Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Geek Time. 欢迎回来极客时间. Hi, Brad.

Hi Lulu.

So what are we going to talk about today?

Have you ever seen the pyramids?

The pyramids金字塔吗? I haven't really been to Egypt. I always wanted to go.

Pyramids aren't only in Egypt. They're all over the world. Have you been to like Mexico, maybe?

Yeah. In that case, I have seen pyramids actually. Thanks for reminding me. I've seen pyramids in Mexico.

Yeah, a lot of times when mentioned the pyramids, people think of the Great Pyramids of Egypt, but there have been pyramids all over the world, which makes people really think that there is something else going on here. There's pyramids in Sudan, Mexico, Italy, Peru, not just Africa, but in like South America as well, which is a whole another world away.

But they're all slightly different. I mean, obviously we're more probably, our audience are more familiar with the pyramids in Egypt, which is pointy at the top, but like the pyramids in South America, in Central America, like Mexico. I went to Teotihuacán and the pyramids there at the top is not pointy, is like a flat type.

Yeah.

There's... the general shape is fairly similar, but some of the aspects of the pyramids are different. It could be based on their beliefs and what they use the pyramids for, but they're all different sizes, but they all generally have the same general shape.

If you think about it, it is a mysterious thing, isn't it? If many different ancient civilizations across continents are building or were building more or less the same sort of thing. What's that about?

Yeah. It's not only just that they're very similar in shape, some of the designs, some of the decorations that they put on the pyramids are very similar. Some of the faces, some of the other additions they've made to pyramids were very similar even from Africa to South America.

So let's dive a little bit deeper into the topic of pyramids. First of all, when were they built, Egyptian ones were built like 5,000 years ago?

Yeah, so according to most historians, the pyramids were built about 5,000 years ago, ancient Egypt only really emerged about 6,000 years ago. Some of the other pyramids were built about 2,000 years ago.

Recently, there has been some other pyramids found such as G?BEKLI TEPE, which is found in Turkey.

这个叫什么哥贝克利石阵，就在土耳其发掘. That was in the 19th, right? It was discovered very very recently compared with the other things.

Right. Yeah.

So people have known about the great pyramids for a long time yet they're easily seen. G?BEKLI TEPE was partially underground. And so a lot of people didn't even see it. It looks like it was covered up. But a lot of the things they found around the site are about 12,000 years old.

Wow.

So like if those things are on top of the pyramid, and so that means the pyramid must be older than that.

Wow. That's like twice more ancient or twice as ancient compared with the pyramids that were quite familiar with in Egypt. Fascinating.

For a lot of people makes them want to reevaluate their understanding of the pyramids were the pyramids actually built 5,000 years ago by the ancient Egyptians or where they built much earlier by another species, maybe not another species, but by another group of people.

Yeah, but I mean we save more of that, we save more of those theories for the advanced episode.

We'll get to that a little bit later.

But first things first, I think a lot of people are fascinated with the idea of pyramids is not just because what they were used for, the more the idea of could they have built it. How could ancient people have built something so monolithic, and also so specifically shaped. And I remember reading history books, and saying how difficult it is for them to build something in that shape, and using those huge stones and materials.

Mhm. If you look at like rock cutting itself, like a rock cutting isn't all that difficult. Yeah, you need something like a hammer, you need to be able to hammer it down. But one man can carve a big huge stone using a hammer and some other tools. The most difficult thing about understanding the creation of the pyramids is there is no historical documentation about how they were built.

So we have to kind of experiment. We have to think how could they have done that using the tools, we knew that they had back then, right? Like they had some kinds of metals, but they didn't have a lot of metals, right? So they didn't have steel or titanium like we have nowadays, right? They don't have really strong metals like that. They might have had some iron, but it would have been much more brittle, right? But how did they move the rocks, right?

Exactly.

That's what I'm thinking about, because let's face it just to cut it. I mean, it's gonna be difficult without proper tools and modern tools, but it's still possible. It's hard, but it takes time, but it's possible you can just use like cheap or free labor back then, but moving it.

How did they move it? I think the same question they asked about how did they build the Great Wall, right? The point is how did people manage to move those building materials to the site and then move them up and down, really?

Yeah.

Some of the ideas is that they used basically logs. So they had a bunch of logs. They put the stone on top of the logs. And then as they rolled the logs across, they moved the log to the front, and then it would go underneath it, and then they would move it to front. It would take a long time, right? They would have to go over and over there. All these people pushing it. It wouldn't be that difficult to push it with a big group of people. But it would take a long time like how you're traveling, probably less than a mile an hour doing something like that.

It's like a human operated conveyor belt, but it's like completely men operated rather than automatic. 就像是人为做的一个传送带, 要一点点滚过去.

I'm pretty sure you guys have read it in history books, these techniques, I would also imagine they use a lot of ropes like pulley system, or even like sled.

Yeah, sled or sledges, you could, especially if you're trying to drag it up the side of a building, you would just put some wood underneath it, kind of like skis or a sled, to help it kind of move along the stones that way, so it's not stone against stone but you have more of a smoother surface to move it along. You have a pulley and then some wood to kind of help it move.

So, that's one fascination with the pyramid like how they were built. But I think another fascination apart from the mummies in the Egyptian ones, I think the other why people are really fascinated with the idea of pyramids is the idea of curses, especially the Egyptian ones, right? The pharaoh’s curse to protect what is in the pyramid, especially when it's used as a tomb.

Right.

There's the pharaoh’s curse and there's the mummy’s curse. You hear both of these words being used. Most of the time people think it was a way to protect the contents of the pyramids. Several people who have went into the pyramids originally passed away very mysteriously. The man who x-rayed the mummy, died mysteriously, people really don't know what happened to him.

A lot of people point maybe at some sort of magic but it could be something else, right? There could be ...

I think probably there is like an ancient pathogen. It could be like some sort of ancient infectious disease and modern technology or modern medical science is not very familiar with, or at least back then when people were excavating what is inside the pyramid. I've read quite of a few books on this. There are many guesses. Then one of them said it's probably like an ancient Egyptian disease, like a virus that goes around and killed people, well mysteriously, because modern science, or modern medical science did not really understand it.

I mean like if you think about when the Europeans first went to North America, lot of people in North America got sick and died, because they didn't have any way to protect themselves against these new diseases that they never encountered before. The Europeans had been living with those diseases for centuries, right? And so it was nothing to them. So that could possibly be as well. Maybe these illnesses were things that people who lived in the area have been dealing with for a long time. And so they have kind of like an immunity to it, but maybe the visitors who are going in didn't have any immunity to it. So maybe that's what killed them.

But the idea of mummy’s curses for us, pharaoh’s curse sounds a lot more wondrous than it's just a disease that we don't know or we have no immunity against. That's why it's a fanciful topic of people like talking about it, because it some parts of it still cannot be explained by modern science, right?

Mhm.

Okay, so I think I'm gonna wrap up here, if you think this episode is already talking about or touching upon the mystery. Next episode is going to blow your mind, because there are theories saying that these pyramids, they pop up all over the world, not because ancient people fought the same, but because they were possibly built by aliens. All right. Thank you, Brad, for coming to the show and I can't wait for us to the advanced episode about pyramids.

All right. See you in the next episode everybody.

See you next time.