Jon Ellison Wrote:
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> I'm not sure either. How many fringe narratives
> are there? How many mainstream narratives are
> there?
> What is the logical threshold of any given
> mainstream narrative?
> What defines mainstream and fringe, where does the
> boundary lie, how wide is the boundary?

These are easy questions. There is one mainstream and it holds four unassailable assumptions;

1 the pyramids are tombs
2 the builders were highly superstitious
3 the builders were just like the later Egyptians who are well understood (book of the dead authors)
4 the builders dragged stones up ramps (or some other brutish and brutal means where that specific means is unimportant)

Any deviation from this is heresy.

Sure an Egyptologist can skirt the edges by saying this or that pyramid is a cenotaph or that some specific religious tenet changed. He can point out words that changed but he most assuredly can't say that they had a primitive science, didn't believe in stinky footed gods, or that it is obvious that pyramids couldn't be built by highly motivated superstitious people.

Alts always deviate on one or more of these points because this is the nature of orthodoxy. Even proposing unusual or unorthodox ramping systems can be called heresy sometimes.