Renewable Revolution

Calcite, aragonite and vaterite are pure calcium carbonate minerals. Industrially important source rocks which are predominantly calcium carbonate include limestone, chalk, marble and travertine.

Limestone and Marble
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate
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These minerals make up more than 80% of the rock. Other common minerals include mica (muscovite and biotite) and hornblende (see amphibole). The chemical composition of granite is typically 70-77% silica, 11-13% alumina, 3-5% potassium oxide, 3-5% soda, 1% lime, 2-3% total iron, and less than 1% magnesia and titania.

Granite
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADRA_enUS485US486&q=granite+chemical+composition

Around the turn of the century (not this last one but the one before that!), I imagine there was a bit of a commotion among British archeologists. You see, British archaeologist Sir Flinder Petrie published his study of "Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh".

British archaeologist Sir Flinder Petrie worked in Egypt from 1880 for around 40 years. He credited the ancient Egyptians with methods that "we are only now coming to understand” (i.e. around 1900 by presenting evidence  in his study of "Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh" proving that the ancient Egyptians used tools such as straight saws, circular saws, and even lathes.).
Possible British Royal Society Erudite, Measured, Prudent and Scientific Comments on the study: Do you mean to say that those Egyptian primitive savages could work stone like we can in England!!? Bollocks! Balderdash! Preposterous! The very idea is repugnant. SNIFF!

Look here Flinder, what would Darwin say? Evolution goes forward, my good man, not backwards! Where's my snuff box? James, bring me a glass of Port!

I must say Flinder, this is most irregular! I don't care what the Germans say, lathes were invented in England! Ancient Egyptians, you say?  I hear people that spend too much time down there go balmy.    

Machining technology was in its infancy in the early 1900’s, and it is only in recent decades that modern-looking machine tool marks in Egyptian workpieces have been fully recognized.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa-opinion-guest-authors/forgotten-stones-aswan-quarry-egypt-001984

Here's small vase in the Petrie identified collection.

Beautiful Granite Vase dated to be from 2,800 BC or earlier

This one piece is so flawlessly turned that the entire bowl (about 9" in diameter, fully hollowed out including an undercut of the 3" opening in the top) balances perfectly (the top rests horizontally when the bowl is placed on a glass shelf) on a round tipped bottom no bigger than the size and shape of the tip of a hen's egg.

It's made of Granite. The attempted "debunking" of ancient Egyptian machine technology  (see Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology: Stoneworking Technology in Ancient Egypt by Denys A. Stocks) through the making of a few vases using hand tools was conveniently done on Limestone, NOT Granite. Yes, Limestone and Marble are made out of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Granite has SOME CACO3 but has mostly other, much harder minerals. Limestone is relatively soft and easily HAND WORKABLE, whereas Granite and marble are much, much harder. PLEASE don't make me provide you with a hardness value, how hardness is determined by modern science and industry and how they measure it. Google it if you don't believe me and don't pull the hairsplitting stuff on me. I know of what I speak.

Also, PLEASE don't bring up potter's wheels.; they are USELESS for stoneworking.

Granite and Marble cannot be worked by hand to get the results Petrie observed and documented.  And even Limestone worked by hand cannot get the symmetrical tolerances observed in Egyptian workpieces. Denys A. Stocks produced some crude specimens (see pictures of his "craftsmanship" on the internet. LOL!). Stocks, of course  , explained that, if he had years and years of training back in ancient Egypt, he would have certainly attained the quality and precision of the Petrie collection.


Please observe the following "minor" detail about the pictured Granite vase:

Bottom of Granite Vase dated to be from 2,800 BC or earlier perfectly balanced on a flat surface.

This requires that the entire bowl have a symmetrical wall thickness without any substantial error! (With a base area so tiny - less than .15 " sq - any asymmetry in a material as dense as granite would produce a lean in the balance of the finished piece.)

NO, the bottom isn't SUPER THICK to produce balancing in spite of the "hand made asymmetry". Others have tried that hairsplitting, but logical, argument already. You can always go back to "those ancient craftsmen sure could make some great hand made stuff" speculation, of course. But don't call THAT science! WE cannot DO THAT by hand NOW. That much, at least, is the accepted scientific consensus. The speculation by some Egyptologist archeologists that they COULD do that by hand in ancient Egypt is just that. But that's their story and they are sticking to it!

My response to this evidence free speculation cloaked as science:



I am certain Sir William Flinders Petrie, grandfather of archaeology, who introduced science and methodology into the subject, would have scoffed at that speculation.
 
In 1892 Sir Flinder Petrie was appointed as Edwards professor at University College London, the first person to hold a chair in Egyptology in Britain.
Here's a google image search on Petrie collection vases:
https://www.google.com/search?q=petrie+collection+granite+vases&newwindow=1&rlz=1T4ADRA_enUS485US486&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=N6fOVP6lNcKfggSmxIHgCw&ved=0CFgQsAQ&biw=973&bih=394

Now let's move on to some large workpieces.

Ancient Egyptian Workpieces Evidence Advanced Technology

The language of science and technology doesn’t have the same freedom as speech. So even though the tools and machines have not survived the thousands of years since their use, we have to assume, by objective analysis of the evidence, that they did exist.

The precision in these artifacts is irrefutable. Even if we ignore the question of how they were produced, we are still faced with the question of why such precision was needed. Revelation of new data invariably raises new questions. In this case it’s understandable to hear, "Where are the machines?"

Machines are tools. The question should be applied universally and can be asked of anyone who believes other methods may have been used. The truth is that no tools have been found to explain any theory on how the pyramids were built or granite boxes were cut! More than eighty pyramids have been discovered in Egypt, and the tools that built them have never been found.

Even if we accepted the notion that copper tools are capable of producing these incredible artifacts, the few copper implements that have been uncovered do not represent the number of such tools that would have been used if every stonemason who worked on the pyramids at just the Giza site owned one or two. In the Great Pyramid alone, there are an estimated 2,300,000 blocks of stone, both limestone and granite, weighing between 2½ tons and 70 tons each. That is a mountain of evidence, and there are no tools surviving to explain its creation.

The principle of "Occam's Razor," where the simplest means of manufacturing holds force until proven inadequate, has guided my attempt to understand the pyramid builders' methods. With Egyptologists, there is one component of this principle that has been lacking. The simplest methods do not satisfy the evidence, and they have been reluctant to consider other less simple methods.

There is little doubt that the capabilities of the ancient pyramid builders have been seriously underestimated. The most distinct evidence that I can relate is the precision and mastery of machining technologies that have only been recognized in recent years.


Copper Chisels to work Granite?   

One can gather by reading Petrie’s work that he involved himself in some extensive research regarding the tools that were employed in cutting hard stone. Even so, there is a persisting belief among some Egyptologists that the granite used in the Great Pyramid was cut using copper chisels. I.E.S. Edwards, British Egyptologist and the world's foremost expert on pyramids, makes the following statement.

“Quarrymen of the Pyramid age would have accused Greek historian Strabo of understatement as they hacked at the stubborn granite of Aswan. Their axes and chisels were made of copper hardened by hammering.” (Edwards, I.E.S. Ancient Egypt, Page 89. (1978 - National Geographic Society, Washington, DC.)

Hopefully, besides mainstream Egyptologists, such as Mark Lehner and IES Edwards, (RIP) other Egyptologists do not suggest that the copper chisels, that can now be found in the Cairo Museum, were representative of the tools used to build the pyramids. If they were I would strongly suggest that they make an effort to learn about the materials and processes that they are proposing by actually creating one of these artifacts.

To identify copper as the metal used for cutting granite is like saying that aluminum could be cut using a chisel fashioned out of butter.
http://www.gizapower.com/Advanced/Advanced%20Machining.html

Physical Cause and Effect Workpiece Machining in Ancient Egypt

What follows is a more feasible and logical method, and it provides an answer to the question of techniques used by the ancient Egyptians in drilling into granite.

The fact that the feedrate spiral is symmetrical is quite remarkable considering the proposed method of cutting. The taper indicates an increase in the cutting surface area of the drill as it cut deeper, hence an increase in the resistance.


A uniform feed under these conditions, using manpower, would be impossible. Petrie theorized that a ton or two of pressure was applied to a tubular drill consisting of bronze inset with jewels. However, this doesn’t take into consideration that under several thousand pounds pressure the jewels would undoubtedly work their way into the softer substance, leaving the granite relatively unscathed after the attack. Nor does this method explain the groove being deeper through the quartz.

High Tech Tubular Drilling

Egyptian artifacts representing tubular drilling are clearly the most astounding and conclusive evidence yet presented to indicate the extent to which knowledge and technology was practiced in pre-history. The ancient pyramid builders used a technique for drilling holes that is commonly known as "trepanning."

This technique leaves a central core and is an efficient means of hole making. For holes that didn’t go all the way through the material, they reached a desired depth and then broke the core out of the hole. It was not only evident in the holes that Petrie was studying, but on the cores cast aside by the masons who had done the trepanning.

Regarding tool marks that left a spiral groove on a core taken out of a hole drilled into a piece of granite, he (Petrie) wrote,

"the spiral of the cut sinks .100 inch in the circumference of 6 inches, or 1 in 60, a rate of ploughing out of the quartz and feldspar which is astonishing."

After reading this, I had to agree with Petrie. This was an incredible feedrate (distance traveled per revolution of the drill) for drilling into any material, let alone granite. I was completely confounded as to how a drill could achieve this feedrate.

Petrie was so astounded by these artifacts that he attempted to explain them at three different points in one chapter. To an engineer in the 1880’s, what Petrie was looking at was an anomaly. The characteristics of the holes, the cores that came out of them, and the tool marks indicated an impossibility. Three distinct characteristics of the hole and core, as illustrated, make the artifacts extremely remarkable.

They are:

A taper on both the hole and the core.

A symmetrical helical groove following these tapers showing that the drill advanced into the granite at a feed rate of .100 inch per revolution of the drill.

The confounding fact that the spiral groove cut deeper through the quartz than through the softer feldspar.

In conventional machining the reverse would be the case. In 1983, Mr. Donald Rahn of Rahn Granite Surface Plate Co., Dayton, Ohio, told me that in drilling granite, diamond drills, rotating at 900 revolutions per minute, penetrate at the rate of 1 inch in 5 minutes.

In 1996, Eric Leither of Trustone Corp, told me that these parameters haven't changed since then. The feedrate of modern drills, therefore, calculates to be .0002 inch per revolution, indicating that the ancient Egyptians were able to cut their granite with a feed rate that was 500 times greater or deeper per revolution of the drill than modern drills. 
The other characteristics also create a problem for modern drills. They cut a tapered hole with a spiral groove that was cut deeper through the harder constituent of the granite. If conventional machining methods cannot answer just one of these questions, how do we answer all three?

The application of ultrasonic machining is the only method that completely satisfies logic, from a technical viewpoint, and explains all noted phenomena. 

Ultrasonic machining is the oscillatory motion of a tool that chips away material, like a jackhammer chipping away at a piece of concrete pavement, except much faster and not as measurable in its reciprocation. The ultrasonic tool-bit, vibrating at 19,000 to 25,000 cycles per second (Hertz) has found unique application in the precision machining of odd-shaped holes in hard, brittle material such as hardened steels, carbides, ceramics and semiconductors. An abrasive slurry or paste is used to accelerate the cutting action.

Modern Stone cutters are Queried

I have contacted four precision granite manufacturers in the US and haven’t been able to find one who can do this kind of work. With Eric Leither of Tru-Stone Corp, I discussed in a letter the technical feasibility of creating several Egyptian artifacts, including the giant granite boxes found in the bedrock tunnels the temple of Serapeum at Saqqarra. He responded as follows:

"Dear Christopher,
First I would like to thank you for providing me with all the fascinating information. Most people never get the opportunity to take part in something like this. You mentioned to me that the box was derived from one solid block of granite. A piece of granite of that size is estimated to weigh 200,000 pounds if it was Sierra White granite which weighs approximately 175 lb. per cubic foot.

If a piece of that size was available, the cost would be enormous. Just the raw piece of rock would cost somewhere in the area of $115,000.00.

This price does not include cutting the block to size or any freight charges. The next obvious problem would be the transportation. There would be many special permits issued by the D.O.T. and would cost thousands of dollars.

From the information that I gathered from your fax, the Egyptians moved this piece of granite nearly 500 miles. That is an incredible achievement for a society that existed hundreds of years ago."

Eric went on to say that his company did not have the equipment or capabilities to produce the boxes in this manner. He said that his company would create the boxes in 5 pieces, ship them to the customer and bolt them together on site.

Agelbert NOTE: The above is a brief summary of a detailed article at the link below. There is much detailed information on stone cutting techniques.

Each and every one of the 'primitive tools did it' Egyptologist claims are dispassionately deconstructed to show they are based on evidence free conjecture, not science.

High Tech machine tools are the only explanation that fits. And that High Tech is right there with the best techniques we have for working these types of stones at present.
 
So you can imagine that Petrie, the fellow that first wrote about these Egyptian workpieces in 1880, did some serious head scratching at the time. Only NOW can we get those kinds of results in granite. 

Enjoy. 
http://www.gizapower.com/Advanced/Advanced%20Machining.html

The book "Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology: Stoneworking Technology in Ancient Egypt" By Denys A. Stocks explaining how the Egyptians used primitive tools to do what they did, including experiments he performed with copper and sand, have been proven insufficient to explain the smoothness, feed rate, striations and tolerances on the Egyptian workpieces.

The book, celebrated by Egyptologists, is full of "I suggest this" and "I imagine that" WITHOUT presenting how, at the drill rate and poor precision he was achieving with copper hand drilling, this massive work could have been accomplished.

So it goes. But perhaps some Doomers will accept it because Stocks is "Credentialed". Just Google it and be prepared for lots of calm, prudent, erudite baloney about how he FINALLY realized how EASY it was to do all this with primitive tools and what poor deluded FOOLS people who see evidence of high tech machine tools are. This arrogant mocking puffery is par for the course in the 'don't confuse us with facts, our minds are made up' "scientific" Egyptologist archeologist community.

I prefer evidence to consensus pseudo scientific cheerleading (more at link below).
http://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=283526&t=282614&v=f

After studying the physical evidence from ancient Egypt and the facts about hand versus machine working of granite, marble or limestone workpieces, this is my response when someone claims the ancient Egyptians had no machines and achieved all their workmanship with copper hand tools and sand: