cladking Wrote:
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> Martin Stower Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> > Which amounts to dragging them up a (relatively
> > steep) inclined plane.
> >
> > So much for coherence.
>
> Sure! Dragging them up the 70 degree step sides
> is technically using a "ramp".

Yes, it is. Also, you need to justify that figure.

If they were dragging things up a slope anyway, then reducing that slope would be a natural step to take.

[. . .]

> There were no teams of men dragging stones on
> ramps. [. . .]

You were there? I see nothing less which would justify so plonking an assertion.

No dragging stones on ramps—but dragging them up 70 degree slopes, yes.

[. . .]

> Semantics. [. . .]

And without semantics, your words amount to . . . ?

> Meanwhile the actual physical, cultural, and
> historical evidence as well as common sense all
> suggest stones were pulled straight up the side of
> five step pyramids one step at a time.

Yeah, common sense, right.

Seems to me that you’re doing what you constantly accuse others of doing: treating the ancient Egyptians as bumpkins, who did things which make no sense.

[. . .]

> Mechanical advantage is a huge hindrance on jobs
> that require an extreme amount of work.
> Mechanical advantage ALWAYS and BY DEFINITION
> increases the total amount of work required. [. . .]

What fools people are to make use of it, then—and yet somehow they do, to make things doable. Total amount of work is not always an overriding consideration.

[. . .]

M.