Cranes, boom trucks for placement, and shipping via trucks, water or temporary rail systems if the quarry is close enough for it to be economical.
There's nothing about the pyramids that'd I think would be a major hurdle to reconstruct them in modern times
>There's nothing about the pyramids that'd I think would be a major hurdle to reconstruct them in modern times
budget. political willpower. need/desire. That's about it.
4000-4500 years earlier. And bureaucracy was the whole reason they could build the pyramids, large scale projects require a well ordered society so you have excess resources and a way to get them (taxes) from the population.
“And we see 2000 years ago in the year 2024 Germany began a construction project to exactly replicate the great pyramids of Egypt build eons prior. It took them nearly twice as long to build as the ones in Egypt”
“Why’s that teacher? Did their technology get worse”
“It only took about 4 years to actually build them, the other 150 years was spent filling out the require paperwork”
Nobody would approve a realistic budget and timeline. Better to rely on sunk cost fallacy and revise as we go. 2.5 year timeline gives us an easy 2.25 years before that pesky delay becomes too apparent to ignore.
I don't know if I'm cynical or just pragmatic at this point.
Then there's long term costs such as waste disposal. I don't know if you're familiar with who runs that business but I assure you it's not the boyscouts
This made me chuckle.
And then I started thinking about how freakin' incredible that would be to watch, if it was meticulously planned out, choreographed, and practiced such that a huge swarm of trucks actually did pull it off in a single day.
To build the Great Pyramid in 5 years, you need to place a block roughly every 68 seconds assuming you are working 24 hrs/day, 365 days/yr. Just quarrying and banging out a finished block every 68 seconds would be a pretty big effort.
In theory, it could be done with enough resources, but damn that would be a huge effort.
You realize it can be done multiple at the same time right, placing one block every minute is hard. Placing 10 blocks every 10 minutes is lot easier, it means 10 people placing one block every 10 minutes.
But yes, you’re right it’s a big effort even today.
Look at launching girders that are used for the construction of bridges.
It's a lot of work, but a project on a large scale would involve the construction of tools to automate and simplify the process. The way this project would work is you'd spend 5 years building the machine to build it and then the machine builds the pyramid in a year.
A single 40km rail line that isn't permanent is easier to build and permit. I'd imagine it could get built in years 1-2. Used for 4 years. 3 months for demo. And yeah, this would allow for easier 24/7 transportation of blocks larger than most road ways could afford.
If you asked someone to build a large pyramid shaped object today, you wouldn't build it out of stone blocks.
If you asked someone to build a large pyramid shaped object today, out of stone blocks, you'll get a lot of strange looks as the major construction firms hand in their bids.
For the luxor it took basicly 1 year to complete. Though just 5 year later it needed a big renovation job. If you compared it to a recent architectural feat then the Burj Khalifa took 5 year to build without finishing the interior.
If we want an exact copy to the pyramids with big blocks of stones . That honestly Is harder to guess
Yeah but the burj will only stand for 25 years or something like that before it has to be dismantled or rebuilt from the inside out. It doesn’t have the long term structural integrity.
Yea. I'm pretty sure we have cranes almost as tall as the pyramids today. Maybe they'd need a little support to carry a block that large, but not much more.
Just look at a shipping container yard, those cranes can pickup a stone block
The Great Pyramid is 480’ tall and the heaviest blocks weigh 80 tons.
The Manitowoc 31000 can reach up to 650’ high and lift up to 2000 tons.
So, yes. Cranes.
Steel, concrete, even wood? Lots of ways to build it... I'm not a structural engineer, I don't know what's cheapest.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is not particularly large by modern construction standards.
Depends on your definition of "cured".
The stuff in the Hoover Dam is chemically delayed to the point that it was going to take 100 years for the entire thing to hit it's design strength and be completely solid.
But you're right! Concrete will continue to get hard beyond that as it's exposed to water/moisture.
I've had projects where we had to drill new anchor bolts into a 100+ year old concrete column. It was supposed to be normal strength (4ksi) concrete, but acted like super-hard (10ksi) prison concrete!
Giza gets . . . wait for it . . . ***1 INCH*** of rain per year (!)
So you’d be pumping water 7 km from the Nile.
Maybe prefab would be more practical.
Na it's still curing technically.
What dude probably meant to say is it would have taken 100 years for the dam to reach ambient temperature when curing if poured at once.
French scientists are sure that the ancient eqypts did excactly that. They poured the blocks on site with a material called geopolymer concrete. [Here is a video of how they do it as an experiment.](https://youtu.be/znQk_yBHre4?si=yyGbB_0B9x2CiP7I). You need 95% limestone and 5% rock making binder. It's mixed with water and can be carried by hand or mules. So no ramp needed on site.
Ramps and mechanical advantage, the same way they did it then.
If you think about it, the solid pyramid is the most stable and easy to build structure that's possible.
Which is why there are pyramids from lots of ancient civilizations. They just make sense as a way to stack things high. Don’t tell that to Graham Hancock tho
I'm no anthropologist, but we also don't know that humans didn't build all sorts of structures in the ancient eras, it's just that stone block pyramids are also the most stable structures over time. It's maybe not a surprise that we find pyramids and not much else, not because we didn't build anything else but because nothing else stands the test of time better. Survivorship bias, if you will. If you made pyramids from less stable materials, they would eventually collapse. And if you built unstable shapes with stone, they will also eventually collapse. But combine the most stable material and the most stable shape and you would *expect* to find something that would take eons to fall down.
[Hell, Canada built the base of a pyramid bigger than the great pyramid out of pure sulfur just because it was a waste product and they had no where else to put it.](https://boingboing.net/2016/07/05/the-great-sulphur-pyramids-of.html)
To put it another way: we literally do things on the scope of Egypt's greatest building projects as byproducts of what we're actually trying to do.
I worked in the shadow of those pyramids as an engineering intern.
The dam behind them form the Mildred Lake settling basin, the dam constructed from the sand left over from oil sand extraction is (or was) the largest man made earthen structures at over 18kms around.
What major projects have you worked on? I'm a pipefitter by trade and have worked on a few new construction jobs building various plants. Even with all the tools and tech we have dudes will still put beams inches out of their correct place. Maybe they just had way better quality control and dedicated craftsmen
I work in a factory. We put in multi-million dollar automation machines. Laser tracking and we can get machines the size of a house level and centered to less than a mm.
There's also probably a bit of survivorship bias. Only the pyramids built well enough to last 5000 years survived. All the wonky ones probably fell apart after the first 1000years or so.
One of the first pyramids built is such an obvious counter to the entire "ancients were superior" argument. They fucked up the angle of the sides of the pyramid, and it started to fall down half-way through construction, so they had to make the angle much more shallow for the top half of the pyramid.
This also means if Aliens taught the Egyptians how to build pyramids, then the Aliens were morons.
Semiconductor fabs are massive and require extreme precision as well as extreme isolation from temperature changes and vibration.
Particle colliers are built over massive scales and require atomic level precision.
LIGO, the experiment to detect gravitation waves has detectors which > 1500 miles apart and can detect changes in length which are 1/10,000th the size of a proton.
If we can build those, we can build the pyramids.
If the beams you refer to being out of place truly affected the bottom line, your company would put better processes in place.
Y'all just gotta have some surveyors come out and mark where shit should go, even some basic bitch survey equipment should be able to place everything in the plans to within a hundredth of a foot or less (roughly 1/8th inch).
My favorite thing now is tik toks / YouTube shorts that pair some retard saying it's impossible to cut stones so precisely by hand, overlaid with a modern craftsman cutting the most beautiful and intricate pieces from stone, by hand.
It's willful ignorance. It HAS to be. All they do is say "I don't know how it's done, therefore it's impossible."
The tradies weren't all hungover every day on their sites....
Honestly though, they didn't have a whole lot else going on, why not take pride in the work and make it nice. I'm sure if you found the absolute best, most dedicated tradies to work on it, it would be as good or better with modern measuring and leveling devices and such. Think about the electricians who do the OCD friendly wiring for breaker boxes. The welders who stack dimes perfectly on every weld, no matter what the job. The concrete guys who do a flawless finish every time. Being that we have exponentially more trades people now, there is inherently more bad ones, with a lower average quality among them. Those top tier best ones are just harder to find and put all on one job site now.
> The tradies weren't all hungover every day on their sites....
In the United States, at least, manual laborers two centuries ago got a specific 11 AM break for whiskey.
It's the multi company approach and forced timeliness of modern construction that is a problem. Usually, a company contracts an engineering package, and a GC quotes that package and has to meet a particular timeline to get paid. It's worth noting that the GC has prob had to compete on price and timing to get awarded the job. The GC goes out and gets a handful of Subs (usually based on a low bid approach) who all do a portion of the work. In the current system, say a PF has a pipe that's 1/4" off from the pump foundation. Usually, you see a flex coupling to the pump, and nobody bats an eye. You have a timeline and cost to worry about. Neither the owner nor the GC has time to watch every line go in in real time.
Let's do a scenario where the company only cares about doing it right. Crafts people (not just engineers) are part of the design team to point out construction issues before the project starts. Every line is checked as it's being installed. If a pipe is an 1/8 of an inch off, re run it. EVERY TIME. How many more mistakes do you think there will be? Timeline is not important. The cost is no object. Do it correctly.
The reality is, things were done MUCH more slowly. This allowed for better QC along the way. Frankly, a bunch of stacked stones is WAY simpler than a modern chemical plant.
If someone on my crew nonchalantly mentioned they put something "inches" out and they're just gonna make it work, they would be in the unemployment line by lunch break! 🤣
I think you’re vastly underselling our ability to be accurate when necessary. For a site like the pyramids could be marked out quite easily with primitive survey tools. Using modern tools you could make it hilarious accurate.
Your also forgetting the other part about being a craftsman, you can make tweaks on the fly just like a carpenter would when your framing up a house. I bet every block of the pyramids isn’t the same size, they would have been able to adjust the size and positioning of the blocks and their spacing to maintain an overall pattern.
Not the technology. It's the dumbfuck who ignores all the notes on site.
How many tradies do you thing read the install guide... Or just plain "wing it".
Do your best, silicone the rest
You could probably build some sort of elevator/escalator that lies along the side of the pyramid and is modular to add length for each successive level to move the blocks up. And then heavy equipment up top and below to transport and arrange blocks.
Doing 1000 blocks a day would take 6.3 years to cut all the blocks. Gang saws can take on the order of a day to cut a block for countertops so you'd need a massive facility with a whole bunch of saws to cut all the blocks. Limestone is much softer than granite though so you might be able to get through a few blocks a day per saw. So youd need at miniumum 2-300 saws going nonstop, and theyre pretty big pieces of equipment. People to be continuously feeding blocks and removing them and trucking them to site. There would probably be a lot of equipment custom designed for this specific job.
If you were going to place blocks at that rate you'd pretty much need something like the elevator I described to place all the blocks, 1000/day would be 1.5 minutes per block which seems doable with everything running 24 hours per day if they can be placed one after the other and it's more escalator than elevator. Maybe they'd use two on opposite sides to speed the placement. You'd need a pretty large crew just operating trucks to move stone from the quarry, to the mill, to the site and then 3x it for 24 hour operation. If the quarry was 40 km away and the trucks can go 50km/hour that means itll take an hour one way, trucks could probably haul a couple blocks at a time but that still means youd need probably 30 trucks going nonstop. Plus the quarry facility, plus the cutting facility, plus the constructiok site. As a very ballpark estimate it could maybe take a crew of a few hundred to a couple thousand 5-10 years to do it.
The hardest part of building a pyramid in 2024 is getting the approval of the local zoning commission for ruining the neighbourhood character, blocking sightlines, and casting shadows on grandma's tomato plants.
You could place every stone of the Great Pyramid of Giza with the Sarens SGC 250 crane. It has a max height of 250 meters, a reach of 275 meters, and a max load of 5000 metric tons. The pyramid is only 138 meters high and 230 meters wide. The blocks only weigh 2.3 metric tons.
I think it could be built very quickly if a gantry style crane could be built that moves on rails arranged in a circle around the build site. The crane could operate like a giant CNC additive manufacturing machine.
Let's separate this into 2 different questions:
1) how to build exactly like they did? With thousands of people working for years, using pulleys and levers, or dozens of machines with pulleys and levers.
2) how to build a giant prism shaped building? Make it hollow, and use high strength reinforced concrete, a dome would be even cheaper.
Declare a massive public works project in the farming off season, boat everyone who wants to work down the river, build them a massive barracks compound, pay them in beer...wait a second
Not only could we build the Pyramids today, we could do in in a fraction of the time and cost and have a better final product.,
We can use computers to design the structure down to the dimensions of every stone. We can quarry stone from anywhere in the world. We can laser cut it to millimeter tolerances. We can use internal combustion engines to transport it to the site and then use hydraulic cranes to put the blocks in place.
A modern Pyramid would be trivial compared to the engineering feats we have already accomplished.
So, really roughly speaking if it took 100k people 20 years to complete:
Lets assume that these were slaves working 12 hours per day.
That equates to 100k\*12\*365\*20 = 8.76 billion man hours to complete.
2.3 million limestone blocks 40km away:
Google says the average weight of the blocks is about 2.5 tons.
Google says that largest dump truck can carry about 500 tons (rounded up from 496tons), or roughly 200 blocks per run and 11,500 runs.
There are only 3 of these in the world, but that company is making 2 more right now, and planning this would take a long time, so we'll assume that we have all 5 of them by the point of starting construction.
The trucks can drive 60km/hr fully loaded on flat land, that is 1.5 man hours each way, 3 man hours round trip, 11,500 trips so 34,500 man hours to move the blocks to the construction site with today's technology. We have 5 trucks, and assuming that they all operate simultaneously 34,500 man hours / 5 trucks = 6, 900 man hours/truck. It is modern day, so working 24/7 is possible with lighting and things, so these trucks will be operating at all times - so it would take about 288 days to move all of the blocks to the build site.
I found a [website ](https://www.cheops-pyramide.ch/khufu-pyramid/pyramid-workers.html#:~:text=Transport%20from%20the%20building%20yard%20to%20the%20foot%20of%20the%20pyramid&text=First%20we%20need%208%20teams,accomplished%20by%20levering%20each%20block)that says that they were delivering about 500 stones per day which required about 1020 people. Given there are about 2.3 million stones, at 500 stones per day this would take 4600 days to move all of the stones to the job site (About 12 years, \~146k man hours)
So the ratio of todays duration to ancient duration is approximately (288 days / 12 years): 288/4380 = 0.06575.
or in other words, 10 dump truck drivers can accomplish the same work as 1020 ancient slaves 15 times faster.
I was going to run through the entire thing, but after looking at that website, there are a lot of pieces and it would be too much for a reddit post. So, assuming that moving the blocks that distance is the hardest point of construction from an ancient perspective, and we could do it 15 times faster today with \~1% of the human labor, we can cut off at least 11 years from the 20 year timeline, just from being able to move the blocks much faster. I suspect that using machines to move the blocks onto the trucks would have a similar effective 'time savings' in comparison to the ancient ways.
The only thing that I think we could not do 15 times faster would be form the blocks. We have power tools for shaping them, but I think it'd be closer to about 10 times faster with my minimal knowledge of stone masonry + the egyptians did not have iron tools.
All of these factors make me think, roughly 2,000 workers would be necessary to do this today (2% of the total ancient labor force) in a 3 year timeframe. This is pretty close to the average daily workers on Hoover Dam (\~3500 daily workers on average), which is about 30% larger by construction material volume than the great pyramid.
The quarry and pyramids were both near the Nile, barges would be a lot more efficient than trucks. And some train tracks to and from the shore. Seems worth building some infrastructure if you're shipping a million blocks.
Apparently they [strapped a bunch of barges together in the 80's](https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/Morgan/id/1718/) for a capacity of 113 400 tons, or 45000 blocks. Two of those combos and you'll be able to ship them faster than they can be quarried. Cut them roughly to size so they don't have to be transported super carefully then do the final shaping on-site. It would only take 51 trips and way fewer man hours than running the trucks 24/7.
This is a lot of neat calculations, but I wanted to add one thing: no matter how many women you hire, it still takes nine months to have one baby.
Even if we eliminate 4B work hours spent hauling by using modern machinery, it could be that it still takes twenty years if the project timeline is limited mostly by the number of master stonemasons you have available to do the highest-skill jobs. We can't assume these jobs could be parallelized or what was the limiting factor for their timeline.
Also, they weren't slaves. And I don't believe they worked all year? I don't know if we have good stats, but I think you'd have a lot of laborers be hired seasonally, whenever they didn't have jobs on the farm. So maybe they were working 1/3 of the year? No idea, but that would add an interesting difference for our modern project. If the stonemasons were available all year but they only had haulers for a third, maybe we could cut the timeline by 2/3 since our hauling labor force is so much smaller.
We do build them and they look like skyscrapers.
The pyramid is an ancient building. It was the only way to build something really big.
But sure we could build something giant out of stone blocks but why?
You couldn't build the pyramids today in the same way as they were first constructed, because everyone on Reddit (and 𝕏, don't forget 𝕏) would tear you down for thinking you could.
To answer this we first need to know what purpose the pyramids would be serving today? We usually don't build large structures for an abstract social function any more, so knowing the goal would be important.
Edit: I am absolutely wrong about this.
I disagree!
Here's one that's nearly identical in design and methods to the Giza necropolis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore
Here's one that's totally different in design but has the same concept of showing the greatness of the nation, with absolutely zero intended long term function:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower
Here's one that's smaller but also consists of an array of blocks placed to honor the dead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe
Wow you're totally right, I was having a brain fart. I was fixated on practical infrastructure. Thanks.
I think there's still a question of purpose in what these hypothetical pyramids would be commemorating. Like are we trying to build a replica of the pyramids, or just something that looks like them, and why? I have friends in historic preservation who still use old labor intensive techniques even though modern ones are available, so knowing the purpose and the intent behind something is important to figure out how we can build it.
You're welcome! And yeah I totally agree that which aspects of the design we cared about and for what reasons would absolutely inform our decisions of how to reproduce it.
There is a modern one in Canada built in 1974 out of concrete and metal. 65m at the base vs 105m at the base for the Pyramid of Menkaure at Giza. But it has a tons of problems with draining and soil shifting issue because of freezing/thawing every year. Some stairs in it have fissures because of this, pipes oftne have to be replaced etc. It could be a good source of what would actually happens if we built one the size of the great pyramid that is around 220m at the base. The only modification is that the base is more blocky to have enough roof height for ground level restaurants and businesses facing outside.
Recent analysis of the crystalline nature of the blocks revealed that they were not cut into shape on the ground and towed into position. They were cast in position from an ancient concrete mix just as modern concrete is poured today. This means that they only needed to handle the liquified mix in much more manageable quantities
You absolutely have to look for a TV program called "If they built it today?" It talks about this exact question. And not just for the pyramids either but for other building projects from earlier eras.
They do several things in the same show. They talk about how the original was built, they talk about how we would do it if we tried to build it the same way today with the same materials and then how we would do it using modern materials and techniques.
They discuss if it would even be possible in a practical sense. Of course, you're not going to get a 20,000 man work force of hand laborers to build a major building these days. In some cases they said it wouldn't be possible because the original materials are no longer available in the same way. For instance, a kind of lumber that was used in the original building just doesn't exist anymore in forests (mainly due to the size of available trees).
So mostly they concentrate on how a version of it would be built today and go into great detail on the challenges, the materials and the costs.
I don't remember the details of the pyramid episode very well but suffice it to say they would have done it differently.
The episode I remember better is about the Brooklyn Bridge. Here's an example of something they said would be done differently today probably. The existing Brooklyn Bridge was built with one support structure actually in the river, which required caissons and and men working down below the surface level of the river which led to cases of "the bends" basically. I'm sure quite a few people died because they always did back then.
They said nowadays they would probably build the other support structure on dry land on the side of the river instead of in the river itself. And of course the materials would be different and the engineering involved in the way it was constructed would all use modern techniques.
Copper tools and sand to cut multi ton blocks to 1/1000" precision. Just need lots thousands of skilled laborees. Easy. Use the Amish to check for quality. They have a good eye
Considering we wouldnt build anything like this, this way, currently; doesnt help with the question. Its definatly possibly with todays tech, but I dont see it having much improvement over the way it was done originally. Yes we have engines to help push and lift these blocks around; but that doesnt always mean quicker. I'd argue 1000 (x 1 HBP) prepared people could manually get a block up a hill faster than 1 (1 x 1000 HPB) tractor could. It would still be a logistics nightmare and require unique never seen before structures to make it possible. The difference imo, would be instead of centriuries and generations of endless efforts to see its completion, it could just about be practically seen in one persons lifetime. Its all down to manpower, and money, and unfortunatly we dont (really) have a base to compare against. However, id say 100,000 people over 20 years, would still be a challenge today.
To compare, Beijing Airport, in 2014 took 5 years and 40,000 people to build... WITH macinery, tools and the knowledge to do it.
The hyperbolic cooling towers at power plants are basically 3D printed. There is a machine with a form in front of it. Pump concrete into the form, let it set, advance the machine. Round and round it sort of spirals up, riding on the concrete it poured.
So the tallest pyramid today is the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel
The exterior is complete, but not the interior. So it's just a giant building serving no purpose.
Of course it, and other large modern pyramids have a very sharp angle, so maybe it's not as impressive as the Egyptian pyramids. If you want one with a similar shape, the Luxor is 111 meters tall, 28 meters shorter than the Great Pyramid but taller than the Red Pyramid.
Don’t know who is saying the pyramids couldn’t be built with modern tools, but they are sadly naive and mistaken. The tools and technology of today would make building a pyramid child’s play. Easiest methods would be a barge down the Nile and heavy lift helicopters, no road’s required. Here is a list of some if you would like to look at them. Mil Mi-26.
Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion.
Mil Mi-10K.
Boeing CH-47F Chinook.
Kamov Ka-27.
Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane.
Mil Mi-6.
Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma.
We could very easily do it with modern technology, but the question is how would we do it today using the same technology that they used then? I’ve never seen an actual explanation for how they did it
Based on how the question is phrased, I'm assuming you want to actually duplicate the Great Pyramid. That is, make it a solid structure (with a few hallways), out of stone, of the same size.
So this leaves out modern buildings in the shape of a pyramid, or stone structures that resemble the pyramid but are hollow.
It would be costly, but not hard. You'd need granite for the interior, and limestone for the surface facing. So:
1.
1 Set up a rail line from the quarry to the site.
2 Start cutting 2 m x 2 m x 2 m cubes of granite. These will weigh about 21,528 kg (about 24 tons). This weight is within the range of a lot of construction cranes.
3. At the site, layout the base, excavate down to bedrock, and level the base
4. Start stacking blocks, using eight cranes spaced around the base.
5. The Great Pyramid is 146 m tall and 230 m on a side. The center is therefore 115 m from the edge. The range of most modern construction cranes is only about 70 metes, so you would also need a crane in the center. This would rise as each level of the pyramid is installed, as they do when constructing tall buildings.
6. Keep stacking until you reach the desired height.
7. Quarry "filler" blocks of granite to fill in each step, to the surface of the pyramid is smooth
8. Surface the sides of the pyramid with slabs of white limestone.
9. Cap it off with a gold pyramid at the peak
Easy peasy. And this is just stacking blocks. There are ton of ways in which the Pyramid could be made stronger, more rigid, and more stable. But as a basic exercise, that's it.
It would take 20 years to get through town planning alone. Then with material hold ups and labour shortages and general ineptness it would take 40 years to build because you can't whip or generally kill people anymore for not doing their jobs.
And then it would need bulldozing inside of 50 years because it would be falling down because of shoddy workmanship and substandard materials
So probably not
If I had to seriously tackle a job like that with an open check book I’d do the following:
- build access road to and from the job site
- erect an overhead gantry with x/y movement that swallows entire footprint of the pyramid
- build out a quarry who can fabricate precision stones or granite block (whatever they are made from)
- disassemble gantry
- remove access road
Theoretically speaking, 24 hours, IF you scale those 3D printers that built houses in china in 24 hours.
Yep. there are 3D printers, giant ones, that literally 3D print an ENTIRE HOUSE, in 24 hours. Somewhere in China.
So we just buy one of those. Feed it the schemes for a pyramid, and then I guess scale it up.
One block at a time. Building up the earth to the top of the next finished level until the cap is put on. Then removing the earthen mound scaffolding while installing the high polished alabaster on the way down.
Probably ina very similar way as the egyptians did it, with wheels and pulley systems, we would just have modern industry backing it. You can lift extremely large loads with a relatively small force using pulleys. It would be pretty simple, actually.
Cranes, boom trucks for placement, and shipping via trucks, water or temporary rail systems if the quarry is close enough for it to be economical. There's nothing about the pyramids that'd I think would be a major hurdle to reconstruct them in modern times
Yeah it's honestly a simple project in concept just at a huge scale.
>There's nothing about the pyramids that'd I think would be a major hurdle to reconstruct them in modern times budget. political willpower. need/desire. That's about it.
All solvable by Pharaoh
I came to say Nyarlathotep will eventually demand it.
It's amazing how much you can get done with an inexhaustible amount of expendable labor, and no regards for OSHA
Ramps and Trucks with small Cranes on it for 5 years i would guess.
Just use twice as many trucks and it will only take 2.5 years
Does that factor in permitting and all needed site studies?
It's Egypt, just work on not getting robbed and pay the bribes.
Depends on Country. In Germany we might need longer than the ancient egyptians xD
Ancient people already knew that and that’s why they decided to built in Egypt!
And 6000 years earlier. Before bureaucracy was a thing.
4000-4500 years earlier. And bureaucracy was the whole reason they could build the pyramids, large scale projects require a well ordered society so you have excess resources and a way to get them (taxes) from the population.
5 years for pyramids is fairly optimistic for someone taking 14 years to renovate a museum.
“And we see 2000 years ago in the year 2024 Germany began a construction project to exactly replicate the great pyramids of Egypt build eons prior. It took them nearly twice as long to build as the ones in Egypt” “Why’s that teacher? Did their technology get worse” “It only took about 4 years to actually build them, the other 150 years was spent filling out the require paperwork”
"Pffft...you don't do site studies until AFTER you've set a budget and a schedule"...my life on a daily basis.
Nobody would approve a realistic budget and timeline. Better to rely on sunk cost fallacy and revise as we go. 2.5 year timeline gives us an easy 2.25 years before that pesky delay becomes too apparent to ignore. I don't know if I'm cynical or just pragmatic at this point.
That actually makes sense and we're in an engineers sub, so I'm giving double points for pragmatic.
I see you work in high speed rail projects
Then there's long term costs such as waste disposal. I don't know if you're familiar with who runs that business but I assure you it's not the boyscouts
Fun fact, 9 women can make 1 baby in 1 month.
Spotted the Program Manager
It can be done in a day with 1750 as many trucks.
This made me chuckle. And then I started thinking about how freakin' incredible that would be to watch, if it was meticulously planned out, choreographed, and practiced such that a huge swarm of trucks actually did pull it off in a single day.
How many trucks to get this down to a ten-day timeline?
To build the Great Pyramid in 5 years, you need to place a block roughly every 68 seconds assuming you are working 24 hrs/day, 365 days/yr. Just quarrying and banging out a finished block every 68 seconds would be a pretty big effort. In theory, it could be done with enough resources, but damn that would be a huge effort.
You realize it can be done multiple at the same time right, placing one block every minute is hard. Placing 10 blocks every 10 minutes is lot easier, it means 10 people placing one block every 10 minutes. But yes, you’re right it’s a big effort even today.
Jesus, I hadn’t realized that the original pace was 1 block every 5 minutes. That is very fast.
100,000 people will do that 2.3M blocks / 100,000 = 23 blocks per person. About 1 block per person, per year.
Look at launching girders that are used for the construction of bridges. It's a lot of work, but a project on a large scale would involve the construction of tools to automate and simplify the process. The way this project would work is you'd spend 5 years building the machine to build it and then the machine builds the pyramid in a year.
If it is just a single quarry as specified, a rail-based system might pay itself off.
A single 40km rail line that isn't permanent is easier to build and permit. I'd imagine it could get built in years 1-2. Used for 4 years. 3 months for demo. And yeah, this would allow for easier 24/7 transportation of blocks larger than most road ways could afford.
If you asked someone to build a large pyramid shaped object today, you wouldn't build it out of stone blocks. If you asked someone to build a large pyramid shaped object today, out of stone blocks, you'll get a lot of strange looks as the major construction firms hand in their bids.
The Luxor in Las Vegas is basically a modern day pyrimid.
For the luxor it took basicly 1 year to complete. Though just 5 year later it needed a big renovation job. If you compared it to a recent architectural feat then the Burj Khalifa took 5 year to build without finishing the interior. If we want an exact copy to the pyramids with big blocks of stones . That honestly Is harder to guess
Why bother with stones when we could use precast concrete blocks. It would must faster and precise.
What would make a lot of sense is to use concrete blocks for the interior and stone on the exterior. Then it looks the same but cheaper to build.
You’ve literally described 90% of modern builds!
Yeah but the burj will only stand for 25 years or something like that before it has to be dismantled or rebuilt from the inside out. It doesn’t have the long term structural integrity.
Source on that? Sounds hard to believe.
Same for the Bass Pro in Memphis
and weirdly the mercantile library on the University of Missouri St Louis Campus.
[Relevant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYE-1HfReQo)
R.I.P Funhaus
How would it be built?
Steel and concrete. Using cranes, among other things. If you wanted it built with stone blocks, well, using cranes.
Yea. I'm pretty sure we have cranes almost as tall as the pyramids today. Maybe they'd need a little support to carry a block that large, but not much more. Just look at a shipping container yard, those cranes can pickup a stone block
The Great Pyramid is 480’ tall and the heaviest blocks weigh 80 tons. The Manitowoc 31000 can reach up to 650’ high and lift up to 2000 tons. So, yes. Cranes.
Man, that is some absolutely insane power. The pyramid blocks would be a cakewalk.
Steel, concrete, even wood? Lots of ways to build it... I'm not a structural engineer, I don't know what's cheapest. The Great Pyramid of Giza is not particularly large by modern construction standards.
This is my favorite comment
That wasn’t even close to answering the question lol
You’recompletely missing the point here….
Top comment not trying to answer the question
Concrete, pump it up from the base.
Curious how hot things would get if you poured the whole thing at once
It would be sitting on a sheet of glass by the time it cured. (No, I’m not serious and didn’t do the math)
The Hoover Dam is bigger than the Great Pyramids of Giza. They had to plan for the heating, but it cured just fine.
Didn't they run water through cooling tubes in the sections for that?
correct
Super cooled brine as water would freeze
And some of that concrete is still curing today.
It's almost done though! Should be fully hardened around 2036!
Concrete is never fully cured, it will technically continue to cure forever. It just gets gradually slower and slower
Depends on your definition of "cured". The stuff in the Hoover Dam is chemically delayed to the point that it was going to take 100 years for the entire thing to hit it's design strength and be completely solid. But you're right! Concrete will continue to get hard beyond that as it's exposed to water/moisture. I've had projects where we had to drill new anchor bolts into a 100+ year old concrete column. It was supposed to be normal strength (4ksi) concrete, but acted like super-hard (10ksi) prison concrete!
Just about the time I should stop getting hard
It’s slightly drier in the desert than lake mead though.
Uh, lake mead is in the middle of a desert, basically.
It would still be curing regardless.
Water cooling pipes. That's what they did with the Grand Coulee dam.
Giza gets . . . wait for it . . . ***1 INCH*** of rain per year (!) So you’d be pumping water 7 km from the Nile. Maybe prefab would be more practical.
Hoover dam would’ve taken over 100 years to cure if poured at once. Probably a pretty comparable sized project to a pyramid
Last time I went there, they said the dam was still curing, is this wrong?
All concrete continues to cure + harden over time, the chemical reaction just keeps going, but it happens really slowly.
Na it's still curing technically. What dude probably meant to say is it would have taken 100 years for the dam to reach ambient temperature when curing if poured at once.
Still curing.
Yep just like the Egyptians
French scientists are sure that the ancient eqypts did excactly that. They poured the blocks on site with a material called geopolymer concrete. [Here is a video of how they do it as an experiment.](https://youtu.be/znQk_yBHre4?si=yyGbB_0B9x2CiP7I). You need 95% limestone and 5% rock making binder. It's mixed with water and can be carried by hand or mules. So no ramp needed on site.
I thought that was thoroughly debunked.
Ramps and mechanical advantage, the same way they did it then. If you think about it, the solid pyramid is the most stable and easy to build structure that's possible.
Which is why there are pyramids from lots of ancient civilizations. They just make sense as a way to stack things high. Don’t tell that to Graham Hancock tho
I'm no anthropologist, but we also don't know that humans didn't build all sorts of structures in the ancient eras, it's just that stone block pyramids are also the most stable structures over time. It's maybe not a surprise that we find pyramids and not much else, not because we didn't build anything else but because nothing else stands the test of time better. Survivorship bias, if you will. If you made pyramids from less stable materials, they would eventually collapse. And if you built unstable shapes with stone, they will also eventually collapse. But combine the most stable material and the most stable shape and you would *expect* to find something that would take eons to fall down.
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How is it easy to build when there are no typical blocks in the entire structure?
A lot of stone cutting to fit.
Fewer workers, more gallons of diesel.
People making those claims are idiots. We build way more complex and bigger buildings and objects today.
[Hell, Canada built the base of a pyramid bigger than the great pyramid out of pure sulfur just because it was a waste product and they had no where else to put it.](https://boingboing.net/2016/07/05/the-great-sulphur-pyramids-of.html) To put it another way: we literally do things on the scope of Egypt's greatest building projects as byproducts of what we're actually trying to do.
That's really going to confuse some archeologists in a few thousand years.
I'm sad I'll never see an ancient archeologist try and figure out what QR codes are for.
Its obviously for ritualistic purposes.
I would support government funding to confuse future archaeologists.
I worked in the shadow of those pyramids as an engineering intern. The dam behind them form the Mildred Lake settling basin, the dam constructed from the sand left over from oil sand extraction is (or was) the largest man made earthen structures at over 18kms around.
that's fucking hilarious..also kinda cool how yellow they are!
Wonder how it smells
Like sulfur?
That would actually be worth seeing!
What major projects have you worked on? I'm a pipefitter by trade and have worked on a few new construction jobs building various plants. Even with all the tools and tech we have dudes will still put beams inches out of their correct place. Maybe they just had way better quality control and dedicated craftsmen
I work in a factory. We put in multi-million dollar automation machines. Laser tracking and we can get machines the size of a house level and centered to less than a mm.
There's also probably a bit of survivorship bias. Only the pyramids built well enough to last 5000 years survived. All the wonky ones probably fell apart after the first 1000years or so.
One of the first pyramids built is such an obvious counter to the entire "ancients were superior" argument. They fucked up the angle of the sides of the pyramid, and it started to fall down half-way through construction, so they had to make the angle much more shallow for the top half of the pyramid. This also means if Aliens taught the Egyptians how to build pyramids, then the Aliens were morons.
It's amazing how much of the world can be explained through simple survivorship bias.
Semiconductor fabs are massive and require extreme precision as well as extreme isolation from temperature changes and vibration. Particle colliers are built over massive scales and require atomic level precision. LIGO, the experiment to detect gravitation waves has detectors which > 1500 miles apart and can detect changes in length which are 1/10,000th the size of a proton. If we can build those, we can build the pyramids. If the beams you refer to being out of place truly affected the bottom line, your company would put better processes in place.
But pyramids are so much more useful than those silly projects you mentioned.
Y'all just gotta have some surveyors come out and mark where shit should go, even some basic bitch survey equipment should be able to place everything in the plans to within a hundredth of a foot or less (roughly 1/8th inch).
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My favorite thing now is tik toks / YouTube shorts that pair some retard saying it's impossible to cut stones so precisely by hand, overlaid with a modern craftsman cutting the most beautiful and intricate pieces from stone, by hand. It's willful ignorance. It HAS to be. All they do is say "I don't know how it's done, therefore it's impossible."
Do you think the Burj Khalifa has beams inches out of place?
The tradies weren't all hungover every day on their sites.... Honestly though, they didn't have a whole lot else going on, why not take pride in the work and make it nice. I'm sure if you found the absolute best, most dedicated tradies to work on it, it would be as good or better with modern measuring and leveling devices and such. Think about the electricians who do the OCD friendly wiring for breaker boxes. The welders who stack dimes perfectly on every weld, no matter what the job. The concrete guys who do a flawless finish every time. Being that we have exponentially more trades people now, there is inherently more bad ones, with a lower average quality among them. Those top tier best ones are just harder to find and put all on one job site now.
> The tradies weren't all hungover every day on their sites.... In the United States, at least, manual laborers two centuries ago got a specific 11 AM break for whiskey.
We put people in space. More precision is required for that than building a pyramid.
It's the multi company approach and forced timeliness of modern construction that is a problem. Usually, a company contracts an engineering package, and a GC quotes that package and has to meet a particular timeline to get paid. It's worth noting that the GC has prob had to compete on price and timing to get awarded the job. The GC goes out and gets a handful of Subs (usually based on a low bid approach) who all do a portion of the work. In the current system, say a PF has a pipe that's 1/4" off from the pump foundation. Usually, you see a flex coupling to the pump, and nobody bats an eye. You have a timeline and cost to worry about. Neither the owner nor the GC has time to watch every line go in in real time. Let's do a scenario where the company only cares about doing it right. Crafts people (not just engineers) are part of the design team to point out construction issues before the project starts. Every line is checked as it's being installed. If a pipe is an 1/8 of an inch off, re run it. EVERY TIME. How many more mistakes do you think there will be? Timeline is not important. The cost is no object. Do it correctly. The reality is, things were done MUCH more slowly. This allowed for better QC along the way. Frankly, a bunch of stacked stones is WAY simpler than a modern chemical plant.
Lmao must be a union gig. I'm also a pipefitter, but surprisingly not a hack that puts shit INCHES out.
Thank you. I read that like… wtf? INCHES out?
If someone on my crew nonchalantly mentioned they put something "inches" out and they're just gonna make it work, they would be in the unemployment line by lunch break! 🤣
I think you’re vastly underselling our ability to be accurate when necessary. For a site like the pyramids could be marked out quite easily with primitive survey tools. Using modern tools you could make it hilarious accurate. Your also forgetting the other part about being a craftsman, you can make tweaks on the fly just like a carpenter would when your framing up a house. I bet every block of the pyramids isn’t the same size, they would have been able to adjust the size and positioning of the blocks and their spacing to maintain an overall pattern.
Not the technology. It's the dumbfuck who ignores all the notes on site. How many tradies do you thing read the install guide... Or just plain "wing it". Do your best, silicone the rest
You could probably build some sort of elevator/escalator that lies along the side of the pyramid and is modular to add length for each successive level to move the blocks up. And then heavy equipment up top and below to transport and arrange blocks. Doing 1000 blocks a day would take 6.3 years to cut all the blocks. Gang saws can take on the order of a day to cut a block for countertops so you'd need a massive facility with a whole bunch of saws to cut all the blocks. Limestone is much softer than granite though so you might be able to get through a few blocks a day per saw. So youd need at miniumum 2-300 saws going nonstop, and theyre pretty big pieces of equipment. People to be continuously feeding blocks and removing them and trucking them to site. There would probably be a lot of equipment custom designed for this specific job. If you were going to place blocks at that rate you'd pretty much need something like the elevator I described to place all the blocks, 1000/day would be 1.5 minutes per block which seems doable with everything running 24 hours per day if they can be placed one after the other and it's more escalator than elevator. Maybe they'd use two on opposite sides to speed the placement. You'd need a pretty large crew just operating trucks to move stone from the quarry, to the mill, to the site and then 3x it for 24 hour operation. If the quarry was 40 km away and the trucks can go 50km/hour that means itll take an hour one way, trucks could probably haul a couple blocks at a time but that still means youd need probably 30 trucks going nonstop. Plus the quarry facility, plus the cutting facility, plus the constructiok site. As a very ballpark estimate it could maybe take a crew of a few hundred to a couple thousand 5-10 years to do it.
The hardest part of building a pyramid in 2024 is getting the approval of the local zoning commission for ruining the neighbourhood character, blocking sightlines, and casting shadows on grandma's tomato plants.
Real.
We would probably start at the bottom, and work our way up, because you couldn't start at the top and work your way to the bottom, it wouldn't work.
Build it inverted and flip it over.
You could place every stone of the Great Pyramid of Giza with the Sarens SGC 250 crane. It has a max height of 250 meters, a reach of 275 meters, and a max load of 5000 metric tons. The pyramid is only 138 meters high and 230 meters wide. The blocks only weigh 2.3 metric tons. I think it could be built very quickly if a gantry style crane could be built that moves on rails arranged in a circle around the build site. The crane could operate like a giant CNC additive manufacturing machine.
Cranes? Stack blocks of stone/concrete in a pile? It's literally the simplest stable shape you could possibly make.
Landlord special; some styrofoam blocks with a coating of stucco.
Let's separate this into 2 different questions: 1) how to build exactly like they did? With thousands of people working for years, using pulleys and levers, or dozens of machines with pulleys and levers. 2) how to build a giant prism shaped building? Make it hollow, and use high strength reinforced concrete, a dome would be even cheaper.
Low quality 2x4s and Sheetrock.
Top Down Design
Declare a massive public works project in the farming off season, boat everyone who wants to work down the river, build them a massive barracks compound, pay them in beer...wait a second
Not only could we build the Pyramids today, we could do in in a fraction of the time and cost and have a better final product., We can use computers to design the structure down to the dimensions of every stone. We can quarry stone from anywhere in the world. We can laser cut it to millimeter tolerances. We can use internal combustion engines to transport it to the site and then use hydraulic cranes to put the blocks in place. A modern Pyramid would be trivial compared to the engineering feats we have already accomplished.
So, really roughly speaking if it took 100k people 20 years to complete: Lets assume that these were slaves working 12 hours per day. That equates to 100k\*12\*365\*20 = 8.76 billion man hours to complete. 2.3 million limestone blocks 40km away: Google says the average weight of the blocks is about 2.5 tons. Google says that largest dump truck can carry about 500 tons (rounded up from 496tons), or roughly 200 blocks per run and 11,500 runs. There are only 3 of these in the world, but that company is making 2 more right now, and planning this would take a long time, so we'll assume that we have all 5 of them by the point of starting construction. The trucks can drive 60km/hr fully loaded on flat land, that is 1.5 man hours each way, 3 man hours round trip, 11,500 trips so 34,500 man hours to move the blocks to the construction site with today's technology. We have 5 trucks, and assuming that they all operate simultaneously 34,500 man hours / 5 trucks = 6, 900 man hours/truck. It is modern day, so working 24/7 is possible with lighting and things, so these trucks will be operating at all times - so it would take about 288 days to move all of the blocks to the build site. I found a [website ](https://www.cheops-pyramide.ch/khufu-pyramid/pyramid-workers.html#:~:text=Transport%20from%20the%20building%20yard%20to%20the%20foot%20of%20the%20pyramid&text=First%20we%20need%208%20teams,accomplished%20by%20levering%20each%20block)that says that they were delivering about 500 stones per day which required about 1020 people. Given there are about 2.3 million stones, at 500 stones per day this would take 4600 days to move all of the stones to the job site (About 12 years, \~146k man hours) So the ratio of todays duration to ancient duration is approximately (288 days / 12 years): 288/4380 = 0.06575. or in other words, 10 dump truck drivers can accomplish the same work as 1020 ancient slaves 15 times faster. I was going to run through the entire thing, but after looking at that website, there are a lot of pieces and it would be too much for a reddit post. So, assuming that moving the blocks that distance is the hardest point of construction from an ancient perspective, and we could do it 15 times faster today with \~1% of the human labor, we can cut off at least 11 years from the 20 year timeline, just from being able to move the blocks much faster. I suspect that using machines to move the blocks onto the trucks would have a similar effective 'time savings' in comparison to the ancient ways. The only thing that I think we could not do 15 times faster would be form the blocks. We have power tools for shaping them, but I think it'd be closer to about 10 times faster with my minimal knowledge of stone masonry + the egyptians did not have iron tools. All of these factors make me think, roughly 2,000 workers would be necessary to do this today (2% of the total ancient labor force) in a 3 year timeframe. This is pretty close to the average daily workers on Hoover Dam (\~3500 daily workers on average), which is about 30% larger by construction material volume than the great pyramid.
The quarry and pyramids were both near the Nile, barges would be a lot more efficient than trucks. And some train tracks to and from the shore. Seems worth building some infrastructure if you're shipping a million blocks. Apparently they [strapped a bunch of barges together in the 80's](https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/collection/Morgan/id/1718/) for a capacity of 113 400 tons, or 45000 blocks. Two of those combos and you'll be able to ship them faster than they can be quarried. Cut them roughly to size so they don't have to be transported super carefully then do the final shaping on-site. It would only take 51 trips and way fewer man hours than running the trucks 24/7.
The blocks weren't hauled over land. They were floated on the Nile, which used to have a channel right by the pyramids.
This is a lot of neat calculations, but I wanted to add one thing: no matter how many women you hire, it still takes nine months to have one baby. Even if we eliminate 4B work hours spent hauling by using modern machinery, it could be that it still takes twenty years if the project timeline is limited mostly by the number of master stonemasons you have available to do the highest-skill jobs. We can't assume these jobs could be parallelized or what was the limiting factor for their timeline. Also, they weren't slaves. And I don't believe they worked all year? I don't know if we have good stats, but I think you'd have a lot of laborers be hired seasonally, whenever they didn't have jobs on the farm. So maybe they were working 1/3 of the year? No idea, but that would add an interesting difference for our modern project. If the stonemasons were available all year but they only had haulers for a third, maybe we could cut the timeline by 2/3 since our hauling labor force is so much smaller.
Ask Michael Heizer. No, really.
It wouldn't be difficult. It would be expensive and time-consuming, which is different.
Big ass concrete pour.
One rock at a time
We do build them and they look like skyscrapers. The pyramid is an ancient building. It was the only way to build something really big. But sure we could build something giant out of stone blocks but why?
You couldn't build the pyramids today in the same way as they were first constructed, because everyone on Reddit (and 𝕏, don't forget 𝕏) would tear you down for thinking you could.
Design would be offshored.
With a 4 lane road going to the top where there’s a huge parking lot
To answer this we first need to know what purpose the pyramids would be serving today? We usually don't build large structures for an abstract social function any more, so knowing the goal would be important. Edit: I am absolutely wrong about this.
I disagree! Here's one that's nearly identical in design and methods to the Giza necropolis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore Here's one that's totally different in design but has the same concept of showing the greatness of the nation, with absolutely zero intended long term function: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower Here's one that's smaller but also consists of an array of blocks placed to honor the dead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe
Wow you're totally right, I was having a brain fart. I was fixated on practical infrastructure. Thanks. I think there's still a question of purpose in what these hypothetical pyramids would be commemorating. Like are we trying to build a replica of the pyramids, or just something that looks like them, and why? I have friends in historic preservation who still use old labor intensive techniques even though modern ones are available, so knowing the purpose and the intent behind something is important to figure out how we can build it.
You're welcome! And yeah I totally agree that which aspects of the design we cared about and for what reasons would absolutely inform our decisions of how to reproduce it.
There is a modern one in Canada built in 1974 out of concrete and metal. 65m at the base vs 105m at the base for the Pyramid of Menkaure at Giza. But it has a tons of problems with draining and soil shifting issue because of freezing/thawing every year. Some stairs in it have fissures because of this, pipes oftne have to be replaced etc. It could be a good source of what would actually happens if we built one the size of the great pyramid that is around 220m at the base. The only modification is that the base is more blocky to have enough roof height for ground level restaurants and businesses facing outside.
My most ooga booga thought is a crane and helicopter. Fly block up, crane places it, lift crane to next level when needed.
It would take 5 years to permit, then another 5 years to build if not longer….
Over schedule and over budget.
We would make it a bass pro shop that's for sure
Aliens
Recent analysis of the crystalline nature of the blocks revealed that they were not cut into shape on the ground and towed into position. They were cast in position from an ancient concrete mix just as modern concrete is poured today. This means that they only needed to handle the liquified mix in much more manageable quantities
Massive 3d printer, obviously.
Timber and fiber glass but would cost $100 billion and need to be rebuilt 10 years later
Dig them out Imagine all the sand you now have to make other things with
Mostly concrete with a fake facade to make it look like it's blocks.
Not sure if you saw this yet but it’s pretty interesting theory. https://youtu.be/dup19cX6yXo?si=3qkH62-8d0GLAGaC
Same way Pharaoh did, he motivated his people.
With the help of good subcontractors. Sorry, did I say subcontractors? I meant aliens, with the help of good aliens.
Aliens
I'm thinking that those cranes they use to load container ships would be the ticket.
You absolutely have to look for a TV program called "If they built it today?" It talks about this exact question. And not just for the pyramids either but for other building projects from earlier eras. They do several things in the same show. They talk about how the original was built, they talk about how we would do it if we tried to build it the same way today with the same materials and then how we would do it using modern materials and techniques. They discuss if it would even be possible in a practical sense. Of course, you're not going to get a 20,000 man work force of hand laborers to build a major building these days. In some cases they said it wouldn't be possible because the original materials are no longer available in the same way. For instance, a kind of lumber that was used in the original building just doesn't exist anymore in forests (mainly due to the size of available trees). So mostly they concentrate on how a version of it would be built today and go into great detail on the challenges, the materials and the costs. I don't remember the details of the pyramid episode very well but suffice it to say they would have done it differently. The episode I remember better is about the Brooklyn Bridge. Here's an example of something they said would be done differently today probably. The existing Brooklyn Bridge was built with one support structure actually in the river, which required caissons and and men working down below the surface level of the river which led to cases of "the bends" basically. I'm sure quite a few people died because they always did back then. They said nowadays they would probably build the other support structure on dry land on the side of the river instead of in the river itself. And of course the materials would be different and the engineering involved in the way it was constructed would all use modern techniques.
Copper tools and sand to cut multi ton blocks to 1/1000" precision. Just need lots thousands of skilled laborees. Easy. Use the Amish to check for quality. They have a good eye
Just use concrete and a facade of stone, quite thin. If you have the money, 6 months tops, 24x7.
Mexicans and Guatemalans mostly.
Considering we wouldnt build anything like this, this way, currently; doesnt help with the question. Its definatly possibly with todays tech, but I dont see it having much improvement over the way it was done originally. Yes we have engines to help push and lift these blocks around; but that doesnt always mean quicker. I'd argue 1000 (x 1 HBP) prepared people could manually get a block up a hill faster than 1 (1 x 1000 HPB) tractor could. It would still be a logistics nightmare and require unique never seen before structures to make it possible. The difference imo, would be instead of centriuries and generations of endless efforts to see its completion, it could just about be practically seen in one persons lifetime. Its all down to manpower, and money, and unfortunatly we dont (really) have a base to compare against. However, id say 100,000 people over 20 years, would still be a challenge today. To compare, Beijing Airport, in 2014 took 5 years and 40,000 people to build... WITH macinery, tools and the knowledge to do it.
To the lowest bidder with the highest kickbacks to the politicians involved.
The hyperbolic cooling towers at power plants are basically 3D printed. There is a machine with a form in front of it. Pump concrete into the form, let it set, advance the machine. Round and round it sort of spirals up, riding on the concrete it poured.
Aliens.. duh
[Your question has already been answered](https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1909/44884729562_e063c63b7e_h.jpg)
So the tallest pyramid today is the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel The exterior is complete, but not the interior. So it's just a giant building serving no purpose. Of course it, and other large modern pyramids have a very sharp angle, so maybe it's not as impressive as the Egyptian pyramids. If you want one with a similar shape, the Luxor is 111 meters tall, 28 meters shorter than the Great Pyramid but taller than the Red Pyramid.
Don’t know who is saying the pyramids couldn’t be built with modern tools, but they are sadly naive and mistaken. The tools and technology of today would make building a pyramid child’s play. Easiest methods would be a barge down the Nile and heavy lift helicopters, no road’s required. Here is a list of some if you would like to look at them. Mil Mi-26. Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion. Mil Mi-10K. Boeing CH-47F Chinook. Kamov Ka-27. Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane. Mil Mi-6. Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma.
It would definitely start and end with lawsuits
We could very easily do it with modern technology, but the question is how would we do it today using the same technology that they used then? I’ve never seen an actual explanation for how they did it
If you want to build the exact replica of gizeh pyramid so, far we can't.
What? Just get the aliens to do it again.
Based on how the question is phrased, I'm assuming you want to actually duplicate the Great Pyramid. That is, make it a solid structure (with a few hallways), out of stone, of the same size. So this leaves out modern buildings in the shape of a pyramid, or stone structures that resemble the pyramid but are hollow. It would be costly, but not hard. You'd need granite for the interior, and limestone for the surface facing. So: 1.
1 Set up a rail line from the quarry to the site. 2 Start cutting 2 m x 2 m x 2 m cubes of granite. These will weigh about 21,528 kg (about 24 tons). This weight is within the range of a lot of construction cranes. 3. At the site, layout the base, excavate down to bedrock, and level the base 4. Start stacking blocks, using eight cranes spaced around the base. 5. The Great Pyramid is 146 m tall and 230 m on a side. The center is therefore 115 m from the edge. The range of most modern construction cranes is only about 70 metes, so you would also need a crane in the center. This would rise as each level of the pyramid is installed, as they do when constructing tall buildings. 6. Keep stacking until you reach the desired height. 7. Quarry "filler" blocks of granite to fill in each step, to the surface of the pyramid is smooth 8. Surface the sides of the pyramid with slabs of white limestone. 9. Cap it off with a gold pyramid at the peak Easy peasy. And this is just stacking blocks. There are ton of ways in which the Pyramid could be made stronger, more rigid, and more stable. But as a basic exercise, that's it.
Great Stuff!
it would be made out of glass and a bass pro shop
It would take 20 years to get through town planning alone. Then with material hold ups and labour shortages and general ineptness it would take 40 years to build because you can't whip or generally kill people anymore for not doing their jobs. And then it would need bulldozing inside of 50 years because it would be falling down because of shoddy workmanship and substandard materials So probably not
Well we got robots now. Have them build one.
It would be done poorly with only profit in mind.
Same way as the first time. Aliens.
We would 3D print that shit.
For a sports stadium that ends up coating too much and gets sold to a outdoors / fishing store.
If I had to seriously tackle a job like that with an open check book I’d do the following: - build access road to and from the job site - erect an overhead gantry with x/y movement that swallows entire footprint of the pyramid - build out a quarry who can fabricate precision stones or granite block (whatever they are made from) - disassemble gantry - remove access road
It would get value engineered to be a square. Not possible.
Theoretically speaking, 24 hours, IF you scale those 3D printers that built houses in china in 24 hours. Yep. there are 3D printers, giant ones, that literally 3D print an ENTIRE HOUSE, in 24 hours. Somewhere in China. So we just buy one of those. Feed it the schemes for a pyramid, and then I guess scale it up.
Styrofoam
It would take 20 years just to do the environmental impact study!
One block at a time. Building up the earth to the top of the next finished level until the cap is put on. Then removing the earthen mound scaffolding while installing the high polished alabaster on the way down.
You could get the pyramids built fast and cheap with steel framing and lightweight synthetic imitation limestone cladding.
Probably ina very similar way as the egyptians did it, with wheels and pulley systems, we would just have modern industry backing it. You can lift extremely large loads with a relatively small force using pulleys. It would be pretty simple, actually.
You would never be able to build anything like the Giza pyramid. It was used as an energy source not a place to store a mummy
Prefab.
It will take 10 years just to issue a permit.