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When I look at pictures of the great pyramids in Egypt all I can think about is the tremendous amount of slave labor that would have been required to build those things (the pyramids were originally covered in white *polished!* limestone so it would glimmer in the sunlight). More than half the population would have been slaves to these crazy rulers who thought they were gods on earth. What the world doesn’t realize today is that when 90%+ of the global population is in debt up to their eyeballs with no glimmer of hope to ever pay off their rolling and ever increasing debts, we are living in a very similar situation. One difference between then and now is at least the Egyptian knew they were slaves.

owenkemeys 2y ago

‘Bout to blow your mind.

They weren’t built by slaves, most likely the brute labour was local farmers with little to do during the flood season. They were treated well. A lot is highly skilled craftsmanship.

They were masters with specialist tools which we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of, these monuments are not dumb piles of rocks.

The proof is in the work: you see signatures of extremely thin saw blades with FAST feed rates, so fast they overcut by INCHES - by hand that would be a whole day’s sawing. You see very high torque/low speed drilling, extremely precise surface and angle work, complex joinery. Painstakingly shaping very hard stones to mate perfectly to the naturally weathered surfaces of softer stones - completely ass-backwards, at least to us with our techniques.

Interior chamber layouts demonstrate complex knowledge of acoustics, possibly industrial chemistry and metallurgy.

This is not done by hand tools made from copper by simple people and it’s all probably MUCH older than ~4500 years.

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owenkemeys 2y ago

On some artefacts we see levels of precision close to modern CNC. For some of the biggest objects like the Unfinished Obelisk there is no organically occurring material that could be woven into rope strong enough to pull it. You need steel cables.

Yet these guys made and shipped these things 500 miles like it was nothing. Not to mention hauling them up out of the quarry beds in the first place. To do it today we’d need several of our largest strongest mobile cranes - think of the many complex layers of industry that exists to produce those cranes.

There is SO much more to Egypt than the narrative pushed in the history books. Proof of work all the way down.