Recently, I’ve been thinking about the pyramids again—the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt specifically, which is estimated to have been built over 4500 years ago. Why have I been thinking about this pyramid? Because when I look around me these days and look at what’s been created over the last two hundred years or so, I wonder, is it possible that our evolution of technology took a turn away from what it might have been?
When I read and learn about the Great Pyramid of Giza, I remain awed by its magnificence. It is the only one of the seven great wonders of the world still standing. It is constructed of more than 2.3 million giant blocks of limestone and granite that weigh upwards of 10 tons, all of which are near perfectly positioned in the structure. It is a near solid mass of stone containing few internal spaces. Inside the pyramid is a sloping passageway called the Great Gallery that leads into three internal rooms: the Queen’s Chamber, the King’s Chamber, and the Subterranean Chamber. Tourists access the Great Gallery through the Robber’s Tunnel, which is an entrance that was dug into the pyramid’s north face by medieval looters on orders of ruler al-Ma’mun, whose army had swept into Egypt from what is now Iraq. Incredibly, the Great Gallery and the three internal chambers were not bored into the Great Pyramid but designed and built into the magnificent edifice, the megaton blocks so precisely placed as to accommodate these internal features. How did they build these? Is it possible they knew something about space, time and the unconscious that’s since been forgotten?
Remember Moses parted the Red Sea and turned the water of the Nile into blood. He even carried the tablets with the Ten Commandments from the Almighty down from Mount Sinai twice. Is it possible that he had knowledge on how to use space, time and the unconscious that’s been forgotten? Is it possible he had access to the knowledge the Egyptians used in constructing the Great Pyramid?
Consider the eras since the Great Pyramid was built. The Great Pyramid was built during the Bronze Age from 3300 BC to 1200 BC—an era that is described by academia as the use of bronze, writing and what is considered the beginning of urban civilization. But is it possible that something else was happening during this period to allow the Great Pyramid to be designed and constructed? For instance, when the perimeter of the Great Pyramid is divided by its height a very accurate approximation of 2 times pi is found. Pi wasn’t supposed to have been known in 2500 BC. Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC) is credited with the first calculation of pi. So how is it that over 2000 years prior to Archimedes, the Egyptians used it in the design of the pyramid? Is it possible they knew something that was lost in between and then rediscovered by Archimedes? Also, the Great Pyramid along with the other two pyramids of Giza are perfectly aligned with the movement of the Sun on the Earth’s surface, especially during the equinoxes. How is this possible without some superior understanding or knowledge?
Following the Bronze Age came the Iron age from 1200 BC to 600 BC. This was a time where throughout Europe, Asia and parts of Africa the making of tools and weapons from iron and steel began. This seems quite cryptic when thinking of the marvels of the Great Pyramid a millennia before. Had something already happened to vanquish the earlier technology of the Egyptians? Classical antiquity or simply antiquity is designated by scholars as the time from 8th century BC to 5th century AD that saw the rise of ancient Greece, ancient Rome or the Greco-Roman world and brought Persian rule over Egypt to an end by the Greek conqueror, Alexander the Great. This period was then followed by what 15th century scholars first designated as the Middle Ages that separated their time from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the period from the 5th century to the 15th century. This 1,000-year period was marked by economic, intellectual and cultural decline but was also a time of increased religious conflict, the rise of feudalism, the introduction of the plow to farming and Black Death plague. Is it possible that Egyptian technology was already lost?
Then we enter the Early Modern Period from 1500 AD to 1800 AD, the Late Modern Period from 1800 to 1945 and Contemporary Period from 1946 until now. The Early Modern Period includes the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. There is so much that begins to take place during this time that is marked by the rise of democracy, the tolerance of a range of religious beliefs and the movement of people from the countryside into towns including the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Why am I wondering about all this history?
It seems to me how human kind has come to structure our world around a material-based thinking—a material world that when looking back through the historic time periods to the Bronze Age when the Great Pyramid was build, may have not been quite what we’ve been made to think of it or might have been.
A good modern explanation to me for how the pyramids were built has yet to be given. The capability the Egyptians found to move very large blocks, long distances and very precisely appears to have been lost to us. Our mechanical understanding of using force and lift seem simply inadequate for constructing such a massive edifice even with a workforce of thousands. It just doesn’t make sense. But is it possible they had another way?
I’ve briefly described the time periods since the Egyptian and Bronze Age, which culminates in our modern age that is very material and mechanical in orientation. I think this stems from Darwin and his On the Origin of Species and the science community’s establishment of methodological naturalism that ruled out the practice of investigating supernatural explanations for physical phenomena and only review theories that are of a material nature. I struggle with this restriction from the late 19th century when science reveals that ninety-five percent of our existence consists of dark energy and dark matter, which are not only invisible but mostly undetectable. Five percent of our existence consists of visible matter, or in other words, is seeable and made up of atoms and molecules—material.
Our world, whether intentional or not, has seemed to follow this lead being visible, material and in many ways mechanical. I can’t help but think of our cars, our planes, our lights, and even our buildings; they’ve all became very mechanical and touchable material.
But is it possible that we’re on the brink of a shift to the invisible? Possibly akin to what was realized by the Egyptian’s to build the Great Pyramid.
Since the dawn of the transistor age in the late 40s, the visible has become increasingly invisible. Mechanical electric circuits have become orders of magnitude smaller to be all but unseen. Fibre optics and satellites transmit astronomical amounts of data all but invisibly. Information passes through the air we breathe without our notice into devices we hold in our hands. We see pictures and videos on screens of the world around us but how they get there we can’t see.
I watch in amazement from the ground as a plane takes off. Human kind no doubt flies through the air. Getting to destinations around the world where before flight, we could not reach. But compared to the grace of a bird jumping off a tree branch to fly through the air, our gigantic mechanical birds by comparison are staggeringly inefficient and cumbersome. I look at a light bulb. A filament or thin piece of metal strung between two other pieces of wire inside a spherical glass bulb provides light from the inefficient heating up of the metal wire from an electric charge. The brilliant light from the sun that centres our galaxy seems all but effortless to produce. And what about our cars, these 2000-pound metal structures on pneumatic tires—feats of incredible ingenuity—seem quite cumbersome and large to transport our, by comparison, much smaller bodies.
But through the likes of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, to name but a few of the giants of industry whose inventions gave us much of our modern conveyances and conveniences, did humankind take a turn away from what could have been? Did Nikola Tesla’s long-time dream to create a source of free, inexhaustible, clean energy get bought out? Did human kind serve the right master?
When I think of the enormity of a 10-ton block of stone and how in today’s material and mechanical sense, we might think of moving it, to be placed in a position as accurate as one might put a thread through a sewing needle and then repeat that effort literally millions of times, the car, the light bulb and the plane seem like child’s play.
There were forces at work in constructing the pyramids that dwindle the material and mechanical accomplishments that fill our lives today. Is it possible, if humankind had taken another route, we might travel without our mechanical devices? Is it possible, we might have light in darkness without our material devices?
And to bring this article to a close, is it possible to think that we may be upon a new era where the invisible world transitions us from our visible, material world? That invisible world that fills our phones and screens and transports immense amounts of information invisibly through the air. Where we can be transported, not by material and mechanical efforts but instead by our connection with the unseen. Is our material world bridging into becoming something that is not material or visible? That in some way harnesses that unseen world of dark energy or dark matter or a recovered understanding of space, time and the unconscious? Is it possible that we may venture into a world, not so unlike what the Egyptians had discovered in building the Great Pyramid?
Lots of thought provoked once again Doug. What might have been or is still yet to come?