How Were the Pyramids Built?

okay so we're going for a ride around the pyramids the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure for nearly four thousand years only surpassed by a large margin by the Eiffel Tower in 1889 one hundred and forty sevens meet up sighs yeah its climate how much what makes the pyramids even more impressive is that these structures were built over 4,500 years ago when Egyptians didn't have wheels or steel the only metal available was copper and copper alloys it took about two million stones to build that pyramid well I call them stones giant rocks somewhere between one and a half pyramids took about 20 to 30 years to make it's a long time but if you think about the number of stones a couple million stones in every pyramid you'd have to be laying a stone roughly once every three minutes if you consider a regular work day like a ten-hour 12-hour workday nobody know how they build it it's still secret but a lot of people do try to do the best to give you some information about how she did it but we must say it's secret the date and they take the signal of them nobody knows no plans survived to show us how the pyramids were built so perhaps it's not surprising that this is the subject of countless conspiracy theories involving aliens time travel or bloss technologies but there is a less far-fetched myth which has become widely accepted that the pyramids were built by slaves but recent discoveries suggest the pyramid builders were not slaves at all they were skilled workers well-preserved tombs near the pyramids suggest that their hard labor and sacrifice were rewarded if these workers have been slaves they would not have received such honorable burials but how did they actually manage to build the pyramids one of the things I find really interesting is that the Egyptians didn't know about wheels so they didn't really even use rollers as far as we can tell I mean these rocks would have been carted across the desert on sleds there's a famous diagram of this giant statue being pulled by a hundred and seventy two men and that that statue would have weighed somewhere on the order of 68 tonnes or something this would normally create a lot of friction but the sand was wetted in front of the sled experiments show this would reduce the pulling force required by half the internal stones of this pyramid are all limestone which is a bit softer and easier to work you can imagine them working it with those copper chisels that they had some of these blocks may have been actually sawed through using copper saws and he wouldn't think that copper could really cut rock but if you put an abrasive in there like the sand you could actually wear away the stone probably be a very difficult and labor-intensive job something that you don't really think about is that when you build a pyramid you need to build it on level ground you can actually see there how they had to level out that ground well it's speculated that when the Nile flooded they put the flood water into a channel and see where the high parts were so the inside was made of this limestone the outside of this pyramid was actually made of granite much harder stone I'm at the granite quarry in as one where they would have quarried the stones that were used in the pyramids at giza now that is an incredible feat because this is nearly a thousand kilometers away from Giza and when the now flooded water would come right through here so that they could move all the stones quarry adhere this granite they could move this back up to Giza and use it on the pyramids these would have had to been floated down on rafts now quarrying this would have been really hard granite is one of the hardest rocks because it contains quartz and quartz on the hardness scale is about a seven where diamond is a ten so how would you dig a massive trench like that basically the technique was just to smash the dollar right rock into the granite over and over and over again they would make about five millimeters progress per hour so there is no clear account of how the pyramids were actually built but the best guess is that ramps were used and in fact some ramps have been found on incomplete pyramids but you can't build just a straight ramp along straight ramp and keep putting the rocks up I mean the problem with that is the the ramp actually ends up taking up more material than the pyramid itself I think a ramp which sort of wraps around the pyramids is probably the most likely thing the top third of the height of the pyramid actually only accounts for about 4% of all the material in the pyramids that's why it's suspected that levers were actually used to finish off the pyramid to do the top levels now the pyramids have clearly weathered but in the past they would have been a brighter white because they would have used a white limestone to cover the whole face of that pyramid and then the very top may have been covered with electrum which is a mixture of gold and silver so if you can imagine that would be a pretty spectacular site the reason these pyramids are shaped this way is so they represent sun rays imagine what that would have looked like when it was first built with a shiny metallic top and smooth white finish on on all of those sides I think that would have been a sight to behold hey I hope you enjoyed that video I filmed it earlier this year when I was in Egypt now I'm currently in Melbourne Australia and tomorrow I am flying to the US in fact next week I'm actually doing a live show in Alabama with Henry from minutephysics Destin from smarter every day Brady Haran from numberphile periodic videos and sixty symbols and CGP grey from CGP grey yes he will actually be there in person so if you want to come and join us then check out the link in the doobly-doo you know on all of these long flights I always need something to help me pass the time and I know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow I will be listening to the brand-new audiobook from Bill Nye the book is called undeniable evolution and the science of creation and he actually narrates this book himself so I can't wait to listen to it and if you want you can download this book for free by going to audible.com/veritasium or you can pick any other book of your choosing for a one month free trial so I really want to thank audible for their support they've helped me go to all of these amazing places and they have hundreds of thousands of audiobooks so if you love audiobooks then you should definitely try them out so thank you for watching and hopefully I will see you next week

Channel: Veritasium

Views: 5,613,547

Rating: 4.8104305 out of 5

Keywords: veritasium, science, physics, Egypt, Egyptian Pyramids (Structure), Ancient, pyramid, pyramids, built, constructed, engineered, granite, limestone, Giza (City/Town/Village), quarry, rock, transport, nile, construction, slaves, ramp, khufu, khafre, Great Pyramid Of Giza (Tourist Attraction), Pyramid Of Menkaure (Structure), Pyramid Of Khafre (Tourist Attraction), engineering, ancient egypt, Egyptian Pyramid Construction Techniques

Id: lotbZQ55SgU

Length: 6min 31sec (391 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 05 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Jkuz]

I really liked how he explained that at one point they would have been painted or covered in white up to the top which then would have been covered in a gold coating. These pyramids are already incredible amazing to look at, I cannot fathom how beautiful they would have been. Makes me want to visit there!

[u/GlassGhost]

I'm not an expert, but I'm fairly certain they got the blocks to the top, the same way they got them down the Nile; floating on water. They must have got the rising water from ancient cattle powered sakiya pumps. The exact tools may never be recovered.

1 stone every 3 minutes, is darn impressive.