehner (and the majority of Egyptologists) on one
side who says pyramid stones we entirely made of carved stones.

That's bull***, most agree that some form of mortar was also used.

Davidovits on the other side says that the entire pyramid is made of
cast stones.

Have you ever seen anyone cast granite? You presented the sides, you
misrepresented one side, and the side you introduced has at least one
obvious flaw.

But now, we have Barsoum that says that the bottom part is carved while
the top is casted. The later is probably the closest to the truth.

Possibly true, in an energy minimization scheme since most of the mass is
on the bottom. But here again, if stone weight is a problem getting it to
the top, reduce the mass of the stone and use a different method.

You forget one thing, when close to the top you have more workers to add
much less mass, therefore more workers can be used to move each structure.
This can involved pushing and pulling very heavy stones up sharp angles as
long as you can use the pyramid itself as leverage.

Consider this, you are adding a wet concrete layer on layer, the the cement
is not strong and viscosity will increase as it dries, you are adding in
the center one wet block after another, eventually the weight of the center
will compress the lowest blocks and the center of the pyramid will sag.
If your concrete does not set quickly, what is the point, you have as the
pyramid gets higher more people waiting around for the previous layer to
dry.

.

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