Mike Goodwin | The Way Teller

Okay, let’s get this straight. The limestone blocks of the Great Pyramid of Giza are ARTIFICIAL. Why? Because they taste salty. This one fact PROVES it. No natural limestone contains table salt. None. I know, I know. Limestone formed in the sea, tidal waves, millions of years of geological processes, blah, blah. NO-NO! Natural limestone is NOT SALTY! Never! Check this out. Even though limestone forms on the seabed, beneath miles of salty seawater, its interior contains no salt. Why? Because salt dissolves readily in water and stays dissolved as long as the water remains. When water is squeezed out of limestone, THE SALT GOES WITH IT. Anyone who has ever tried to extract salt from water knows this. Either you use a salt evaporation pond, or the salt stays dissolved in the water. That’s it. By a strange twist of fate, I happen to have a piece of stone from the Great Pyramid. Before you freak out and accuse me of stealing it, first of all, I didn’t. And second, the person who took it didn’t steal it either. He simply brought it home, back in 1978, long before anyone cared or taking such a piece became illegal. A friend’s father brought it home at a time when climbing to the top of the pyramid was still allowed. Heck, a French couple even had sex up there, in the middle of a Muslim country. Climbing was banned shortly afterward. Anyway, my friend’s father took this infamous piece of stone from one of the inner corridors of the Great Pyramid. Go ahead and freak out now, but it doesn’t change anything. He took it more than 40 years ago, and it’s not going to grow back. He brought it all the way back to Hungary in his pocket. When I read Davidovits’ recipe for making pyramid stones, I came across his claim that the stones are indeed salty. So we organized a pyramid-stone-licking session with the guys. (Don’t freak out again!) Four grown men licked this original, unquestionably authentic piece of pyramid stone. And guess what? It IS salty. So, what now? How did the salt get in there if not millions of years ago? Well, then, thousands of years ago. Exactly. The recipe is astonishingly simple: 2 parts natron + 1 part quicklime + water = limestone paste (CaCO₃). That’s the basic idea. But the mixture isn’t salty yet, and it can even release corrosive NaOH. To prevent this, Imhotep added one part magnesium salt (MgCl₂), which transforms the mixture in a rather interesting way. But that’s too much chemistry for one post. I’ll explain it separately. The point is that the final product is an artificial limestone containing a little dolomite and table salt. But what about the snails? “But the pyramid stones must be natural because they contain fossils!” Ever heard of gravel or aggregate? As far as I know, it’s absolutely impossible to find billion-year-old pebbles in concrete. Nooo, you can’t mix gravel into concrete! Impossible! Just as impossible as finding fossil-bearing limestone fragments embedded in a limestone binder. So much for the snails. And now comes the inevitable question: “But how did they lift the cast stones into place?” They didn’t. Why lift something that’s already in place? CAST IN PLACE, MY FRIEND. CAST IN PLACE! Here are four advantages of casting the stones in place: 1. You only have to lift the raw materials, never the finished blocks. 2. Hardly any formwork is needed. Just a few boards, because three sides of each block are already there: the bottom and the two sides formed by adjacent stones. 3. The joints can be so precise that you can’t even slip a razor blade between them. 4. Every block can have a unique shape and size because there’s no need for a standardized mold. The result? An interlocking wall that could be highly resistant to earthquakes! If you believe the pyramids were built by aliens, or that 20-ton blocks were hauled 600 kilometers from a distant quarry, that’s your problem. That’s a belief, not an established fact. LET THE COMMENTS BEGIN! :-)