Speaker 1 (00:00):
The age-old question. How did the Egyptians build the pyramids? Perplexing historians, all the way back to ancient Greece, stumping Napoleon's archaeologists, and becoming the butt of jokes today.
Speaker 2 (00:12): Did this start at the top and work down, or start at the bottom and work up?
Speaker 1 (00:16): Although we're fairly sure they started at the bottom, we still don't know exactly how they did it. There are all kinds of theories, ramps, cranes, and yes, aliens.
Speaker 3 (00:27): Probably extraterrestrials.
Speaker 1 (00:28): Now we're getting a new potential answer, one a little more grounded in reality, water researchers just published a study suggesting that hydraulic force could have helped build the step pyramid for Pharaoh Djoser more than 4,600 years ago. It's the oldest of the seven monumental pyramids in Egypt, and was at the time the largest structure, coming in at 204 feet. That's King or Pharaoh Lebron James stacked head to toe more than 30 times. Some of those stones weighing more than 600 pounds. (01:00) The researchers now say the internal architecture of the pyramid supports a new theory, a hydraulic lift. A nearby structure might've functioned as a dam. Water could have flowed into shafts inside the pyramid that would have raised some sort of float carrying the stones, like a water elevator. They say the discovery represents a significant leap in our comprehension of ancient Egyptian engineering. The question is, where would the water have come from? Researchers say the area used to be more of a savanna than a desert getting a lot more rain than it does now, but some experts are skeptical.
Speaker 4 (01:34): I think it's extremely unlikely, to say the least.
Speaker 1 (01:38): John Darnell is a professor of Egyptology at Yale.
Speaker 4 (01:41): We don't have any evidence for the Egyptians making use of, let's say water pressure, or understanding or exploiting that. It would be very difficult to do that using the structures they're describing because the enclosure would leach water into the desert.
Speaker 1 (02:01): The researchers behind the new study say there's more to investigate. They're looking into whether other pyramids could have been built in a similar way, from the inside out. So in many ways, it all remains a mystery and alien watchers can keep their eyes on the skies. David Noriega NBC News.
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