Posted: February 26th, 2023

Egyptian Pyramids

Please answer these questions in paragraph form using my included article, and outside sources. Please paraphrase instead of quotation marks. Please make it about 700 words long.

a) What kind of questions should be answered in any theory of pyramid construction?

b) What major problems arise in ramp theories?

c) What are the current mostly accepted theories of pyramid construction?

d) How does each theory address the main question(s) in pyramid construction? Jean Pierre Houdin

OF THE SEVEN WONDERS of the ancient world, only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains.

An estimated 2 million stone blocks weighing an average of 2 1/2 tons went into its construction. When completed, the 481-foot-tall pyramid was the world’s tallest structure, a record it held for more than 3,800 years, when England’s Lincoln Cathedral surpassed it by a mere 44 feet.

We know who built the Great Pyramid: the pharaoh Khufu, who ruled Egypt about 2547–2524 B.C. And we know who supervised its construction:

Khufu’s brother, Hemienu. The pharaoh’s right-hand man, Hemienu was “overseer of all construction proj- ects of the king” and his tomb is one of the largest in a cemetery adjacent to the pyramid.

What we don’t know is exactly how it was built, a question that has been debated for millennia, The ear- liest recorded theo- ry was put forward by the Greek histo- rian Herodotus, who visited Egypt around 450 B.C., when the pyramid was already 2,000

years old. He mentions “machines” used to raise the blocks and this is usually taken to mean cranes. Three hundred years later, Diodorus of Sicily wrote, “The construction was effected by mounds” (ramps). Today we have the “space alien” theory— those primitive Egyptians never could have built such a fabulous structure by themselves; extrater- restrials must have helped them.

Modern scholars have favored two basic theo- ries, but deep in their hearts, they know that neither one is correct. A radical new one, however, may

How to Build a Pyramid

Hidden ramps may solve the mystery of the Great Pyramid’s construction.

BY BOB BRIER

The 5th- century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus suggested that cranes were employed to life the blocks of the Great Pyramid in the same way that the shadouf, seen in a tomb p ainting from Deir el-Medina, was used to lif t water for irrigation.

2 How to Build a Pyramid

provide the solution. If correct, it would demon- strate a level of planning by Egyptian architects and engineers far greater than anything ever imagined before,

THE EXTERNAL

RAMP AND

CRANE THEORIES

The first theory is that a ramp was built on one side of the pyramid and as the pyramid grew, the ramp was raised so that through- out the construction, blocks could be moved right up to the top. If the ramp were too steep, the men hauling the blocks would not be able to drag them up. An 8-percent slope is about the maxi- mum possible, and this is the problem with the sin- gle ramp theory. With such a gentle incline, the ramp would have to be approxi- mately one mile long to reach the top of the pyra- mid. But there is neither room for such a long ramp on the Giza Plateau, nor evidence of such a mas- sive construction. Also, a mile-long ramp would have had as great a vol- ume as the pyramid itself, virtually doubling the man-hours needed to build the pyramid. Because the straight ramp theory just doesn’t work, several pyramid experts have opted for a modified ramp theory.

This approach sug- gests that the ramp

According to the new theory , an external ramp was used to build the lower third of the pyramid and was then cannibalized, it s blocks t aken through an internal ramp for the higher levels of the structure.

How to Build a Pyramid 3

corkscrewed up the outside of the pyramid, much the way a moun- tain road spirals upward. The corkscrew ramp does away with the need for a massive mile- long one and explains why no remains of such a ramp have been found, but there is a flaw with this version of the theory. With a

ramp corkscrewing up the outside of the pyra- mid, the corners couldn’t be completed until the final stage of construction. But careful measure- ments of the angles at the corners would have been needed frequently to assure that the cor-

A microgravimetry survey of the Great Pyramid in the 1980s yielded the enigmatic image at right. Less dense areas (indicated in green) seem to correspond to an internal ramp proposed by Jean-Pierre Houdin (diagram). Below , wooden hoist s on notches lef t in the edge of the pyramid could have been used to turn blocks onto the next p art of the internal ramp.

4 How to Build a Pyramid

ners would meet to create a point at the top. Dieter Arnold, a renowned pyramid expert at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, comments in his definitive work, Building in Egypt: “During the whole construction period, the pyramid trunk would have been completely buried under the ramps. The surveyors could therefore not have used the four corners, edges, and foot line of the pyramid for their calculations.” Thus the modified ramp theory also has a serious problem.

The second theory centers on Herodotus’s machines. Until recently Egyptian farmers used a wooden, cranelike device called a shadouf to raise water from the Nile for irrigation. This device can be seen in ancient tomb paintings, so we know it was available to the pyramid builders. The idea is that hundreds of these cranes at various levels on the pyramid were used to lift the blocks. One prob- lem with this theory is that it would involve a tremendous amount of timber and Egypt simply didn’t have forests to provide the wood. Importing so much lumber would have been impractical.

Large timbers for shipbuilding were imported from Lebanon, but this was a very expensive enterprise.

Perhaps an even more fatal flaw to the crane theory is that there is nowhere to place all these cranes. The pyramid blocks tend to decrease in size higher up the Great Pyramid. I climbed it dozens of times in the 1970s and ’80s, when it was permitted, and toward the top, the blocks sometimes provide only 18 inches of standing room, certainly not enough space for cranes large enough to lift heavy blocks of stone. The crane theory can’t explain how the blocks of the Great Pyramid were raised. So how was it done?

THE INTERNAL RAMP THEORY

A radical new idea has recently been presented by Jean-Pierre Houdin, a French architect who has devoted the last seven years of his life to making

The complexities of the Great Pyramid’ s design and construction could not have been deciphered without the aid of 3-D imaging sof tware

How to Build a Pyramid 5

detailed computer models of the Great Pyramid. Using start-of-the-art 3-D software developed by Dassault Systemes, combined with an initial sug- gestion of Henri Houdin, his engineer father, the architect has concluded that a ramp was indeed used to raise the blocks to the top, and that the ramp still exists—inside the pyramid!

The theory suggests that for the bottom third of the pyramid, the blocks were hauled up a straight, external ramp. This ramp was far shorter than the one needed to reach the top, and was made of lime- stone blocks, slightly smaller than those used to build the bottom third of the pyramid. As the bottom of the pyramid was being built via the external ramp, a second ramp was being built, inside the pyramid, on which the blocks for the top two-thirds of the pyramid would be hauled. The internal ramp, according to Houdin, begins at the bottom, is about 6 feet wide, and has a grade of approximately 7 per- cent. This ramp was put into use after the lower third of the pyramid was completed and the external ramp had served its purpose.

The design of the internal ramp was partially determined by the design of the interior of the pyra- mid. Hemienu knew all about the problems encoun- tered by Pharaoh Sneferu, his and Khufu’s father. Sneferu had considerable difficulty building a suit- able pyramid for his burial, and ended up having to construct three at sites south of Giza! The first, at Meidum, may have had structural problems and was never used. His second, at Dashur—known as the Bent Pyramid because the slope of its sides changes midway up—developed cracks in the walls of its burial chamber. Huge cedar logs from Lebanon had to be wedged between the walls to keep the pyramid from collapsing inward, but it too was abandoned. There must have been a mad scramble to complete Sneferu’s third and successful pyramid, the distinc- tively colored Red Pyramid at Dashur, before the aging ruler died.

From the beginning, Hemienu planned three burial chambers to ensure that whenever Khufu died, a burial place would be ready. One was carved out of the bedrock beneath the pyramid at the begin- ning of its construction. In case the pharaoh had died early, this would have been his tomb. When, after about five years, Khufu was still alive and well, the unfinished underground burial chamber was abandoned and the second burial chamber, commonly called the Queen’s Chamber, was begun. Some time around the fifteenth year of construction

Khufu was still healthy and this chamber was aban- doned unfinished and the last burial chamber, the Kings Chamber, was built higher up—in the center of the pyramid. (To this day, Khufu’s sarcophagus remains inside the Kings Chamber, so early explor- ers of the pyramid incorrectly assumed that the sec- ond chamber had been for his queen.)

Huge granite and limestone blocks were need- ed for the roof beams and rafters of the Queen’s and King’s Chambers. Some of these beams weigh more than 60 tons and are far too large to have been brought up through the internal ramp. Thus the external ramp had to remain in use until the large blocks were hauled up. Once that was done, the external ramp was dismantled and its blocks were led up the pyramid via the internal ramp to build the top two-thirds of the pyramid. Perhaps most blocks in this portion of the pyramid are smaller than those at the bottom third because they had to move up the narrow internal ramp.

There were several considerations that went into designing the internal ramp. First, it had to be fashioned very precisely so that it didn’t hit the chambers or the internal passageways that connect them. Second, men hauling heavy blocks of stones up a narrow ramp can’t easily turn a 90-degree cor- ner; they need a place ahead of the block to stand and pull. The internal ramp had to provide a means of turning its corners so, Houdin suggests, the ramp had openings there where a simple crane could be used to turn the blocks.

There are plenty of theories about how the Great Pyramid could have been built that lack evi- dence. Is the internal ramp theory any different? Is there any evidence to support it? Yes.

A bit of evidence appears to be one of the ramp’s corner notches used for turning blocks. It is two-thirds of the way up the northeast corner—pre- cisely at a point where Houdin predicted there would be one. Furthermore, in 1986 a member of a French team that was surveying the pyramid report- ed seeing a desert fox enter it through a hole next to the notch, suggesting that there is an open area close to it, perhaps the ramp. It seems improbable that the fox climbed more than halfway up the pyramid. More likely there is some undetected crevice toward the bottom where the fox entered the ramp and then made its way up the ramp and exited near the notch. It would be interesting to attach a telemetric device to a fox and send him into the hole to monitor his

6 How to Build a Pyramid

movements! The notch is suggestive, but there is another bit of evidence supplied by the French men- tioned earlier that is far more compelling.

When the French team surveyed the Great Pyramid, they used microgravimetry, a technique that enabled them to measure the density of differ- ent sections of the pyramid, thus detecting hidden chambers. The French team concluded that there were no large hidden chambers inside it. If there was a ramp inside the pyramid, shouldn’t the French have detected it? In 2000, Henri Houdin was pre- senting this theory at a scientific conference where one of the members of the 1986 French team was present. He mentioned to Houdin that their comput- er analysis of the pyramid did yield one curious image, something they couldn’t interpret and there- fore ignored. That image showed exactly what Jean- Pierre Houdin’s theory had predicted—a ramp spi- raling up through the pyramid.

Far from being just another theory, the internal ramp has considerable evidence behind it. A team headed by Jean-Pierre Houdin and Rainer

Stadlemann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo and one of the greatest authorities on pyramids, has submitted an application to survey the Great Pyramid in a nonde- structive way to see if the theory can be confirmed. They are hopeful that the Supreme Council of Antiquities will grant permission for a survey. (Several methods could be used, including powerful microgravimetry, high-resolution infrared photogra- phy, or even sonar.) If so, sometime this year we may finally know how Khufu’s monumental tomb was built. One day, if it is indeed there, we might just be able to remove a few blocks from the exteri- or of the pyramid and walk up the mile- long ramp Hemienu left hidden within the Great Pyramid.

Bob Brier is a senior research fellow at the C. W Post Campus of Long Island University and a con- tributing editor to ARCHAEOLOGY. For more on how the Great Pyramid was built, visit www.archaeology.org.

Ancient Heavy Transport, Methods and Achievements Author(s): Robert F. Heizer Source: Science, New Series, Vol. 153, No. 3738 (Aug. 19, 1966), pp. 821-830 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL:

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19 August 1966, Yolume 153, Number 3738

Anciexlt Heavy Transpol Methods and Achievemen

Transport of heavy stones provides evidence of socio-economic types of ancient societi

Robert F. He

Modern engineering and energy re- sources are so great ,that the task of transporting a 1 OOO-ton weight teday would constituite no particular problem. But in times before the wheel and steam or internal-combustion engines were known, such transport could have been accomplished only with human or animal energy aided by such simple friction-reducing devices as sledges, gliders, or rollers, and equally uncom- plicated lifting or raising devices such as inclined ramps and levers. That great stones weighing hundreds of tons were moved by some ancient societies is well known, but the means which were em- ployed are less well understood.

Recent histories of (technology and engineering ( 1 ) usually mention only in passing the remarkable examples of long-distance moving of stones weigh- ing scores or hundreds of tons in bioth the Old and the New World in ancient times. Perhaps this is either because .. . .s . . nlstorlans ol: englneerlng are unaware of the information buried in the anthro- pologic,al literature (2) or because they are relusctant to enter into an in- vestigation which involves so much speculation.

Physical and Historical Evidence

Several kinds of information are available. First are the great stones themselves which still lie unfinished in the quarry, such as the 1 1 68-ton un-

19 AUGUST 1966

finished granite obelisk and the uncompleted vc ues on Easter Island (4 many linown examples which were aband-oned between their source an tination. A good exam] red porphyry blocks w to over 100 tons that clifT of Cerro Buena Ne they were cut, and the f taytambo, 5 kilometers unfinished fortress was attacked by thle Spania nando Pizarro, brothe Pizarro, in 1534, and w today marks the poinl Inca construction aeti gressed at the,time of tl quest. Unfinished or a such as these provide l ful information, since project is usually easi than a completed one.

The main source- o heavy transport in a course, stones that wz moved to their intenc and placed in their int Into ,this category in t fall the score or more o tured human heads, ste] of basalt weighing up assignable to the Olmes southeastern lowland oi 1st miliennium B.C. (

ton andesite statues ass early phases of Teotihu

SCIE: NCE:

among which are the 217-ton Idolo de Coatlinchan, the largest stone sculpture a,ttempted by the prehistoric peoples of the New World, and the 24-ton Diosa

rtS de Agua (9); the ignimbrite ja.mbs and lintelsS weighing up to) 26 tons, em-

ltS ployed in the temple constructions at Mitla in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico (10); the 60-ton Stela

and the several

the 30-ton zoomorphic altars at the Maya

ies site of Quirigua, Guatemala; and the- * largest of the Aztec-period sculptures of Mexico, such as the famous "calendar

izer stone" weighing 24 tons. In South America are the 200- to 300-ton stonles used in constructing the Inc!a fortresses at Sacsahuaman above Cuzco (Fig. 1) (11, 12) and at Ollantaytambo, about

at; Aswan (3) 50 kilometers from Cuzco, in the valley rlcanic tuff stat- of the Urubamba (Vilcanota) River t 5). lNhere are (6). In the Old World, the number of of large stones ancient stone monumenits weighing 50 along the route tons or more (some. as much as 1000 d intendled des- tons) is so large that they cannot be

ple is the great listed here. Examples are the granite reighing from 2 ob!elisks of the 18th and l9th dynasties lie beitween the at Luxor, quarried at Aswan and gra, Peru, where brought down the Nile on boats (13, ortress of Ollan- 14); the two 1000-ton Colossi of Mem- away .(6). The non (the Greek name. for Amenhotep

s unsuccessfully III) brought up the Nile from quarries rds under Her- at Silsileh, near Cairo (13, pp. 96-97), r of Francisco which stand on the plain of Thebes; rhat can be seen the huge stones in some of the tomb t to which the chambers, passagewaysS and relieving ivity had pro- arches over ¢he chambers '(15); in he Spanish Con- Greece, the jambs, lintels, and sills of rrested projects the Lion Gate at M.ycenae, land at the particularly use- same site the.s,tones weighing 120 tons?

an interrupted used as doorway lintels in some of the ier ,to interpret tholos tombs, especially that of the

Tomb of Agamemnon (16); in France, f evidence for Spain, and the British Isles, the hun- Lntiquity is, of dreds of huge stones, some weighing ere successfully over 100 tons, used as menhirs or Jed destinations walling ( orlthostats ) and roofing ( cap- ended positions. stones) in the megalithic tombs (vari- the New World ously called dolmens, chambered tombs, >f colossal sculp- passage graves) (17-Z9); and in lae, and "altars" England, the impressive megalithic con- to 3 6 tons and structions -a,t Avebury anel Stonehenge c culture of the (20n 21). The largest stone transported f Mexico of the by the megalithic peoples of western t 8); the multi- ociated with the The autlior is Professor of Antldropology and

Coordinator of tlie Arcliaeological Cltesearch Fa- acan In Mexlco cility at the Urliversity of California, Berkeley.

821

- . peoples could have moved the stones - u for megalithic tombs and wrote,

; These stones are a consequence of dis- n l n ! turbance that the land has suffered as a

i $ w result of the many floods, tremors, inun-

S S t dations and volcanic eruptions by which i - | L its entire surface has been disfired.

E E E | E Another belief, which according to = = | Camby (29) was held by several 18th-

s 1 century students of megalithic remains,

.w r was that the Druids possessed a highly z 7 _ : advanced knowledge of mechanics, the s s ,.st..t,.,.. facts of which were later lost, which [1 s enabled them to move megaliths. Ear- 8<<i lier explanations had postulated trans- t port by giants of superhuman strength

v x or by fairies (17, pp. 16-18; 30). For i instance, Saxo Grammaticus wrote,

..... ... .. < .. ........

> .- about A.D. 1200,

That the country of Denmark was once sahuamans cultivated and worked by giants is aflirmed

by the enormous stones which are in the barrows of the ancients. Should any man question that this was accomplished by

rn experi- sUperhuman force, let him look to the tops of certain mountains and say, if he

attempted knows how, what man has carried such to 4 tons, immense boulders up to their summits. tonehenge For anyone considering this marvel will od a work note that it is inconceivable how a mass,

scarcely, or but with difficulty, movable s and re- upon a level, could have been raised to ing a 12- so mighty a peak of so lofty a mountain a 25-ton by mere human effort, or by the ordinary gradually exertion of human strength.

as it w,as Another prescientific explanation was stones (4, that the stones could will themselves to z involved move or to remain immovable on the ection of ground, as was belieed in Europe and aising up- Polynesia (4, p. 369; 31), as well as in ,tonehenge Mexico (32 ) and Peru (33 ), where

stones abandoned between the quarry must be and their destination are called piedras

rpothetical cansadas (tired stones). Posnansky The perfect fitting together by the two 100- Incas of irregularly shaped stones with at "Puma as many as ten joints was done by a te of Tia- process which is not understood toclay. , Bolivia, Since blocks of stone weighing many acting as tons could not have b.een liflted up and prepared taken down repeatedly to test their fit,

zcks (Fig. it seems probable to me that some sort been sug- of template was used, but no evidence m Karelia or report of such devices is known. The In pedestal stone joining is so remarkable that it eat placed aroused the interest of the Spaniards, running in and in response to their inquiries in t. Another the 16th century they were told that ble theory the stones were "softened" and thus

that the made easy to work by application of ^ of which the juice of certain red leaves. This ex- ted not by planation is surely folkloristic, notwith- mic erup- standing the fact that polyhydroxypoly- that made carboxylates of certain plants can serve andes ( 17, as chelating agents to weather stone ze ancient and thus make it easier to work (34).

Fig. 1. One of the large, closely fitted limestone blocks in the fortress of Sac! near Cuzco, Peru. Weight exceeds 200 tons. [Photo by author]

Europe is the 382-ton Grand Menhir Brise at Locmariquer, Brittany.

Other sources of information, of great importance but limited in quan- tity, are pictorial representations of great stone sculptures being transported by water or dragged on land by gangs of men. These are known from Egypt and Assyria, and most of these paint- ings or low-relief sculptures are well known because they have been often reproduced and discussed. In addition, written records from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean area provide use- ful, brief accounts of particular feats of heavy transportation, and there are documents in which reference is made to a particular aspect of the process, such as numbers of men employed, the use of a ship or sledge for transport, or the employment of slave labor.

Still another source of information is ethnographers or early chroniclers who h,ave recorded the techniques employed for extracting large blocks of stone from the quarries and the means by which recently living primitive peoples (who are, in effect, modern megalithic culture groups) have transported large blocks of stone and raised them in.to position. Such accounts are available for some still-living peoples of the Himalayan provinces, Indonesia, and Madagascar, as well as for the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru at the time of the Spanish Conquest (see Fig. 2).

Some hints of how the problems of moving and raising extremely heavy pieces of stone were solved in ancient

822

times also come from modex ments. Atkinson, for instance, to move replicas, weighing up of the "blue stones" used at Sl (20 ), and Heyerdahl organize crew of 180 Easter Islanderr corded their success in dragg ton statue and in setting up fallen statue by levering it and building up under it, < raised, a blocking of small s 22 ) . Other investigations have scale models, as in the er Egyptian obelisks (23) and r right the sarsen shafts of S (24) .

Observations of this sort distinguished from purely hy suggestions such as that of ] (25), who believed that the ton blocks of red sandstone Punka," a section of the sit huanaco on Lake Titicaca. were pushed on stone balls ball-bearings running over a roadbed of dressed stone blc 3 ) . This theory may have gested by the transport fror to St. Petersburg of a 600-to of a statue of Peter the Gr -on.top of iron cannonballs r grooved iron tracks (26, 27) example of a highly improba is Wolffs suggestion (28) statues of Easter Island, some weigh 70 tons, were transporl men but by periodic volca tions, a suggestion rather like in the 18th century by Deslc p. 16), who did not belie

SCIENCE, VOL. 153

Recent and Ancient Transport

Examples of the moving or erection of large stone sculptures or obelisks from recent times can provide useful hints of the kinds of problems that were faced and solved in ancient times. Reference here is to the removal from Luxor, Egypt, to the Place de l!a Con- corde, Paris, of a 230-ton granite obel- isk by the French marine engineer Le Bas, which required 6 years (1830- 1836) of labor (Fig. 4) (26, chapter 3); and to the dragging for 3 -kilometers and the erection at Seringapatam, In- dia, in 1895, of the 20-meter granite obelisk weighing 35 tons (13, p. 103; 35) .

Egyptian obelisks were moved effi- ciently to London by Dixon in 1877 and to New York by Gorringe in 1879 (76, chapters 2, 4; 36). The Paris obel- isk was transported in a specially built ship, the Louqsor, which had a remov- able bow. The shaft was run into the ship lengthwise and the bow bolted on. The London obelisk was encased in a watertight steel cylinder which was towed behind a steamer from Alexan- dria. The New York obelisk was taken into the hold of the ship through a hole cut in the iron plate bow.

The desire of foreigners to acquire these outstanding examples of Egyptian stone-working is not limited to the last century, as is indicated by the dozen Egyptian obelisks taken to Rome by the emperors Augustus, Caligula, and Constantine II (dimensions, weights, and locations of all known Egyptian obelisks are given in 26, p. 145) . The remarkable engineering accomplish- ments of the Romans are evidenced not only by their transport of the Egyptian obelisks but also by the 1000-ton blocks employed in the temple of Jupi- ter at Baalbek, and the 350-ton granite capstone of the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna (37). The largest existing finished Egyptian obelisk now stands before the Basilica of St. John Lateran. It weighs 510 tons, and about A.D. 357 it was brought by Constantius to Rome from Alexandria, where it had been left in A.D. 330 after having been moved down the Nile from Thebes by Con- stantius's father, Constantine the Great. There are Roman records of the trans- Mediterranean shipping and erecting of obelisks (26, p. 156; 38). Assurbanipal (the Sardanapalus of the Greeks), an Assyrian emperor who captured and sacked Thebes in 663 B.C., brought from there two obelisks which together

19 AUGUST 1966

Fig. 2. Two stages of litter,transport of a large stone in the Himalayan area. [From 51

.. . sest . % t. . ss

's ^"'" '3, ti,'i'ss,*A.,.,S ,r',.,2._N',

X;- r

Fig. 3. Hypothetical means of transport of the 1 OO-ton block of sandstone at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, with the use of stone "ball-bearings." [From 25]

823

isk of Queen Hatshepsut which was 108 cubits ( about 65 meters ) long. It has been calculated that such a stone, to withstand the internal stress when moved, would have had to weigh 11,000 tons (23, p. 106; 40). No evidence of this obelisk exists now, however, and the report is either an error or a gross exaggeration.

The difficulties of moving and erect- ing obelisks even with the advantages of steel cables, heavy ropes, windlasses, and pulley blocks are amply demon- strated by the illustrated accounts of Fontana (26, chapter 5; 41 ), who in 1585 moved and set up the 5 1 0-ton Vatican obelisk which had been brought to Rome by Caligula (Fig. 5); by Lay- ard's spirited description of the removal of the colossal bull and lion sculptures from Nimrud to the banks of the Tigris (42); by-Major Bagnold's raising and transport of the 600-ton statue of Rameses II at Memphis (43); and by the moving of the 21 7-ton Idolo de Coatlinchan to Mexico City in 1964 on a specially built trailer, weighing 45 tons, supported by 112 pneumatic-tired wheels and powered with four tractors (44).

The methods anciently employed for raising very heavy stones such as col- umn drums, wall blocks, or architraves were probably simple ones whose exe- cution depended primarily upon a large human labor force. In Peru, inclined earth ramps were employed on which heavy stones were dragged, and there is a record that the cathedral in Cuzco was built by Inca workmen using such ramps (45, vol. 92, p. 262). It is sup- posed that the imposing Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, with its jmmense columns and heavy stone spans, was erected by filling the interior of the hall with earth as the construction grew in height, and that the stones were raised by drawing them up inclined ramps laid against the exterior (15, p. 91). The same method for raising the 2.5-ton limestone blocks that form the hearting of the Giza pyramids is mentioned by Herodotus, who wrote that the ramp which ex- tended from the Nile to the pyra- mids was 1000 meters long, 10 meters wide, and 16 meters high (46). The techniques believed to have been used to set the 50-ton Stonehenge sar- sens upright (21) are remarkably like

those reported from recent times for setting up in their sockets the cedar logs used in the large houses of the Clayoquot tribe of Vancouver Island (47).

SCIENCE, VOL. 15

Fig. 4. Erection of the 230-ton Paris obelisk in 1837. [From Magasin Pittoresque, 1837]

weighed 75 tons, and set them up out- side a temple at Nineveh (26, p. 154).

Classical authors wrote about the moving of stone monuments of such weight that the accounts must be either wholly im!aginary or great exaggerations of actual events. Herodotus, for in- stance, reports a monolithic chapel weighing about 50()0 tons brought from Aswan to the temple of Laitona at Buto in the Nile delta (39). Diodorus

Siculus, who wrote in the middle of the 1 st century B.C., tells of Queen Semiramis of Assyria (probably to be identified as Sammuramat, wife of Adad-Nirari III, 81 s782 B.C. ) who "quarried out a stone from the moun- tains of Armenia which was 130 feet long and 25 feet wide and thick," and which she caused to be brought to Babylon on a raft. An 1 8th-Dynasty Egyptian inscription mentions an obel-

tEv ...

Fig. 5. Erection, directed by Fontana, of the 51 O-ton Vatican obelisk in 1585, with the use of 40 windlasses, 907 men, and 75 horses. [From 41]

824

Human Energy Expenditure

Probably there is a limit to the weight of a stone which can be carried on a litter of poles or with shoulder poles and rope slings. A 5-ton stone would require such a heavy and cum- bersome litter that it would be more practical to drag the stone with ropes on a sledge (that is, a modified litter). At La Venta, Mexico, in 1955, we found that basalt columns weighing be- tween 1.5 and 2.0 tons could be carried, though with difficulty, by 35 men using shoulder poles and rope slings support- ing the stones (Fig. 6; 48, plate 9). In 1943, in the moun!tains of Colombia, 35 men under the direction of H. Leh- mann managed, with difficulty, to trans- port on a litter a stone sculpture weigh- ing 1 ton (Fig. 7) (49). A week was required to carry this stone 7 kilo- meters, the slowness being due to rain and the need to cut a trail through the. forest. In Madagascar, stones weighing more than 2 tons were dragged, and smaller ones were carried on a litter of poles borne by 50 men (50). Stones on the island of Nias and in the Himalayan area appear, from descrip- tions of the litters and reports that 300 or 400 men were engaged as bearers, to have been somewhat heavier, but their weighos and dimensions are unfor- tunately not recorded (Sl, 52 ) . Here the mountainous terrain must have pre- cluded, or at least discouraged, the dragging of large stones.

It has been proved that heavy stones were transported by water. Wall reliefs in the temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Thebes show two huge granite obelisks laid base to base on a lighter that had been specially built for the purpose. The lighter was towed by a flotilla of 30 smaller craft (53). It is believed that these obelisks, which were quarried at Aswan and weigh 370 tons apiece, were loaded on a lighter floated into a canal leading from the Nile. After the canal was blocked off, the lighter was packed in earth, loaded from the bank, and then, after the earth packing vvas removed, floated off again (23, p. 64; 13, pp. 9v95). Another possible meth- od of loading an obelisk onto a ship was employed by Ptolemy Philadelphus (286-247 B.C.), who dug a canal under the obelisk, leaving it suspended with each end resting on the bank of the canal. Two boats, each loaded with stone blocks, were brought beneath the s,tone shaft, the blocks were removed, and as the boats rose in the water they sup-

19 AUGUST 1966

Fig. 6. Carrying a 1.5-ton stone column with poles Mexico, in 1955. [Photo by author]

ported the obelisk (26, pp. 15>155). The two colossi of Memnon at Thebes were moved on the Nile, and, in the words of the sculptor, "I caused to be built eight ships whereupon the statues were carried up the river" (13, p. 96). The earliest Egyptian pictorial records of heavy transport by water are the re- liefs from the causeway of Wnis (Unas), dating from the 5th Dynasty ( about 2400 B.C.), which show large planked barges bearing two granite columns about 1 meter in diameter, 5 meters long, and each weighing about 100

tons, lashed to sledges ( Fig. 8 ) ( see 54) .

Another pictorial example of water transport is that of the colossal human- headed bull sculptures which stood at the gates of the palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh. These great limestone blocks, weighing over 30 tons, are shown resting on heavy wooden sledges sitting on large rafts which were towed on the Tigris from,the quarries at Bala- tai (now Eski Mosul), some 35 kilo- meters away. In other reliefs, gangs of slaves (prisoners of war) draw the

....... + ::: R4'iJs *+r^zflj;;jo :: .................................................... - A_a i_

Fig. 7. Litter transport of a l.O-ton andesite statue in Colombia, 1943. [Photo by H. Lehmann, Musee de l'Homme, Paris]

825

Mexico, some of which weigh nearly 40 tons (7).

A well-known tomb pfainting, now destroyed, from E1 Bersheh Egypt, dat- ing from the 12th Dynasty, shows 168 men dragging a 6()-ton alabaster statue of a noble named Djehotihetep on a sledge (Fig. 10) (58). Opinions diSer as to how accurate the painting was in- tended to be, some sltudents believing that an impression of a great crowd of men drawing on the ropes was intended (13, p. 92; 59) arld others (56 60) arguing that the exact number of drag gers is shown and that the sledge was running on greased wooden planks which were "the beginnings of a mod- ern technique, namely, lubricated flat machine-surfaces.' Egyptian and Assyr- ian records of heavy transport are abundantS and are illustrated by one ex- ample (61, p. 73) referring to the As- syrian king, Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.) :

Hittite people [Syrians], plunder of my bow, I settled in Nineveh. Mighty ships after the workmanship of their land, they built dexterously. Tyrian, Sidonian and Cyprian sailors? captives of my hand, I ordered to descend the Tigris with thenz [bull statues l and come to land at the wharves of Opis. From Opis where they drew them up on land, they dragged them on sledges.

Fig. 8. Barge carrying granite columns for the pyramid complex of Wnis at Saqqara, Egypt. Fifth Dynasty) about 2400 B.C. [From 54]

sledge with a breast sling or bricole attached to the heavy ropes fastened to the sledge which runs on the ground over short logs laid lengthwise as sta- tionary gliders, not as rnoving rollers (Fig. 9 ) . From the time of Layard, who discovered and first published these reliefs over a century ago (39 55) most scholars have accepted the view that cylindrical wooden. rollers were used to move the bull statues, but this interpre- tation is questioned by Davison (56), who 'believes that the round wooden pieces are friction-reducing sleepers laid beneath the runners in the direction of the sledge m,ovemen.t.

Much has been said about the use

of wooden rollers for moving heavy stones in prehistoric times, but rnost of this seems to be conjecture. Wooden rollers require a firm surface to move uponS and very heavy weights would crush such wooden pieces. The use of wooden rollers cannot be demonstrated for any stone-m-oving culture in the New World, and at best the evidence is weak for pre-Roman Old World so- cieties. The blue stones of the inner circle of Stonehenge were almost cer- tainly brought by water from their source in the Prescelly Mountains in Wales (20 p. 99; 57) anfil transport by water is considered practic!ally cer- tain for the La Venta monuments in

F;g. 9. Assyrian transport of a winged bull statue weighing about 30 tons. From a sculptured limestone panel dating from the 8th century DB.C. discovered at Nineveh by Layard. [From 423

826 SCIENCE, VOL. 153

t k k :

w--_ffi N22a%WD&Dk JS

J S- _ }

ffi ff WAtu:AlSEet ASw X ,RlRlA-tWtS

s- i- # r- # t -

Fig. 10. Dragging the 60-ton alabaster statue of Djehutihetep. From a 1 2th-Dynasty tomb painting at El Bersheh, Egypt, about 1800 B.C. [From J. G. Wilkinson, The Manners and Cllstoms of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878)]

A number of groups in southeast Asia, Africa, and Oceania have, until recent times, moved large stones which they set upright as me;morials for the dead or built into tombs similar to the megalithic graves ( dolmens) of western Europe. Good-accou-nts of the placing of stones weighing several tons on a heavy sledge made of a forked tree which was dragged by ropes or vines attached to it have been published for the Nagas (62, 63), the Khasis (64), and for the people of Malekula and Tonga (65, 66), Madagascar (50, pp. 63-64; 67), Nias (68), and Sumba (69). One of the best of these accounts (69) describes how an ll-ton block of stone was dragged on a heavy wooden sledge over a distance of 3 kilometers by 525 men in 2 days. The slab was then pulled up an inclinled plane made of heavy logs and brought into final position as the capstone of a tiomb.

Ramps of earth, known to have been widely employed in ancien,t times bo!th in the Old sand New Worlds, are usually thought of as the simplest and most commonly used means of elevating heavy stones serving as upright col- umns, stelae, tomb covers, or archi- traves.

CCalculations of numbers of men required to pull the ropes attached to a sledge running over the ground de- pend upon the kind of sledge used, the weight of the stone being borne, the use of log or plank sleepers laid either at right angles like railroad ties or as gliding rails in line with the direction of movement, the slopes encountered, and the distance from the

19 AUGUST 1966

quarry ( 7, 8, 10, 70 ) . By considering examples providled by modern mega- lith movers and using known data on human energy ( 13, 71, 72 ), attempts have been made to determine how many men were required to move cer- tain multi-ton stones (73). Animal pow- er was not used for drawing heavy weights in ancient.times beca.use, it is believed5 adequate harnessing methods were not dleveloped until the 1 0th century A.D. (74). Although a horse has 15 times the pulling power of a man, the pre-lOth-c!entury neck harness chloked the animal so that it could exert only about one-quarter of its strength (71, pp. 82-86). In Roman times it had been determined that the ratio of food consumed by the horse and man was 4: 1, and because this was about the same ratio as the relative power output iof the horse and man, the use of draft animals rather than men would have had no economic ad- vantage if, as was the case, there was a plentiful supply of manpower (71).

Socio-economic Implications

An important but difficult problem in connection with preliterate or pre- historic civilizations is whether public works in which great stones were em- ployed can be taken as evidence of the existence of a class-differentiated so- ciety. I believe that in those societies which engaged in transport of sub- stantial numbers of stone monuments of colossal size there existed a devel- oped system of superordinate authority,

and that these tasks were performed through the -exercise of control over the population by the ruling group. The evidence from Assyria from the 7th and 8th centuries B.C. supports this interpretation ( 75 ), a.nd ithe same is .true of the absolute authority exer- cised by the Egyptian pharaohs, at whose orders the obelisks, tomb cham- bers, colossal statues, temples, and other constructions were quarriedg shaped, transported, and ereclted. For Mycenae, with its cyclopean walls, great tholos tombs, and the deep shaft graves ex- cavated in the last century by Schlie- mann (16), the evidence points to the existenice of powerful leaders. For the megalith.ic Europeans of the 2nd and 3rd. millennia B.C., the actual evidence for all-pow-erful leaders is less clear, but some au,thorities (20, p. 165; 18, p. 32; 76) have in.terpreted the mega- lithic tombs and "temples" such as Stonehenge as evidence of a strongly class-structured socielty.

Similar arguments, although admit- tedly not based on direcit evidence, are proposed for the Olmec culture of the 1 st millennium B .C. in south- eastern Mexico (77, 78) and the cul- ture of Teotihuacan, Mexico, during the first five centuries A.D. ( 79, 80 ) . There is no doubt that.the Aztecs (81) and the Incas ( 11, 82 ) had strongly differentia.ted class structures. Agricul- turists are or have be!en in the past, movers of multi-ton stone monuments. This practice is lacking among pre- agricultural hunting, fishing, and plant- collecting societies. .An established farming economy permi.ts and en-

827

.\waw

Sles

courages-through an assured food supply, long periods of leisure be- twteen crop harvesting and planting, population expansion, and eraft splecial- ization (V. G. Childe's ;'Neolilthie flRevolution' ) development of civili- zation to a degree which is impossible in food-clollecting societies (833 84).

The transport of huge stones most often has a religious or memorial zurpose (85), for such stones com- nonly are sculptured to represent ac- twal persons or deities or are integral elements o£ relig;ous structures. La Yenta? with its stone tnonuments, was a sacred ceremonial center, and the Olmec colossal heads there are believed to be portraits o:E great chiefs or priests, colossal statues of the 18th and 1 9th dynasties in Egypt repre- sent Amenhotep III and Rameses IIS personifications of the sun god th/e human-headed colossal bull statues of Assyria show the face of the emperor and were demonstrably located at the gates to serve as supernaturaiL pro- tectors of the palace; and most of the stones which ;today are dragged b-y troupes of villagers in the Himalayas, VMelanesia, Madagascar and Indonesia ,§ are erected as memorials to thle dead. These southeastern Asiatic groups can scarcely be characterized as class-struc- tured societies. When they move and set up a storle as a rnemorial to a dead ancestor ( the stone serves the secon- dary purpose of inlltlencing the spirits -to bring big harvests), the work is done by membSers of men's organizations (clllbs ) or by large numbers of co- esident villagers? and although these

stones are relatively large, they seem rarely to weigh more than 10 o:r 12 tonsn There is rlo compulsion to pro- rride help in tnoving .stones, and every- one who aids is fed by the family whose ancestor is being honored. Cases are reported 7here the amount of food required was so great that the project had to lbe abandloned, or where as much as S or 6 years were needed to move a large stone because the surplus :5vod required had to lbe periodically regathered (659 p. 362 679 p. 103; 69). Thus these stonestransport events in southe!asbern Asia and Madagascar are family-orientedS cooperative proj- ects which are paid for in :food given to the workers This is an "individual- ized' activity where a single stone is moved and is different from the much more complex organized work in volved, fo-r example in the building of the fortriess of Sacs,ahuaman in Peru or St!onehenge in England. Where grea,t

82B

numbers of very large stones are trans- ported {:o one place, presum.ably some direction is being exercised. The giant sculptured phallic monuments at Dim-a- pur in what is now Naga territory- were made by '4skilled labour which only a powerful prince in the plains could command" (63). Dimapur mon- uments are larger than the stones moved lby Naga villagers in recent times.

Kapl!an (86) argues that huge con- structions such as the earth- or rubble- filled stone-faced pyramids of Meso- america are not necessarily evidence *of centralized authority and the exer- cise of labor direction and cvntrol of large populations. On the other hand, thc magnitude and quantity ,of stone and earth required for some of these pyramids (87) and indications that the Pyrlamid of the Sun at T!eotihuacan uras built as a single shor.t-term proj- ect imply that more than casual vol-un- teers showed up for the stone-cutting, earth-carrying, and odd duties, that a svell-planned engineering program was devised and prosecuted by a Iarge labor forlce of specialisits (stonemasons, earth-bearers, engineeroverseers ) S and that the work was carried out on a

planned wand regular basis :1 do not stlggest that ther;e was actual compul- sion- in the form of gangs of laborers working under the la.shS but rather that some strong persuasion-perhaps unques.tioning obedience to an author- ity which indicatled what it wished and expected to be done resulted in suc- cessful large-scale cooperative work projects ( 79, 88 ) . The old view that th!e pyramids of Egypt wtere built by slaves .toiling under the whips of over- seers has given way to the belief that farm,ers and craftsmen performed the work, the farmers "working on the job in payment of taxes during the season of the [Nile] inundation. when agricultural work was impossible any- way" (89).

A similar view of the theocratic so- ciety of the La Venta Olmecs in the New World has beien proposed ( 78, 90). Lopez dle Gomara's account of the Cortesian conquest of Mexico (91) presents evidence of the unques- tioning obedience [Linne (92) felici- tously called this the Mexican trait of "submissive religiosity' I displayed by the Aztecs whose heroic and hope- less defense of their city of Tenoch titlan for inorfe than 3 months ranks as one of the most remarkable ex- amples of voluntary and unbending allegiance to a ruler in all human history Perhaps this undeviating ae-

ceptance of authority is the key to understanding the nature and strength of the motivating idea referred to above, which has long characterized the aboriginal socielties of Meso- america. This kind of relationship be- twelen the general populzation and those who held the power may have also been characteristic of some) perhaps mostX of the ancient Old World civili- zations. Slaves or prisoners did serve in some societies (Egypt, Assyria, Per- sia ) as the main source of human labor, but these were the exception and not the rule.

A generally acceptable definition of civilization has not yet belen achieved. S. Piggott defines civilized societies as "those which workeSd out a solution to the problem of living in a rellatively permanent community, at a level of technological and social development above that of a hunting band . . . and with a capacity for storing information in the form of written documents or their equivalent." Sanders ( 93 ) has recently written that "archaeologists define civilizations in terms of excel- lence of techn!ology, and especially by the presencfe of mlonumental architec- ture.... More significant, however, are the social and economic implica- tions of these telchnological achieve- ments. They aregalways the product of a large, organized human society with marked occupational specialization and social stratification." Within the gen- eral purview of these definitions, one can argue that transport and use of multi-ton stones in architecture and sculpture are the pralplable evidence of the exercise of authority in socially sFtratified populations, and, whether those societies were literate or not, that these impressive monuments were often intended to memorialize the per- son or deity represented, or in whose name the construction was erected, the point here being th!at with civilization there comes a desire, as well as a means, of leaving a record for the future (94). If it is to be maintained, power must be exercised and demon- strated, and one of the ways which cer;tain societies devised toward this end, from Neolithic times on, was to secure, transport, and erect stones weighing many tons.

Conclusions

That more and larger stones were transpo!rted over a much longer time span in the Old than in the New

SCIENCE, VOL. 153

20. R. J. C. Atkinson, Stonehenge (Hamish Ham- ilton, London, 1956).

21. , Stonehenge und Avebury and Neigh- bouring Monuments (H. M. Stationery Office, London, 1959 ) .

22. T. Heyerdahl, Historia 146, 15-24 (1959); Aku-Aku (Allen and Unwin, New York, 1959).

23. R. Engelbach, The Problem of the Obelisks (Unwin, London, 1923).

24. E. H. Stone, Stones of Stonehenge ( Scott, London, 1924 ) .

25. A. Posnansky, Tiahanacu: the Cradle of American Man (Augustin, New York, 1946). The two stones measure 8.5 by 5.0 by 3.2 meters and 8.5 by 2.2 by 2.0 meters respec- tively.

26. H. H. Gorringe, Egyptian Obelisks (Gorringe, New York, 1882), pp. 8-9.

27. Another possible source of the idea is T. Zammit, Prehistoric Malta (Oxford Univ. Press, London, 1930), pp. 10, 85. The lime- stone balls of Malta are, however, clearly too soiTt to have been used in this fashion.

28. W. Wolff, Island of Death; a New Key to f;ster Island's Culture through an Ethno- psychological Study (Augustin, New York, 1948), p. 161.

29. Cambry, Monuments Celtiques ou Recherches sur le Culte des Pierres (Paris, 1805 ) .

30. L. V. Grinsell, The Ancient Burial-Mounds of Britain (Methuen, London, 1936), chap. 3. Montfaucon in 1719 was an exception in attributing the construction of megalithic tombs toi people of normal size.

31. H. Roussel, Ann. Sacres-Coeurs No. 309 (1926) .

32. C. Navarrete, Pap. New World A7chaeol. Found. 7, 10 (1960); D. Duran, The Aztecs, D. Heyden and F. Horcasitas, Eds. and translators (Orion, New York, 1964).

33. P. Gutierrez de Santa Clara, A History of the Civil Wars in Peru (1544-1548) and of Other Elvents in the Indies (Libreria General de Victoriano Suarez, Madrid, 1905 ), vol. 4, pp. 550-551; M. Murua, A History of the Origin and Royal Genealogy of the Incan Kings of Peru ( Santo Toribio Institute of Mongrovejo, Madrid, 1946), p. 110.

34. A. Schatz and V. Schatz, Com post Sci. 1965 19-26 (spring 1965).

35. A. Kennedy, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh 9, 307-316 (1821).

36. E. A. W. Budge, Cleopatra's Needles and Other Egy ptian Obelisks ( Religious Tract So- ciety, London, 1926 ) .

37. A. Neuberger, The Technical Arts and Sci- ences of the Ancients (Macmillan, New York, 1930), pp. 398-399.

38. P. Carriou, Bull. Soc. Pre'Stist. Franc. 55, 444-445 (1958).

39. A. Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (Harper, New York, 1853), p. 116.

40. R. Engelbach, Ancient Egypt 4, 100-102 (1922).

41. D. Fontarla, Della Transportatione dell' obe- lisco Vaticano, et delle fabriche di nostro Signore Papa Sisto V (Rome, 1590).

42. A. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains (Put- nam, New York, 1 840 ), pp . 63-85.

43. A. H. Bagnold, Proc. Soc. Biblical Archaeol. 10, 452-463 (1888).

44. "Ancient rain god on the move," Lif e 57, 89-90 (11 Dec. 1964).

45. B. Cobo, A Hisfory of the New World (Li- brary of Spanish Author6 from the Formation of the Language until the Present, vols. 91-92, Madrid, 1956) .

46. D. Dunham, Archaeology 9, 159-165 (1956). 47. V. A. Koppert, Catholic Univ. Amer. An-

thropol. Ser. No. 1 ( 1930) . 48. P. Drucker, R. F. Heizer, R. J. Squier, Bull.

Bur. Amer. Ethnol. 170, plate 9 (1959). 49. H. Lehmann, Marco Polo 27, 13-24 (1957). 50. A. Grandidier and G. Grandidier, Histoire

Physique, Naturelle et Politique de Mada-- gascar (Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, 1917), vol. 4, p. 63.

51. A. L. Lewis, Materiau.c Iist. Primitile Nat. Homme ser. 2, 7, 185-187 (1876).

52. S. Dillon Fipley, Nat. Geog. Mag. 97, (No. 1), 35 (1950), shows 60 Nepalese bearers carrying a Mercedes sedan weighing perhaps 1.5 tons on a litter.

53. E. Naville, Deir el-Bahri (Egyptian Explor- ation Fund, London, 1898).

54. S. Hassan, Z. Sgypt. Sprache Altertumskurtde 80, 136-139 (1955).

55. A. Layard, Monuments of Nineveh (Murray, London, 1853 ), ser. 2; C. J. Gadd, The Stones of Assyria (Chatto and Windus, Lon- don, 1936) .

56. S. St. C. Davison, Technol. Culture 2, 11-16 (1961).

57. Although earlier suggestions had been made of the source of the blue stones, the matter was first definitely settled by H. H. Thomas, Antiquaries J. 3, 239-260 (1923).

58. P. E. Newberry, El Bersheh (Egyptian Ex- ploration Fund, London, 1893 ), part 1.

59. I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt (Penguin, Baltimore, 1961), p. 56.

60. A. Badawy, Deut. Akad Wiss Berlin Mitteil. Inst. Orientforsch. 8, 325-332 (1963).

61. D. D. Luckenbill, The Annuls of Sen7zacherib (Oriental Institute, Chicago, 1924), vol. 2.

62. C. von Furer-Haimendorf, The Naked Nagas (Thacker, Spink, Calcutta, 1962), chap. 2; J. H. Hutton, The Angami Nagas (Macmillan, London, 1921), pp. 232-233, 345-347, 40S 406; L. W. Shakespear, History of Upper Assam, Up per Burmah and North Eastern Frontier (Macmillan, London, 1914), pp. 89-90.

63. J. H. Hutton, J. Roy. Anthropol. Inst. 52, 242-249 (1922).

64. P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (Macmillan, London, 1914), pp. 111-113, 144-155.

65. J. Layard, Stone Men of J!Jalekula (Chatto and Windus, London, 1942 ); description of coral memorial stone weighing about 32 tons.

66. W. C. McKern, Bishop Mus. Bull. 60, 65 (1929).

67. R. Linton, Field Mus. Nat. Hist. Anthropol. Ser. 22, 182-185 (1933); H.-M. Dubois, Trav. Mem. Inst. Ethnol. 34, 666ff. (Paris, 1938).

68. E. Schroder, Nias: Ethnographische, Geo- graphische en Historische Aanteekeningen en Studien (Brill, Leiden, 1917), pp. 113-114.

69. J. Roder, Paideuma 3, 84-87 (1944-49). 70. Quarry sources are best determined by com-

parative petrographic studies. For examples, see F. Alfeld Bol. Soc. Geol. Peru 19, 33-34 (1946); H. M. Fischer, Mineralogie als Hilf- ;issenschaft fur Archaologie, Ethnologie u.s.w. mit Speciallen Bezuchtsichtigung Mexikanischer Sculpturen ( Stuttgart , 1 877 ); H. E. Gregory, A7ner. J. Sci. ser. 4 41, 1-100 (1916); A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and In- dustries (Arnold, London, 1962); F. W. Shot- ten, in Science in Archaeology, D. Brothwell and E. Higgs, Edst (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963 ), pp. 482-488 ; F. S. Wallis, Endeavour 14, 146-151 (1955); G. Wilkinson, Practical Geology and Architecture of Ireland (Murray, London, 1845).

71. R. J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology (Brill, Leiden, 1955), vol. 2.

72. "Earthmoving by Manual Labour and Ma- chines," United Nations Flood Control Ser. No. 17 (Bangkok, 1961 ); O. T. Mason, A7ner. Anthropologist 2, 21-46 (1889).

73. In addition to works referred to in 2, 4, 9, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20, and 56, see T. Kagami- yama, Bull. Fac. Literature Kyushu Univ. 3, (1955); I. Takahashi, Rep. Archaeol. Res. Dept. Literature Kyoto Univ. 14 (Kyoto, 1937) .

74. Comm. Lefebvre de Noettes, La Force Mo- trice Animale a Travers les Xges (Paris, 1924); Anthropologie 36, 297-308 (1926); Bull. Soc. Franc. Pedagogie 30, 31-42 (1928). W. Wat- son, China (Praeger, New York, 1961 ), p. 93, states that itl China the chest and shoulder harness was known in the 1 st century B .C.

75. J. Laessoe, People of Ancient Assyria (Rout- ledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963 ) .

76. V. G. Childe, The Dawn of European Civit- ization ( Knopf, London, 1947 ), pp. 302-303; S. Piggott, The Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles ( Cambridge Univ. Press, Cam- bridge, 1954), p. 94; R. E. M. Wheeler, Prehistoric and Roman Wales ( Clarendon Press, London, 1925), pp. 102-103.

77. R. F. Heizer, A.mer. Antiquity 26, 215-222 ( 1960 ) .

78. , Kroeber Anthropol. Soc. Pap. 25, 43-58 ( 1961 ) .

79. R. Millon, B. Drewitt, J. A. Bennyhoff, Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc. 55, 35 ( 1965) .

80. E. Wolf, Sons of the Shaking Earth (Univ. Of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1959 ) .

81. G. Vaillant, Aztecs of Mexico (Doubleday, New York, 1941 ) .

82. P. A. Means, Trans. Conn. A cad . Arts Sci. 27, 407-469 (1925).

83. R. J. Braidwood alld C. A. Reed, Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 23, 19-32 ( 1957) .

84. G. Clark and S. Piggott, Prehistoric Societies (Knopf, Nesv York, 1965 ), chaps. 8, 9.

85. S. Piggott, J. Roy. Inst. Brit. Architects, ser. 3, 63, 175-1 81 ( 1956) .

86. D. Kaplan, Southwestern J. Anthropol. 19, 397-410 (1963). A clear distinction should be

829

World is obvious. The earlier arrival of the peoples of the Old World at the level of cultural development gen- erally termed "civilization" accom- panied as it was by a superior tech- nology (95), goes far to account for this fact. Similarities, even identities, in techniques employed in transport- ing heavy stones (for example, sledge, ramps) or beliefs about stones (for example, that stones can will them- selves to move or remain fixed) are taken to be fortuitous and indepevnd- ent convergences of.the same genre as those cultural parallels recently pointed out by Caso (96) and Rowe (97).

References and Notes

1. J. K. Finch, The Story of Engineering (Doubleday, New York, 1960); R. S. Kirby, S. Withington, A. B. Darling, F. G. Kilgour Engineering in History (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1956); C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall, A History of Technology (Oxford Univ. Press, London, 1954 ), vol. 1; M. Daumas, Ed., Les Origines de la Cililiza- tion Technique (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1962); L. S. de Camp, The Ancient Engineers (Doubleday, New York, 1963 ) .

2. In addition to citations below, see J. Fer- gusson, Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries (Murray, London, 1872); G. Daniel, The Megalith Builders of Western Europe (Hutchinson, London, 1958); R. J. C. Atkin- son, Antiquity 35, 292-299 (1961); B. S. Browne and R. J. C. Atkinson, ibid. 37, 140144 (1963); P. A. Hill, Scieatce 133, 1215- 1222 (1961); J. E. Watkins, Smithsonian Inst. Ann. Rep. 1898, 615-619 (1899).

3. R. Engelbach, The Aswan Obelisk (Institut Francais d'Archeologie Orientale, Cairo, 1922).

4. W. Mulloy, A. Skjolsvold, C. S. Smith, in The Archaeology of Easter Island, T. Heyer- dahl and E. N. Ferdon, Jr., Eds. (Forum Publishing House, Santa Fe, 1961), vol. 1.

5. S. Routledge, The Mystery of Easter Island (Hazell, Watson and Viney, London, 1919).

6. J. O. Outwater, Archaeology 12, 26-32 (1959); E. G. Squier, Peru, Incidents of Travel and ExplorAtion (Macmillan, London, 1878).

7. H. Williams and R. F. Heizer, Contrib. Univ. Calif. Berkeley Archaeol. Res. Facility 1, 1-40 (1965).

8. M. W. Stirling, Bull. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. 138, (1943).

9. R. F. Heizer and H. Williams, Contrib. Univ. Calif. Berkeley Archaeol. Res. Facility 1, 55-70 (1965).

10. W. H. Holmes, Field Columbian Mus. An- thropol. Ser. 1 (No. 1) (1897); H. Williams and R. F. Heizer, Contrib. Univ. Calif. Berkeley ArcZlaeol. Res. Facility 1, 41-54 (1965).

11. J. H. Rowe, Bull. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. 143 (vol. 2) 183-330 (1946).

12. C. O. Becker, Trans. Newcomen Soc. 21, 129-138 (1943); V. W. von Hagen, A Guide to Sacsahuaman, the Fortress of Cusco (Guild New York, 1949).

13. F. M. Barber, The Mechanical Triumphs of the Ancient Egyptians (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1900).

14. C. D. J. Bell, Ancient Egypt 1934, 107-114 (1934). These obelisk barges were the largest boats constructed up to that time. See also C. V. Solver, Mariner's Mirror 26, 237-256 (1940); - , ibid. 33, 39-43 (1947); G. A. Ballard, ibid. 27, 290-306 (1941); - , ibid. 33, 158-164 (1947).

15. S. Clarke and R. Engelbach, Ancient Egyptian ANAsonry (Oxford Univ. Press, London, 1930).

16. A. J. Wace, Mycenae (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, 1949 ) .

17. G. Daniel, The Prehistoric Chamber Tombs of France (Thames and Hudson, London, 1960).

18. F. Niel, Dolmens et Menhirs ( Presses Uni- versitaires de France, Paris, 1961 ) .

19. J. Dechelette, Manual d'Arche'ologie Pre'his- torique Celtique et Gallo-Romaine ( Picard, Paris, 1908 ), vol. 1.

19 AUGUST 1966

made between piece-work constructions such as Mesoamerican earth or stone rubble pyra- mids, and moving of multi-ton stones. Huge eartllwoSrks can be built in a snort time by many workers, or in a longer period by fewer workers. Unless we have a fairly clear idea of the construction time involved, it is only guesswork to suggest the number of man- days involved per month or per year. But with a 10()-ton stone a minimum number of workers were necessarily involved, and it is for this reason that I believe transport of colossal stones offers a more definite avenue of inquiry into the energy organization of prehistoric societies. When numbers of megalithic stone monuments were moved by one people, it can be assumed that a large group effort was involved. DespiteH the per- suasive arguments of Kaplan that the "chief- dom" type of society operating with an agri- cultural economy may have achieved such impressive construction projects as exist at Teotihuacan or at the major sites of the Olmec and Maya cultures in Mexico and lowland Guatemala, I consider the question of societal type still an open one until more precise in- formation is available. It is difficult in any case to see Teotihuacan and Tikal as merely religious capitals of chiefdoms.

87. The La Venta pyranlid contains about 140,000

cubic meters of earth, the stone-faced Pyra- mid of the Sun at Teotihuacan about 840,000 cubic meters, and the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan about 210,000 cubic meters of rubble.

88. A. Palerm, Pan. Amer. Union Social Sci. Monograph 1, 2842 (1955); Ga Cowgill, Southwester)t J. Anthropol. 20, 145-159 ( 1964) .

89. R. J. Forbes, Man the Maker (Schuman, New York, 1950), p. 44; W. A. Fairservis, The Ancient Kingdoms of the- Nile (Crowell7

New York, 1962), pp. 80-81. 90. M. Coe, The Jaguar's Childres1 ( New York

Graphic Society, New York, 1965 ), p 122, thinks that 31mec Society was not organized on a theocratic basis but rather, like that of the Maya, was controlled by "secular lords who drew their power from lineage and from conquest."

91. F. Lopez de Gomara, Cortes, L. B. Simpson, Ed. and Transl. ( Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1964).

92. S. Linne, Ethnogr. Mus. Sweden, Publ. No. 7 ( 1942) .

93. W. T. Sanders, The Cultus al Ecology of the Teotihuacan Valley (Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, 1965).

94. A point made earlier by J. W. Fewkes, Snithsonian Inst. Misc. Coll. 61 (No. 6), 4

cubic meters of earth, the stone-faced Pyra- mid of the Sun at Teotihuacan about 840,000 cubic meters, and the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan about 210,000 cubic meters of rubble. 88. A. Palerm, Pan. Amer. Union Social Sci. Monograph 1, 2842 (1955); Ga Cowgill, Southwester)t J. Anthropol. 20, 145-159 ( 1964) . 89. R. J. Forbes, Man the Maker (Schuman, New York, 1950), p. 44; W. A. Fairservis, The Ancient Kingdoms of the- Nile (Crowell7 New York, 1962), pp. 80-81. 90. M. Coe, The Jaguar's Childres1 ( New York Graphic Society, New York, 1965 ), p 122, thinks that 31mec Society was not organized on a theocratic basis but rather, like that of the Maya, was controlled by "secular lords who drew their power from lineage and from conquest." 91. F. Lopez de Gomara, Cortes, L. B. Simpson, Ed. and Transl. ( Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1964). 92. S. Linne, Ethnogr. Mus. Sweden, Publ. No. 7 ( 1942) . 93. W. T. Sanders, The Cultus al Ecology of the Teotihuacan Valley (Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, 1965). 94. A point made earlier by J. W. Fewkes, Snithsonian Inst. Misc. Coll. 61 (No. 6), 4

95. A. L. Kroeber, A Roster of Civilizations and Culture (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962). See especially pp. 73-86, "Presences and absences: Old and New World civiliza- tions. "

96. A. Caso, Cuadernos Amer. 6, 147-152 (1965). 97. J. H. Rowe, Amer. Antiquity 31, 334-337

(1966) . 98. Acknowledgement is made to the Guggenheim

Foundation for a fellowship during 1964, to the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Sci- ence for a professorship in the fall of 1964, to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthro- pological Research and to the National Geographic Society for travel grants in 1963 and 1964 in connection with field studies on the subject of this paper. The data for this article have been drawn from a much larger collection being prepared for a book to be published by A. Knopf, Inc.

(1913), who wrote, "Monoliths, as expressions of a desire to perpetuato the memory or to commemorate past events, are naturally found only where the race had arrived at a self-consciousness of its own power." G. Clark and S. Piggott, Preh-istoric Societies (Knopf, New York, 1965), p. 158, discuss the theme of the "Neolithic enlargement of the conceptual horizon in terms of an in- creased [time] perspective." 95. A. L. Kroeber, A Roster of Civilizations and Culture (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962). See especially pp. 73-86, "Presences and absences: Old and New World civiliza- tions. " 96. A. Caso, Cuadernos Amer. 6, 147-152 (1965). 97. J. H. Rowe, Amer. Antiquity 31, 334-337 (1966) . 98. Acknowledgement is made to the Guggenheim Foundation for a fellowship during 1964, to the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Sci- ence for a professorship in the fall of 1964, to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthro- pological Research and to the National Geographic Society for travel grants in 1963 and 1964 in connection with field studies on the subject of this paper. The data for this article have been drawn from a much larger collection being prepared for a book to be published by A. Knopf, Inc.

stressed the importance to diSerentia- tioln of changes in (i) enzyme activi- ties (1); (ii) RNA metabolism (2); (iii) gene activation (3); (iv) levels of spe- cific substrates (4, 5); or (v) inhibitors (6). At any of these levels of control the rate of a reaction critical to mor- phogenesis may be influenced. Since disagreement and confusion frequently arise from unexpressed (and usually un- known) discrepancies in the definitions of the -words d igerentiation, morpho- genesis, and development, they are used interchangeably in this discussion for the sake of variety; their meaning in the particular context should be clear. If diSerentiation were always so com- plex as to simultaneously involve each of the types of control summarized above, it would indeed be difficult to analyze them all at this stage of our knowledge. For example, in view of the role of the gene in controlling the rate of an enzymic reaction necessary to differentiation, it is clear that its ac- tion is distant and indirect, being me- diated throiugh RNA templates, through enzymes, and through substrates. Sin e partial control of morphogenesis could (and does) occur independently at these "lower" levels, the extent of their con- tribution must be understood before we can clarify the role of selective gene activation.

As an example of the dependellcc of one level of control upon another, let me summarize two cases in which interpretation of data at the enzyme level was completely dependent on knowledge of alter-ations at the sub- strate and inhibitor level.

SCIENCE, VOL. 153 stressed the importance to diSerentia- tioln of changes in (i) enzyme activi- ties (1); (ii) RNA metabolism (2); (iii) gene activation (3); (iv) levels of spe- cific substrates (4, 5); or (v) inhibitors (6). At any of these levels of control the rate of a reaction critical to mor- phogenesis may be influenced. Since disagreement and confusion frequently arise from unexpressed (and usually un- known) discrepancies in the definitions of the -words d igerentiation, morpho- genesis, and development, they are used interchangeably in this discussion for the sake of variety; their meaning in the particular context should be clear. If diSerentiation were always so com- plex as to simultaneously involve each of the types of control summarized above, it would indeed be difficult to analyze them all at this stage of our knowledge. For example, in view of the role of the gene in controlling the rate of an enzymic reaction necessary to differentiation, it is clear that its ac- tion is distant and indirect, being me- diated throiugh RNA templates, through enzymes, and through substrates. Sin e partial control of morphogenesis could (and does) occur independently at these "lower" levels, the extent of their con- tribution must be understood before we can clarify the role of selective gene activation. As an example of the dependellcc of one level of control upon another, let me summarize two cases in which interpretation of data at the enzyme level was completely dependent on knowledge of alter-ations at the sub- strate and inhibitor level. SCIENCE, VOL. 153

Entities are not to be multiplied

WitslOUt necessity .-OCKHAM The correct hypothesis for the solu-

tion of a problem often turns out to be the least complicate-d one that can be thought of at the time. Experience has taught us that "nature operates in the shortest way possible," and that the least complex explanation usually corresponds to reality. This, of coiurse, depends on how complicated the prob- lem really is, and on how close we are to its solution. The investigator tnay be unaware that the shortest way possib]e is in fact long and tortuous, and may cling to the security of an oversimplified interpretation which in- terferes with a search for relevant new

The author is an associate biochemist at the Huntington Laboratories of Harvard University at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

830

Entities are not to be multiplied WitslOUt necessity .-OCKHAM The correct hypothesis for the solu- tion of a problem often turns out to be the least complicate-d one that can be thought of at the time. Experience has taught us that "nature operates in the shortest way possible," and that the least complex explanation usually corresponds to reality. This, of coiurse, depends on how complicated the prob- lem really is, and on how close we are to its solution. The investigator tnay be unaware that the shortest way possib]e is in fact long and tortuous, and may cling to the security of an oversimplified interpretation which in- terferes with a search for relevant new The author is an associate biochemist at the Huntington Laboratories of Harvard University at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. 830

facts and avoids recognition of the complexity of the prolblemi In dealing with icomplicated phenomena wh;ch are brought about by varied and. in- dependent forces, searching for a sin- gle cause or trigger mechanism can only delay our eventual understanding of the problems involved. Differentia- tion !appelars to be such a pheniomenoln and, with Ockham's permission, we shall now proceed, out of necessity, to m.ultiply entities; show ithat thley are all required; and even sugges.t that their very number is an essential aspect of diSerentiation.

Relatively few processes of morpho- genesis are both simple enough and at present, well enough studied to al- low an analysis of more than one of the responsible entities (or causes) itls volved. Many investigators have

Multiple Causes and Controls in Differentiation

The variety and interdependence of these causes may be essential to the stability of morphogenesis.

Barbara E. Wright

Multiple Causes and Controls in Differentiation The variety and interdependence of these causes may be essential to the stability of morphogenesis. Barbara E. Wright

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