Graham Hancock : "We've Been Wrong About How the Egyptians Cut Granite"
Elias Discovery
414,507 views
Graham Hancock : "We've Been Wrong About How the Egyptians Cut Granite"
In a museum at University College London, there is a small cylindrical object made of pink granite.
It's roughly the size of a thick candle. It came from the Giza Plateau. It was excavated in 1881 by William Flinders Petrie, who is considered the founder of modern scientific archaeology in Egypt. And Petrie, who was not a person given to dramatic statements, sat with this object for long enough that he published a specific analysis of what he found on its surface.
What he found was a spiral groove running around the exterior of the core — the mark left by whatever tool had drilled through the granite to produce it. He measured the pitch of that groove. He calculated the feed rate: the depth of advancement per single revolution of the drill. The number he arrived at was 0.1 inches per revolution.
He described this as extraordinary. He stated plainly in his published work that it indicated a cutting action far exceeding what any known method could achieve. And he proposed a candidate for what might explain it. Not copper. Not sand. A material harder than quartz. Fixed cutting points of corundum or jewels.
20 Comments
If you know anything about engineering , this is mind blowing
granite blocks that were 100s of tons.
Copper as a pure metal is very soft and usually found mixed with other metals so its never pure.
But Brass is an alloy mixture of copper with zinc 90/10 , 85/15, 80/20 etc. Still quite soft and used mainly for sheets , rods, extrusions etc.
Bronze alloy is copper + tin or lead or silicon added in different ratios. Is much stronger used for bearings, machine parts to take more friction wear. Can even become so harder its brittle.Much easier to cast into required shapes like tools including sculptures.
We need to be discussing tools with better strength suitable for cutting tools and that will be a bronze material. Because it can be cast better than pure copper Im suggest corundum can be cast in place to create cylinders with hardened cutting tips just like our modern diamond core drills. Even diamonds could have been used in same principle of tyey had access. Simple to make in any size. Cylinders , discs, drill heads.
The Egyptians also were using acoustic vibration to some degree.
If they mastered this enough to concentrate vibration it can become what we already know as ultrasonic drilling and cutting. At the tip of a wire vibrates so hard when hard rock touches it , cutting the micro surface begins. Just have to feed the direction to cut. Gem cutters machinery.
Graham Hancock : "We've Been Wrong About How the Egyptians Cut Granite"
Elias Discovery
414,507 views
Graham Hancock : "We've Been Wrong About How the Egyptians Cut Granite"
In a museum at University College London, there is a small cylindrical object made of pink granite.
It's roughly the size of a thick candle. It came from the Giza Plateau. It was excavated in 1881 by William Flinders Petrie, who is considered the founder of modern scientific archaeology in Egypt. And Petrie, who was not a person given to dramatic statements, sat with this object for long enough that he published a specific analysis of what he found on its surface.
What he found was a spiral groove running around the exterior of the core — the mark left by whatever tool had drilled through the granite to produce it. He measured the pitch of that groove. He calculated the feed rate: the depth of advancement per single revolution of the drill. The number he arrived at was 0.1 inches per revolution.
He described this as extraordinary. He stated plainly in his published work that it indicated a cutting action far exceeding what any known method could achieve. And he proposed a candidate for what might explain it. Not copper. Not sand. A material harder than quartz. Fixed cutting points of corundum or jewels.