The Egyptians stopped building their most prominent structures with the beginning of the New Kingdom, but why? What was the cause that led to the abandonment of the most incredible ancient structures of ancient Egypt?
From the beginning of the New Kingdom around the year 1550 BC, ancient Egyptians stopped building their most prominent and detailed structures, the Pyramids. Researchers have never understood the reason in their extreme and abrupt change in architectural preferences. Their most incredible constructions were replaced by tombs that were carved into the mountainside. These new architectural preferences helped reduce the amount of looted tombs. During the New Kingdom, the pyramids that were still “built” were of much lower quality and never reached the dimensions of the past.
Researchers have long wondered why the ancient Egyptians stopped building their most famous structures, some suggest that there is a possibility that changes in materials and construction techniques caused the construction of more volatile structures that could not withstand the test of time like the constructions built before them.
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We know that they stopped building the pyramids, but how and why did they start building them?
Well, the pyramid was born as the logical “evolution” of the mastabas, a monument used as a burial site by the rulers of the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt. No one know exactly why the mastabas were “displaced” by the incredible pyramids, some researchers suggest that the Pyramids were constructed de to the aspiration to attain greater heights, but both the Pyramids and the Mastabas shared a similar goal, to maintain the essence of the King for eternity.
It was during the beginning of the Third Dynasty around 2700 BC when ancient Egyptians began transforming mastabas into pyramids, initially, these structures were staggered, very similar to those found in ancient civilizations of America. These first pyramids, like Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Saqqara, was built in the form of various steps, as if it were a ladder to heaven.
Some researchers are quite skeptical about the pyramids being used as tombs since there has been no evidence found, nor inscriptions, that would link these marvelous constructions to tombs.
The other great mystery about the pyramids is, how this ancient civilization was capable of lifting structures of such dimensions formed by massive stone blocks?
There are many hypotheses developed even since the days of ancient Greek scholar, Herodotus who proposed several theories on how the ancient Egyptians managed to build these structures but never gave a definitive answer. Strangely, there have not been discovered, any ancient texts or documents reporting on the period of the construction of the pyramids.
In total, researchers have found more than one hundred pyramids in Pharaonic Egypt. Pyramids of various sizes, dedicated to both kings and nobles and great craftsmen. The most notable construction is the Great Pyramid of Giza for its huge size. The pyramid is estimated to have around 2,300,000 stone blocks that weigh from 2 to 30 tons each and there are even some blocks that weigh over 50 tons. It is a true masterpiece and has rightly earned the title of a “Wonder”. It was built with such precision that our current technology cannot replicate it. Egyptologists believe that the pyramid was built as a tomb over a 10 to 20-year period concluding around 2560 BC.
It was originally covered with casing stones (made of highly polished limestone). These casing stones reflected the sun’s light and made the pyramid shine like a jewel. They are no longer present being used by Arabs to build mosques after an earthquake in the 14th century loosened many of them. It has been calculated that the original pyramid with its casing stones would act like gigantic mirrors and reflect light so powerful that it would be visible from the moon as a shining star on earth. Appropriately, the ancient Egyptians called the Great Pyramid “Ikhet”, meaning the “Glorious Light”.
The Great Pyramid of Giza. Image Credit Wikipedia
After the prowess of the Fourth Dynasty, future generations would show a drastically lower skill when it came to the construction of monuments and pyramids. After the fourth Dynasty, the builders were not able to obtain such perfection in the building of pyramids, the example of the little pyramid of Abusir is consistent evidence of technical setback.
In fact, in the following centuries, the design and development of these structures would get worse. And although it has been traditionally accepted that from the sixteenth century BC ancient Egyptians began abandoning the Pyramids, the fact is that there are references to these structures in future periods.
The Nubian kings from the fifteenth Dynasty were buried small and low-quality pyramids. However, and this may be the crux of the matter, from the Middle Kingdom ancient Egyptians began to build more perishable constructions with materials such as wood, brick and adobe in the inside. This is the reason why very few of these constructions have survived to this day.
The amazing pyramid of Khufu is perhaps one of the buildings of antiquity that has aroused most curiosity among people. Its construction method is unsubstantiated … Just how is it possible that the Egyptians were able to erect something so precise and technically difficult?
According to ancient texts the great pyramid was built by pharaoh Khufu, and was completed in just 20 years, but that is something that most researchers find very hard to believe. 20 years is just too little time to complete something so precise, so important and so great.
3 million stone blocks weighing up to 60 tons, were transported from different quarries that were kilometers away. We cannot forget that they did not have traced roads, and that the wheel had not yet been invented. Better yet, the ancient Egyptians cut stone blocks with such precision that even the most advanced saws that we have today would not be able to match the accuracy of ancient Egyptians. Many Egyptologists stress that there are marks that have been left on the surface of some of the blocks that raise interesting questions. It has been demonstrated by researchers that the pyramid builders used a material, 50 times stronger than diamond to cut and shape the giant stone monuments and sarcophagi seen across Egypt, but what kind of material is 50 times stronger than diamond? Today, researchers are unaware of a material of similar characteristics. Yet, these giant blocks of stone were so precisely cut and placed into position that we today, without modern technology are not able to reproduce that ancient Egyptians did thousands of years ago. So what kind of technology did the ancient Egyptian possess?
The ancient Egyptians flattened the surface of the Giza plateau in such a way that between the ground level separating a pyramid of the other, there is only one centimeter in error.
But here are more interesting details. In addition to the huge stone blocks, the Egyptian pyramids were covered by 27,000 tiles of blocks polished to perfection. These tiles were placed one by one on the surface of the monumental construction. These huge pieces of rock had a weight of around 16 tons each. Now the question is, how did the ancient Egyptians of the fourth dynasty move so much weight? It would be interesting to mention that today, in a construction process where you need the transport huge blocks of stone, giant machines are used which are able to move only certain blocks of stone due to their weight. This only demonstrates that the original pyramid builders had access to advanced technology that helped them achieve such incredible feats of engineering, design and architecture.
The accuracy with which the pyramids are oriented north is simply stunning, taking into account that the ancient Egyptians did not leave any record of such geodetic knowledge in their ancient texts. But if the ancient Egyptians did not have such knowledge thousands of years ago in different scientific fields, how is it possible that the pyramids are oriented so well? Archaeologists and scholars have preferred to leave it to chance, the fact that the margin of error of the orientation of the monuments to north is about 5 minutes and 31 seconds.
There is another feature that makes the Great Pyramid something even more spectacular. The faces are not smooth, but they form two vertical planes which make up an angle of 27 minutes. Therefore, the great pyramid of Egypt does not have four sides but eight. With all of these characteristics, the ancient builders of the Pyramids of Egypt wanted to point out the equinoxes and solstices.
The interior of the pyramid is as incredible as the outside. Inside the Pyramid, the air is very dense, and if you enter the great pyramid with a flashlight or cameras to record the inside, you would be surprised to find out that the batteries run out very quickly. All of these incredible aspects make us reconsider whether the ancient Egyptians were actually capable to erect such monuments. Did they have the necessary knowledge and technology to calculate and construct these amazing monuments or are we missing something?
Is it unlikely to think that the pyramids were built by a civilization that predates the ancient Egyptian? A far more advanced civilization that passed on, to the Egyptian civilization, their knowledge and technology, merging and passing on their beliefs and culture.
Whoever built these incredible structures deserves all the credit and respect, since these incredible monuments have been able to withstand the test of time.
Two billion years ago parts of an African uranium deposit spontaneously underwent nuclear fission
In 1972, a worker at a nuclear fuel processing plant noticed something suspicious in a routine analysis of uranium obtained from a mineral source from Africa. As is the case with all natural uranium, the material under study contained three isotopes- three forms with different atomic masses: uranium 238, the most abundant variety; uranium 234, the rarest; and uranium 235, the isotope that can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. For weeks, specialists at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) remained perplexed
Elsewhere in the earth’s crust, on the moon and even in meteorites, we can find uranium 235 atoms that make up only 0.720 percent of the total. But in the samples that were analyzed, which came from the Oklo deposit in Gabon, a former French colony in West Africa, the uranium 235 constituted only 0.717 percent. That small difference was enough to alert French scientists that there was something very strange going on with the minerals. These little details led to further investigations which showed that at least a part of the mine was well below the standard amount of uranium 235: some 200 kilograms appeared to have been extracted in the distant past, today, that amount is enough to make half a dozen nuclear bombs. Soon, researchers and scientists from all over the world gathered in Gabon to explore what was going on with the Uranium from Oklo.
What was fund in Oklo surprised everyone gathered there, the site where the uranium originated from is an advanced subterranean nuclear reactor that goes well beyond the capabilities of our present scientific knowledge? Researchers believe that this ancient nuclear reactor is around 1.8 billion years old and operated for at least 500,000 years in the distant past. Scientists performed several other investigation at the uranium mine, and the results were made public at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to News agencies from Africa, researchers had found traces of fission products and fuel wastes at various locations within the mine.
Incredibly, compared with this massive nuclear reactor, our modern-day nuclear reactors are not comparable both in design and functionality. According to studies, this ancient nuclear reactor was several kilometers long. Interestingly, for a large nuclear reactor like this, thermal impact towards the environment was limited to just 40 meters on the sides. What researchers found even more astonishing, are the radioactive wastes that have still not moved outside the boundaries of the site, as they have still held in place thanks to the geology of the area.
What is surprising is that a nuclear reaction had occurred in a way that the plutonium, the by-product, was created, and the nuclear reaction itself had been moderated. This is something considered as a “holy grail” of atomic science. The ability to moderate the reaction means that once the reaction was initiated, it was possible to leverage the output power in a controlled way, with the capacity to prevent catastrophic explosions or the release of the energy at a single time.
Researchers have dubbed the Nuclear Reactor at Oklo a “natural Nuclear Reactor”, but the truth about it goes far beyond our normal understanding. Some of the researchers that participated in the testing of the Nuclear reactor concluded that the minerals had been enriched in the distant past, around 1.8 billion years ago to spontaneously produce a chain reaction. They also found that water had been used to moderate the reaction in the same way that modern nuclear reactors cool down using graphite-cadium shafts preventing the reactor from going into critical state and exploding. All of this, “in nature”.
However, Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, former head of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and Nobel Prize winner for his work in the synthesis of heavy elements, pointed out that for uranium to “burn” in a reaction, conditions must be exactly right. For example, the water involved in the nuclear reaction must be extremely pure. Even a few parts per million of contaminant will “poison” the reaction, bringing it to a halt. The problem is that, no water that pure exists naturally anywhere in the world.
Several specialists talked about the incredible Nuclear Reactor at Oklo, stating that at no time in the geologically estimated history of the Oklo deposits was the uranium sufficiently abundant Uranium 235 for a natural nuclear reaction to occur. When these deposits were formed in the distant past, due to the slowness of the radioactive decay of U-235, the fissionable material would have constituted only 3 percent of the total deposits – something too low mathematically speaking for a nuclear reaction to take place. However, a reaction took place mysteriously, suggesting that the original uranium was far richer in Uranium 235 than that in a natural formation.
West Long Branch Patrolman Dave Brosonski, who is highly trained in water rescue, entered the frigid water and was able to get the boy out and to the shore
“Jacksonville ISD is proud to recognize JISD Police Chief Bill Avera for an extraordinary 50 years of service to the community,” said JISD Superintendent Brad Stewart
According to a more recent theory, the Moon was created from the leftover space debris from the creation of the Earth. This concept proved unsustainable in the light of the current theory of gravity, indicating that a large object collects all loose material, leaving none for the formation of another large body. It is generally accepted that the moon originated elsewhere and entered the gravitational field of the Earth at some point in the distant past.
None of the suggested theories are especially compelling because of the lack of evidence that neither Earth nor the Moon appears to have been physically altered by a close encounter that occurred in the distant past. No debris in space indicate a collision in the past, yet it seems that the Earth and Moon were developed during the same period.
As for the theories suggested that Earth “naturally captured” the Moon, Isaac Asimov states: “The Moon is too big to have been captured by the Earth. The chances of such a capture, after which the moon adopted a nearly circular orbit around the Earth are too small to make such an eventuality credible.”
Asimov was right to consider the orbit of the Moon – not only is it almost a perfect circle, but it also is stationary, one side is always faced towards Earth with only the slightest variation. For all we know, it is the only natural satellite with such an orbit.
This circular orbit is one of the strangest things when it comes to the moon considering that the center of mass of the Moon is over a mile closer to Earth than its geometric center. This fact alone should produce an unstable, wobbly orbit, as well as an off-center mass. Interestingly, almost all other satellites in our solar system orbit in the Ecuador plane of its planet.
The Moon’s orbit is strangely closer to the Earth’s orbit around the sun, inclined to the ecliptic of the Earth for more than five degrees.
If it is just a coincidence that the moon has a precise and stationary orbit around our planet, is it also a coincidence that the Moon is at the right distance from Earth to completely cover the sun during an eclipse?
Asimov explains: “There is no astronomical reason why the moon and the sun should fit so well. It’s the purest of coincidences, and only the Earth among all the planets is blessed in this way.”
It seems impossible that a rarity of this type would naturally fall into a circular orbit so precisely. It is a fascinating enigma well articulated by science writer William Roy Shelton, who wrote: “It is important to remember that something had to put the moon in or near its current circular pattern around the Earth. Smiley put, it is very unlikely that any object just stumbles on the right combination of factors needed to help an object stay in orbit. ‘Something “had to put the moon on its altitude, on its course and speed. The question is: what was that “something”?
In July 1970, two Russian scientists Mijail Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, published an article in the Soviet magazine Sputnik entitled “Is the Moon a creation of extraterrestrial intelligence?” They advanced the theory that the moon is not an entirely natural object, but a planetoid that was excavated eons ago in the depths of space by intelligent beings with a technology superior to ours.
Responding officers initially encountered the suspect behind the shopping center, and he “almost immediately produced a handgun,” said Roswell Police Chief James Conroy
Apparently, the moon is a terraformed, engineered piece of hardware, with a 3-mile thick outer layer of dust and rock, which has, below this layer, a thick solid shell of around 20 miles made of highly resistant materials such as titanium, uranium 236, neptunium 237.
Not what you would expect to find “inside” the Moon.
Despite six visits announced by US astronauts between 1969 and 1972, the Moon remains an enigma for scientists in many aspects.
The solutions to these riddles may indicate an alien aspect of our familiar Moon. Called “the Rosetta Stone of the planets” by Dr. Robert Jastrow, the first president of NASA’s Commission of Lunar Exploration, scientists hoped to understand the composition and formation of the moon and solve some of the mysteries of how our planet and solar system came into existence. However, six lunar landings later, science writer Earl Ubell said: “… the Moon remains a mystery.
The Moon is more complicated than anyone expected, is not just a frozen billiard ball in space and time, as many scientists had believed. The Moon is far older than imagined, some have ventured out to say that it might well be older than planet Earth. The Moon has at least three distinct layers of rock.
Contrary to the idea that heavier objects sink, heavier rocks are found on the surface. And there is a gap defined in the distribution of minerals.
The moon is very dry and it does not seem that it had, at some point, substantial amounts of water. None of the lunar rocks regardless of where they were found contained traces of water or even water molecules bound to minerals.
Apollo 16 astronauts found rocks containing pieces of rusty iron Since oxidation requires oxygen and free hydrogen, this rust indicates that water should be somewhere on the moon.
Strangely, instruments left by the Apollo missions sent a signal to Earth on March 7, 1971, indicating that “wind” containing traces of “water” had swept across the lunar surface. Since the water on the surface without air is vaporized, it behaves like wind on Earth, the question was where this water originated.
If the Earth and the moon were created at the same time, close to one another, how come one body, the Earth has great amounts of Iron, while the other body, the moon, has very little of it. Astrophysicists are unable to explain exactly how the moon became a satellite of Earth.
Magnetized moon rocks were found, not strong enough to pick up a clip but they were nevertheless magnetic in nature. But, there is no magnetic field on the moon, so where did the magnetism come from?
Evidence suggests that the moon may be hollow. Moon rocks studies indicate that the interior of the moon differs from the mantle of the Earth in ways that suggest the presence of a very small core, even though some suggest the Moon might not have a core at all.
In 1962, NASA scientist Dr. Gordon MacDonald stated, “If the astronomical data are reduced, it is found that the data require that the interior of the moon be less dense than the outer parts. Indeed, it would seem that the moon is more like a hollow than a homogeneous sphere.”
The significance was stated by astronomer Carl Sagan way back in his 1966 work Intelligent Life in the Universe, “A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object.”
The most incredible evidence that suggests the moon could be hollow came on November 20, 1969, when the Apollo 12 crew, after returning to their command ship, sent the lunar module ascent stage crashing back onto the moon creating an artificial moonquake.
The LM crashed into the surface about 40 miles from the Apollo 12 landing site where ultra-sensitive seismic equipment recorded something both unexpected and astounding – the moon reverberated like a bell for more than an hour. The vibration wave took almost eight minutes to reach a peak, then decreased in intensity, something no one had expected to occur.
Experts were even more surprised about the moon when lunar rocks were found with traces of bronze, mica, amphibole and almost pure titanium. According to the Argonne National Laboratory, uranium 236 and neptunium 237-elements that were not previously found in nature-were discovered in moon rocks. Scientists were baffled when they discovered the presence of rustproof iron particles in a soil sample from the Sea of Crises.
A Volusia County firefighter made a daring leap onto a runaway boat to rescue an unconscious man as the vessel spun out of control on a lake near De Leon Springs
“The individual then began kicking the vehicle’s door in an attempt to escape,” the Camden County Sheriff’s Office said; the deputies were able to safely restrain the man
The Broward Sheriff’s Office currently staffs the facility 24 hours a day but says critical shortages and safety concerns make continued operations unsustainable
