this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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As a Stonemason, this shit always bothers me. Recent example was an article on stone henge. "Scientists still mystified as to how the stones were stood so that to caps were level!"
Mfr! Give me a straight piece of wood, a length of string and a rock, I will make you a basic level. Don't want to lift the stone in and out multiple times to adjust the level? Get logs and cut them to the same length as the upright stones. It's not fucking rocket surgery!
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.
Yeah dude, I took a drafting class way back in HS (really enjoyed it), yet have maybe seen three drafting tables since (and I'm in a field that would have previously had countless).
I know that stuff was basically immediately made obsolete by CAD and what not, but there was always something relaxing and meditative about sitting down at (or standing if you so choose) a drafting table, armed with nothing but a pencil, an eraser, a T-square, a protractor, and a couple plastic triangles, and coming up with some really impressive looking shit with perfect perspective.
If I had the room for one, I'd def get a drafting table... lol I'd probably end up using it to hang wet clothes on to dry.
Think your school was cheap? My school only had CAD on 3 machines and you had to take 4 YEARS of drafting courses to be allowed to use it, I graduated in 2012… this shit wasn’t new tech at that time lol