WCF

History, politics, and culture articles and forum discussions.

archaeology

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The uncanny precision of the Great Pyramid of Giza

I knew that the Egyptian pyramids were pretty precise in their footprint measurements, so I was surprised when I came across an article entitled, “Great Pyramid of Giza Is Slightly Lopsided“.

My previous research, and what I had told students in the past, was that the measurements of the base of at least one of the pyramids of the Giza Plateau were extremely precise.  So precise, in fact, that the sides differed by fewer than two inches, even though the sides were over 700 feet long.  This was an incredible feat for a civilization working around 2500 B.C. with Bronze Age tools.

The jagged pyramid exterior without its smooth veneer.
The jagged pyramid exterior without its smooth veneer.

The new article I came across indicated that the difference between the sides of the Great Pyramid of Khufu could actually differ by around five-and-a-half inches, rather than just two.  This was based upon research conducted in the Spring of 2015 by Glen Dash and team.  The team based its findings on the existing casing stones that once provided a flat veneer that covered the entire structure, as well as statistical analysis (the jagged appearance of the pyramid’s surface today is much different than how it originally appeared).

Although the article did not include information about the original report, I was able to find the published survey results about the footprint of the Great Pyramid.  I must say that it’s nice to find articles that detail ongoing archaeological work performed on world-famous monuments.  For as much as we have studied the pyramids of Egypt, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or the Great Wall of China, or some other famous landmark, it’s nice to know that these sites have more secrets yet to be revealed which can help us understand how historical civilizations lived.

Does it make a difference?

Although the footprint measurements are undoubtedly important for future scholarship, it doesn’t really matter whether it means the Great Pyramid is an exact square.  The fact remains that the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom must have been highly disciplined and led by a unitary vision when creating the Pyramid of Khufu and the rest of the pyramids of the Giza Plateau.

The design of the structures is brimming with contradiction.  They are simple in form, yet their logistics must have been complex; they are rationally-laid out, yet mysterious in their creation; understandable in terms of their aesthetic appeal, yet difficult to understand why a civilization would desire to create these.

It’s understandable why the pyramids could have been considered a marvel to those in the ancient world, such as Herodotus.  But in a sense, they should be more of a marvel to those of us living today since we know the pace of technology.  For as far as mankind has reached in the modern age, could he begin to replicate what the Egyptians did 4500 years ago?

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Is this the oldest settlement in North America?

A super-ancient settlement has recently been unearthed in Canada.

The age of the settlement?  Fourteen thousand years old.

Cave painting of a deer from Lascaux, France (c. 15,000-13,000 B.C.).

Let’s put that into perspective for a moment.  A settlement that existed circa 12,000 B.C. would clearly lie within the Paleolithic period when ice covered Europe and man lived his nomadic existence of hunting and gathering.  The Canadian settlement would have sprung up not long after the creation of cave paintings at Lascaux, France, and around the same time that the Altamira caves were painted in Spain.  It would have pre-dated some of the most ancient-known civilizations at Jericho and Çatal Höyük by several thousand years.

Location of Triquet Island (yellow dot).

The location of the site, which was found by a doctoral student, is on Triquet Island on the coast of British Columbia.  A video on a news site showed what appeared to be some of the items found, which were small tools or weapon parts.  The story states that this is the oldest North American settlement ever found.

A typical Canadian family circa 12,000 B.C.?

This is pretty amazing.  While Paleolithic people left several fascinating works of art in sites across Europe, I am unfamiliar with any found in North America.  Could this find bring about a more intense search for prehistoric North American settlements?  It would be quite interesting to me if North America ever had its own version of the Venus of Willendorf.

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How many Viking warriors were women?

I came across some commentary and reactions that were posted in regard to a study of Viking burial sites which had included information about the gender of the deceased.  Without citing the actual text of the study, here is some of the reaction (via Invasion of the Viking women unearthed):

So much for Hagar the Horrible, with his stay-at-home wife, Helga. Viking women may have equaled men moving to England in medieval invasions, suggests a look at ancient burials.

The author presents a conclusion which seems commonplace today in the sense that it shatters our stereotypes about what we thought we knew about medieval women.  This sentiment was then echoed by more recent commentary on the supposedly myth-busting find (via Better Identification of Viking Corpses Reveals: Half of the Warriors Were Female):

It’s been so difficult for people to envision women’s historical contributions as solely getting married and dying in childbirth, but you can’t argue with numbers—and fifty/fifty is pretty **** good. The presence of female warriors also has researchers now wondering just how accurate the stereotypes of raping and pillaging actually are…

This second conclusion has us imagining wild Viking battles in which every other warrior rampaging through Carolingian villages is a long blond maiden-fighter named Helga or Olga.  It’s backed up, supposedly, by archaeological evidence.  Right?

Not so fast.  One of the comments to that same article was left by a historian (“Andrew”) who just so happens to study early medieval burial sites (in other words, an expert on the topic).  According to Andrew, the conclusion about the 50/50 gender split on the battlefield is simply not a correct one to be made, and that “…while many women have been found buried with weapons, the evidence doesn’t support the claim made in the title of equal gender representation on the battlefield.”  The underlying rationale behind the women-on-the-battlefield theory is that warriors were typically buried with weapons, and archaeological evidence indicates that some of those with weapons are the remains of deceased females.

Andrew goes on to say that the actual rate of graves containing females with weapons is under 10%, and even that percentage might not accurately reflect how many women saw the battlefield (i.e. simply being buried with a weapon does not automatically mean that the deceased was a warrior).  His conclusion:

Archaeologists who ignored evidence that Viking women weren’t all housewives caused great harm, but going to the other side and saying that men and women were equal on the Viking battlefield isn’t really any better. It minimizes the reality of gender inequality that Viking women had to struggle against, much like the inequality faced by their modern counterparts.

Good advice, except for the curious conclusion in the last sentence, which seems to violate at least the sentiment of avoiding unfair conclusions that he had been advocating.  Did Viking men and women share the same roles?  Did they have the same responsibilities, or enjoy the same benefits as the opposite sex?  Certainly not, but using a loaded, modern term such as “gender inequality” inserts biased socio-politically-motivated language into a discussion which up to that point had been about archaeology.

Personally, I thought that it was interesting to see the display of cause and effect in regard to archaeological findings, even if the effect caused some erroneous conclusions to be made.  It doesn’t really matter to me how many Viking women were on the battlefield, but it does make more intuitive sense that the percentage would have been quite low.  Quite understandably, men would have been more valued for their physical prowess in war, and women would have been more valued for their gifts of childbearing and home life.  This isn’t to say that this was absolute, but just a general rule.  As unfashionable it may seem these days, it’s far wiser to get one’s knowledge by learning the general rules about how the world works (or worked in history) than it is to be educated in a thousand exceptions.

WCF