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dry land discoveries – news archive 2001
text translation service for 25 worldwide languages
This
archive is about the various discoveries in 2001 which have helped to
create the ‘paradigm shift’
in the historical sciences that characterises the ‘new
appreciation’ of the ancient world.
The
Morien Institute welcomes contributions
from everywhere in the world. Wherever you are, if your traditional prehistory
has been challenged by new discoveries, please
send us the press reports
webpage URLs and magazine stories …
| 2002
Egyptian kite-flyers ‘may have built the pyramids’
This was the headline in the UK newspaper,
The Independent on October 25 2001,
and it seemed at first to be just another strange theory about how the
pyramids were built. Written by their Technology Editor, Charles Arthur,
it opened with the word:
“AN EGYPTIAN hieroglyph showing a number of men in odd postures holding
ropes apparently connected to a huge bird has inspired a new theory about
the way ancient monuments like the pyramids and Stonehenge were built.”
It seems
that a Californian software engineer saw the hieroglyph and wondered if
the ‘bird’ might not have been
a large man-made ‘kite’, that
could have provided the lift to raise the heavy megaliths used to built
the pyramids off the ground, and into place atop each other. This interesting
theory has been voiced before in ‘Earth Mysteries’
circles, though that suggestion was in the context of the building of
the Nazca geoglyphs on the pampa in Peru. The story in The Independent
went on to tell that:
“After managing to raise a 180 kilogram cement block off the ground
with kites bought in a shop, Maureen Clemmons tok the idea to Morteza
Gharib, a professor at the Californian Institute of Technology. He then
lifted a 3.5 ton obelisk by using a large sail.”
The seem to have picked up the story from the
New Scientist, and they quoted Professor Gharib as saying:
“The instant the sail opened into the wind, a huge force was generated
and the obelisk was raised to the vertical in a mere 40 seconds … We
were absolutely stunned.”
The Independent
writer speculated that the discovery offered an alternative theory as
to how the Egyptians, and perhaps other megalith builders in Prydein may
have erected many of their biggest monuments. The idea that man-carrying
kites built along the same principle as modern ‘hang-gliders’
has been an idea that has been around for some time, and there was at
least one attempt in the 1980s to launch one off the top of Glastonbury
Tor in order to see if it might have been a possible way in which the
controversial Glastonbury ‘zodiac temple’
was observed from the air by ancient geoglyph builders.
Certainly
it is possible to get a clear view of the ‘goat’s
head’ geoglyph in the Pumpsaint
Zodiac Temple discovered by Lewis Edwards in 1947. The nearby
Cwm Twrch heights offer an idea launch-place for such low-tech aircraft,
though it would have to be manoeverable as wind alone would not necessarily
take it directly over the area of Lewis Edwards’ Caer
Sidi temple.
As ever,
The Independent, like most newspapers, turned to an Egyptologist for comments,
and reported that Willeke Wendrich, an associate professor of Egyptology
at the University of California in Los Angeles, scoffed at the idea with
the usual jibe we’ve come to expect:
“The evidence for kite-lifting is non-existent.”
So there
you go! We have it from an ‘ologist’
that this sort of thing has not shown up in the arch?ological record,
so presumably it could never have happened. Now where, and how many times,
have we heard that before? …
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