Kind: captions
Language: en
[Applause]
okay so we're going for a ride around
the
pyramids the Great Pyramid was the
tallest man-made structure for nearly
4,000 years only surpassed by a large
margin by the Eiffel Tower in
1889 147 M High you are interested by
climbing yeah it's climbing but he is
not free how much what makes the
pyramids even more impressive is that
these structures were built over 4,500
years years ago when Egyptians didn't
have wheels or steel the only metal
available was copper and copper Alloys
it took about 2 million stones to build
that pyramid well I call them Stones
giant rocks somewhere between 1 and 1 12
and 3 tons each the pyramids took about
20 to 30 years to make it's a long time
but if you think about the number of
stones a couple million stones in every
pyramid you'd have to be laying a stone
roughly once every 3 minutes
if you consider a regular workday like a
10 hour 12h hour workday nobody know how
they build it it's still secret but a
lot of people they try to do the best to
give you some information about how they
did it but we must say it's secret they
did and they take the secret of them
nobody know no plans survive to show us
how the pyramids were built so perhaps
it's not surprising that this is the
subject of countless conspiracy theories
involving aliens time travel or lost
Technologies but there is a a less
far-fetched myth which has become widely
accepted that the pyramids were built by
slaves but recent discoveries suggest
the pyramid Builders were not slaves at
all they were skilled workers
well-preserved tombs near the pyramids
suggest that their hard labor and
sacrifice were rewarded if these workers
had been slaves they would not have
received such honorable
burials but how did they actually manage
to build the pyramids one of the things
I find really interesting is that the
Egyptians did didn't know about wheels
so they didn't really even use rollers
as far as we can tell I mean these rocks
would have been carted across the desert
on sleds there's a famous diagram of
this giant statue being pulled by 172
men and that that statue would have
weighed somewhere on the order of 68
tons or something this would normally
create a lot of friction but the sand
was wetted in front of the sled
experiments show this would reduce the
pulling Force required by half the
internal Stone of this pyramid are all
Limestone which is a bit softer and
easier to work you can imagine them
working it with those copper chisels
that they had some of these blocks may
have been actually sawed through using
copper saws now you wouldn't think that
copper could really cut rock but if you
put an abrasive in there like a a sand
you could actually wear away the stone
probably be a very difficult and labor
intensive job something that you don't
really think about is that when you
build a pyramid you need to build it on
level ground you can actually see there
how they had to level out that ground
well it speculated that when the Nile
flooded they put the flood water into a
channel and see where the high parts
were so the inside Was Made of This
Limestone the outside of this pyramid
was actually made of granite much harder
Stone I'm at the Granite Quarry in Awan
where they would have quarried the
stones that were used in the pyramids at
Giza now that is an incredible feat
because this is nearly 1,000 kilm away
from Giza and when the Nile flooded
water would come right through here so
that they could move all the stones
quarried here this Granite they could
move this back up to Giza and use it on
the pyramids these would have had to
been floated down on rafts now quaring
this would have been really hard Granite
is one of the hardest rocks because it
contains quartz and quartz on the
hardness scale is about a seven where
diamond is a 10 so how would you dig a
massive trench like that basically the
technique was just to smash the doite
rock into the granite over and over over
and over again they would make about 5
mm progress per hour so there is no
clear account of how the pyramids were
actually built but the best guess is
that ramps were used and in fact some
ramps have been found on incomplete
pyramids but you can't build just a
straight ramp a long straight ramp and
keep putting the Rocks up I mean the
problem with that is the the ramp
actually ends up taking up more material
than the pyramid itself I think a ramp
which sort of wraps around the pyramids
is probably the most likely thing the
top third of the height of the pyramid
actually only accounts for about 4% of
all the material in the pyramid that's
why it suspected that levers were
actually used to finish off the pyramid
to do the top levels now the pyramids
have clearly weathered but in the past
they would have been a brighter white
because they would have used a white
Limestone to cover the whole face of
that pyramid and then the very top may
have been covered with electrum which is
a mixture of gold and silver so if you
can imagine
that would be a pretty spectacular site
the reason these pyramids are are shaped
this way is so they represent sun rays
imagine what that would have looked like
when it was first built with a shiny
metallic top and smooth white finish on
on all of those sides I think that would
have been a sight to
[Music]
behold hey I hope you enjoyed that video
I filmed it earlier this year when I was
in Egypt now I'm currently in Melbourne
Australia and tomorrow I am flying to
the US in fact next week I'm actually
doing a live show in Alabama with Henry
from minute physics Destin from smarter
everyday Brady Heron from number file
periodic videos and 60 symbols and cgp
Gray from cgp Gray yes he will actually
be there in person so if you want to
come and join us then check out the link
in the dooblydoo you know on all of
these long flights I always need
something to help me pass the time and I
know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow
I'll be listening to the brand new audio
book from Bill Nye the book is called
undeniable Evolution and the science of
creation and he actually narrates this
book himself so I can't wait to listen
to it and if you want you can download
this book for free by going to
audible.com/veritasium or you can pick
any other book of your choosing for a
one-month free trial so I really want to
thank Audible for their support they've
helped me go to all of these amazing
places and they have hundreds of
thousands of audiobooks so if you love
audiobooks then you should definitely
try them out so thank you for watching
and hopefully I will see you next week