Drafting* class taught me that you can build any structure with just a T-square, a compass, a pencil, and some basic math.
*As in the precursor to Computer-Aided Drafting. My school was cheap and didn’t let us use AutoCAD till the 2nd semester.
But anyway, place the straight piece of wood across a gap. One end of the string goes around the middle of the wood, the other end hangs down where you tie the rock. You can visually tell with decent enough accuracy if the rock is hanging closer to one side (not level) or just straight down (level). If you can’t tell, get a longer string.
The pyramids at gizeh predate most of that. They predate algebra by some 800 years.
Of course, despite Pythagoras not being born for some 2000 years, they DID have Rope stretchers to create square angles. They also had square levels and plumb bobs for making straight blocks and level surfaces.
“From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, followed closely by Ancient Egypt and the Levantine state of Ebla began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for purposes of taxation, commerce, trade and also in the patterns in nature, the field of astronomy and to record time and formulate calendars.”
The first “true” pyramids were not built until ~2613. Prior to that it was all step pyramids, which are much less complex - just put a bunch of consecutively smaller squares in a stack. Even then, Djoser was started in ~2670, several hundred years after the “introduction” of basic math. Just because we don’t have extant physical mathematical texts surviving from that time doesn’t mean they didn’t know how to do math.
Trying to picture how you do this with those. Brain is stuck on hanging rock from wood with string which feels like I’m going the wrong way
Drafting* class taught me that you can build any structure with just a T-square, a compass, a pencil, and some basic math.
*As in the precursor to Computer-Aided Drafting. My school was cheap and didn’t let us use AutoCAD till the 2nd semester.
But anyway, place the straight piece of wood across a gap. One end of the string goes around the middle of the wood, the other end hangs down where you tie the rock. You can visually tell with decent enough accuracy if the rock is hanging closer to one side (not level) or just straight down (level). If you can’t tell, get a longer string.
The pyramids at gizeh predate most of that. They predate algebra by some 800 years.
Of course, despite Pythagoras not being born for some 2000 years, they DID have Rope stretchers to create square angles. They also had square levels and plumb bobs for making straight blocks and level surfaces.
You don’t even need maths, just rope and gravity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
“From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, followed closely by Ancient Egypt and the Levantine state of Ebla began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for purposes of taxation, commerce, trade and also in the patterns in nature, the field of astronomy and to record time and formulate calendars.”
The first “true” pyramids were not built until ~2613. Prior to that it was all step pyramids, which are much less complex - just put a bunch of consecutively smaller squares in a stack. Even then, Djoser was started in ~2670, several hundred years after the “introduction” of basic math. Just because we don’t have extant physical mathematical texts surviving from that time doesn’t mean they didn’t know how to do math.
I swallowed my rock, can I be excused?