Who builds pyramids? Who built the pyramids? Mysteries of ancient civilizations

There are fewer and fewer unsolved mysteries on our planet every year. Constant improvement of technology, collaboration of scientists from various fields of science reveals to us the secrets and mysteries of history. But the secrets of the pyramids still defy understanding - all discoveries give scientists only tentative answers to many questions. Who built Egyptian pyramids, what was the construction technology, is there a curse of the pharaohs - these and many other questions still remain without an exact answer.

Description of the Egyptian pyramids

Archaeologists talk about 118 pyramids in Egypt, partially or completely preserved to this day. Their age ranges from 4 to 10 thousand years. One of them - Cheops - is the only surviving “miracle” from the “Seven Wonders of the World”. The complex called the “Great Pyramids of Giza”, which includes and, was also considered as a participant in the “New Seven Wonders of the World” competition, but was withdrawn from participation, since these majestic structures are actually a “wonder of the world” on the ancient list.

These pyramids have become the most visited excursion sites in Egypt. They are perfectly preserved, which cannot be said about many other buildings - time has not been kind to them. Yes and local residents contributed to the destruction of the majestic necropolises by removing the cladding and breaking out the stones from the walls to build their houses.

Egyptian pyramids were built by pharaohs who ruled from the 27th century BC. e. and later. They were intended for the repose of rulers. The enormous scale of the tombs (some reaching almost 150 m in height) was supposed to testify to the greatness of the buried pharaohs; things that the ruler loved during his life and that would be useful to him in the afterlife were also placed here.

For construction, stone blocks of various sizes were used, which were hollowed out of the rocks, and later brick began to serve as material for the walls. The stone blocks were ground and adjusted so that a knife blade could not slip between them. The blocks were stacked on top of each other with an offset of several centimeters, which formed a stepped surface of the structure. Almost all Egyptian pyramids have a square base, the sides of which are oriented strictly to the cardinal points.

Since the pyramids performed the same function, that is, they served as the burial place of the pharaohs, their structure and decoration are similar inside. The main component is the burial hall, where the sarcophagus of the ruler was installed. The entrance was not located at ground level, but several meters higher, and was masked with facing slabs. From entrance to inner hall There were stairs and passages-corridors, which sometimes narrowed so much that they could only be walked on squatting or crawling.

In most necropolises, burial halls (chambers) are located below ground level. Ventilation was carried out through narrow shaft-channels that penetrated the walls. Rock paintings and ancient religious texts are found on the walls of many pyramids - in fact, from them scientists draw some of the information about the construction and owners of burials.

The main mysteries of the pyramids

The list of unsolved mysteries begins with the shape of the necropolises. Why was the pyramid shape chosen, which is translated from Greek as “polyhedron”? Why were the edges located clearly in the cardinal directions? How were huge stone blocks moved from the excavation site and how were they raised to great heights? Were the buildings built by aliens or people in possession of a magic crystal?

Scientists even argue over the question of who built such tall monumental structures that stood for thousands of years. Some believe that they were built by slaves, who died by the hundreds of thousands during the construction of each. However, new discoveries by archaeologists and anthropologists convince us that the builders were free people who received good food and medical care. They made such conclusions based on the composition of the bones, the structure of the skeletons and the treated injuries of the buried builders.

Mystical coincidences were attributed to all deaths and deaths of people involved in the exploration of the Egyptian pyramids, which provoked rumors and talk about the curse of the pharaohs. There is no scientific evidence for this. Perhaps the rumors were started to scare away thieves and looters who wanted to find valuables and jewelry in the graves.

To the mysterious interesting facts The short time frame for the construction of the Egyptian pyramids can be attributed to this. According to calculations, large necropolises with that level of technology should have been built in no less than a century. How, for example, was the Cheops pyramid built in just 20 years?

Great Pyramids

This is the name of the burial complex near the city of Giza, consisting of three great pyramids, a huge statue of the Sphinx and small satellite pyramids, probably intended for the wives of rulers.

The original height of the Cheops pyramid was 146 m, the side length was 230 m. It was built in 20 years in the 26th century BC. e. The largest of Egypt's landmarks has not one, but three burial chambers. One of them is below ground level, and two are above the base line. Intertwining corridors lead to the burial chambers. Along them you can go to the chamber of the pharaoh (king), to the queen's chamber and to the lower hall. The Pharaoh's Chamber is a chamber made of pink granite, measuring 10x5 m. It contains a granite sarcophagus without a lid. Not a single report by scientists contained information about the mummies found, so it is unknown whether Cheops was buried here. By the way, the mummy of Cheops was not found in other tombs.

It still remains a mystery whether the Cheops pyramid was used for its intended purpose, and if so, then apparently it was plundered by looters in past centuries. The name of the ruler, by whose order and design this tomb was built, was learned from the drawings and hieroglyphs above the burial chamber. All other Egyptian pyramids, with the exception of Djoser, have a simpler engineering structure.

Two other necropolises in Giza, built for the heirs of Cheops, are somewhat more modest in size:

Tourists travel to Giza from all over Egypt, because this city is actually a suburb of Cairo, and all transport interchanges lead to it. Travelers from Russia usually travel to Giza as part of excursion groups from Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada. The trip is long, 6-8 hours one way, so the excursion usually lasts 2 days.

The great buildings are accessible to visitors only during working hours, usually until 17:00, in the month of Ramadan - until 15:00. It is not recommended for asthmatics, as well as people suffering from claustrophobia, nervous and cardiovascular diseases, to enter inside. Be sure to take drinking water and hats with you on the excursion. The excursion fee consists of several parts:

Entrance to the complex.
Entrance inside the pyramid of Cheops or Khafre.
Entrance to the Museum of the Solar Boat, on which the body of the pharaoh was transported across the Nile.

With the Egyptian pyramids in the background, many people like to take photos while sitting on camels. You can bargain with camel owners.

Pyramid of Djoser

The first pyramid in the world is located in Saqqara, near Memphis, the former capital of Ancient Egypt. Today, the pyramid of Djoser is not as attractive to tourists as the necropolis of Cheops, but at one time it was the largest in the country and the most complex in terms of engineering design.

The funeral complex included chapels, courtyards, storage. The six-step pyramid itself does not have a square base, but a rectangular one, with sides 125x110 m. The height of the structure itself is 60 m, inside it there are 12 burial chambers, where Djoser himself and members of his family were supposedly buried. The pharaoh's mummy was not found during excavations. The entire territory of the complex, 15 hectares in size, was surrounded by a 10 m high stone wall. Currently, part of the wall and other buildings have been restored, and the pyramid, which is approximately 4700 years old, has been preserved quite well.

Experts suspect that these are traces of the activities of an ancient forgotten civilization

Could the ancient Egyptians have built their giant pyramids and palaces on their own? People who have only read about these structures in history books believe: yes. But many of those who have been to this country and wandered, for example, through the Giza Valley, doubt it. These structures are too impressive, even if tens of thousands of slaves are believed to have worked on their construction.

Photo by Andrey SKLYAROV Exact age this stone sculpture is unknown to anyone

Photo by Andrey SKLYAROV The famous “Inventory Stele” with the inscription about the “restoration” of the Sphinx.

Photo by Andrey SKLYAROV Plates of black basalt located along the perimeter of the temple

Photo by Andrey SKLYAROV Fragment of the obelisk in Karnak

Photo by Andrey SKLYAROV This is an obelisk lying near the famous scarab beetle on the shore sacred lake in Karnak.

Photo by Andrey SKLYAROV Artifact from southern Saqqara, where tourists are not allowed

Photo by Andrey SKLYAROV Gate in the still closed part of the Karnak Temple

Photo by Andrey SKLYAROV Aswan quarries. Holes going several meters deep

Conan Doyle version

The theory that the pyramids are material traces of some more ancient technologically advanced civilization has not been put forward today. For example, in 1929, the “father of Sherlock Holmes” Arthur Conan Doyle published the fantasy novel “Marakot’s Abyss”, the heroes of which end up in a certain city - an island that sank to the bottom thousands of years ago Atlantic Ocean. When one of them examines the underwater structures, he notices that: “The columns, platforms and stairs of this building surpassed anything I had ever seen on earth. Most of all, the building resembled the remains of the temple of Karnak in Luxor, in Egypt, and, amazingly, the work, decorations and half-erased inscriptions in small details were reminiscent of the same decorations and inscriptions of the great ruins near the Nile.”

According to Conan Doyle, who, by the way, visited Egypt before writing this novel, all local ancient structures were built by Atlanteans. And Doyle, according to his contemporaries, like his famous detective hero, had brilliant analytical skills.

The Sphinx is 5000 years older?

It is not clear on what Conan Doyle based his conclusions. But he now has many followers. For example, the head of the Laboratory of Alternative History, Andrei SKLYAROV, who has visited Egypt several times, claims that most of the local historical monuments were actually created by representatives of an ancient civilization:

You can call them Atlanteans, you can call them aliens, you can call them something else, but there are an incredible number of their traces in Egypt. It’s even strange that Egyptologists did not pay attention to this before. Although now I have the impression that the Egyptians themselves are guessing about something, but are carefully hiding the secret.

If possible, specific examples...

Please let's start with the Great Sphinx. Classical Egyptology claims that it was built during the time of Pharaoh Cheops or his son - approximately 2.5 thousand years BC - based only on the fact that, according to its “artistic features,” it can be attributed to that era. But a century and a half ago, the so-called “Inventory Stele” was found in Giza, which indicated that Cheops only ordered the damaged statue to be repaired. Repair, not build!

And in the early 90s, American geologist Robert Schoch proved that the grooves on the body of the Sphinx and on the wall of the trench around it are traces of erosion not by wind, but by rain: vertical stripes instead of horizontal ones. But there has been no serious rain in Egypt for at least 8 thousand years.

Immediately after Schoch’s publication, the Egyptian authorities began an urgent restoration of the Sphinx. Now the lower two-thirds of the monument are covered with new masonry, and the top of the sculpture has been cleaned - almost no traces of erosion remain. By the way, around the same time, the “Inventory Stele” was also hidden in the storerooms of the Cairo Museum - before that it was put on public display, but now another one was put in its place. In response to questions about this stele, the museum's caretakers only shrug their shoulders in bewilderment. But it has been repeatedly described in scientific and so-called alternative literature.

When the gods ruled...

According to Andrei Sklyarov, the ancient Egyptians themselves built something. But they built their buildings on the basis of ancient structures.

This is clearly visible on the pyramids - which are made by hand, and which with the help of high-precision tools, says Andrey. - Moreover, many ancient buildings resemble bunkers - semi-underground structures over which the pharaohs built their pyramids, trying to copy the ancients. And there were only 6 - 7 original pyramids built by pre-civilization: three in Giza, two in Dashshur and one in Medun. Perhaps there was another one in Abu Roash, but it is not clear whether it was a pyramid or a bunker. And other pyramids are ancient structures completed by the pharaohs, which were originally typical bunkers. Moreover, with such powerful ceilings that they cannot be called anything other than a refuge in the event of a nuclear war. True, it is not clear why and who could threaten them. But the war explains the disappearance of pre-civilization.

Why, besides the buildings, were there no other material traces left?

Why isn't there any left? For example, in the Giza Desert we came across something that resembled iron dust. They took samples and brought them to Moscow. It turned out that it was iron oxide with a high content of manganese. Percentage corresponds to high-alloy manganese steels, which are now used in tank tracks and as a material for stone crushing machines. In how many years could this extremely strong steel turn into dust in a desert where there had been no decent rain for 8 thousand years?

But what kind of mysterious civilization left us these artifacts?

There are different versions. Some people adhere to the theory that they were Atlanteans, others talk about colonists from other worlds. It is difficult to say when they came to Earth, but the period of the heyday of their power can be determined. At the beginning of the 3rd century BC. e. Egyptian historian Manetho published his History of Egypt. It has not been completely preserved to this day, but fragments are mentioned in the works of other historians of the first millennium AD. Manetho compiled a chronological list of the rulers of the country. Classical Egyptology recognizes only the "dynastic part", which deals with famous human pharaohs. But Manetho also talks about the first kingdom, when Egypt was supposedly ruled by gods. It existed approximately 10 - 12 thousand years ago, long before the first known pharaohs.

They worked with granite like styrofoam

Now Egyptologists spend time arguing about how the workers moved these multi-ton stone blocks from which they built pyramids and temples, they are building versions, conducting experiments, says Andrei Sklyarov. - We took a different path: if there are millions of tons of stones, then we need to understand how they were processed. We analyzed many parameters. For example, if they were sawed out, then we look at the width and depth of the cut, and the thickness of the cutting edge. Sometimes the results are surprising.

Slabs of black basalt located around the perimeter of the temple, standing near the Great Pyramid (they used to be the floor of an ancient Egyptian temple). The trace of a circular saw is visible, which is known to operate on a hydraulic, pneumatic or electric drive, but the Egyptians had neither the first, nor the second, nor the third.

It is also noticeable that during sawing there is grinding. If, as they believe, the builders worked with hand-held copper saws, then there would be scratches, but similar grinding is left by modern diamond-coated saws, and they must move very quickly.

Fragment of the obelisk at Karnak. Lies 10 meters from hiking trail. There are strange holes on it with a diameter of 1 cm and a depth of about 10 cm. They were obviously made to attach some kind of decorative plates: gold or copper. But some of them go deep into the granite not perpendicularly, but at an angle of 10 - 20 degrees: this is impossible to do manually. It turns out that they were drilled into granite, just as we turn holes with a drill in soft wood. What kind of drill did the ancient Egyptians have that could go into granite like it would into butter?

This is an obelisk lying near the famous scarab beetle on the shore of the sacred lake at Karnak. A decorative strip 3 mm wide and 1 cm deep is visible. It is believed that this was scratched with a nail. Jewelers, perhaps, could repeat, carefully cutting, with modern tools.

An artifact from southern Saqqara, where tourists are not allowed. A very revealing block of black basalt. The far part of it has been sawed off: the mark of a circular saw is visible. And they tried to process the other part manually. The difference is immediately visible.

A gate in the still closed part of the Karnak Temple. At the very top, a hole was made in the granite, believed to be about the size of a good barrel for a gate post. In our world, machines capable of cutting such holes appeared only 10 - 15 years ago.

Aswan quarries. Pits going several meters deep. The diameter is slightly larger than the width of the human body. How to dig holes like this? Unless you stand with your head down. There are many such pits. According to Egyptologists, they are designed to watch how cracks appear in the main massif. And this is a completely pointless exercise, because the direction of the cracks can be determined from the surface. And why was it necessary to align the walls so carefully? It looks like they were working here with a milling cutter. There is a hypothesis that the builders simply took granite samples. But with such a tool that made it possible not to spend a lot of time on these tests. This proto-civilization demonstrates to us that it worked with granite as with foam plastic.

Andrey MOISEENKO
TVNZ

The Egyptian pyramids, built by aliens, according to supporters of this point of view, were a spaceport where their spaceships landed, including to refuel.

At the top of the Cheops pyramid there is now a flat area. According to scientists, there was a triangular pyramidion stone there, but perhaps it was not there at all. It’s hard to imagine that he disappeared so easily, because his weight was about one hundred tons.

Why don’t aliens now use the pyramids for their intended purpose? Experts agree that although extraterrestrial beings continue to visit our planet, they no longer need the pyramids. Due to technological progress, they now have other ships that do not need such a spaceport. Thus, Egyptian pyramids- this is a kind of outdated space equipment of aliens.

Signs have been preserved in the pyramids indicating the placement of special alien technology there. Thus, in the Great Gallery there are 28 recesses on the walls. One gets the impression that they housed something, perhaps some mechanisms and instruments, with the help of which, in particular, energy was generated for the functioning of ships.

Where did all these devices go? Most likely, they were destroyed by the aliens themselves. After the invention of more advanced means of transportation, the old technology was no longer needed.

In the middle of the pyramid, in the royal room, there is a large granite box. Perhaps alien fuel was stored in it. There is also an opinion that various chemical processes took place in this room; it is no coincidence that this room is decorated with granite, not limestone, because granite is much harder and more reliable. The room is completely sealed, except for two tunnels, which scientists believe are ventilation shafts. But is it?

The tunnels have entrance holes 20 x 20 cm, they are located on the walls at a distance of 1 m from the floor. Is it a coincidence that the top of the granite box is at the same height? Another oddity is that the walls of the tunnels are made of large stone slabs, which suggests that something other than water flowed through them. It can be concluded that fuel was supplied upward through the tunnels to refuel the ships.

At the bottom of the pyramid there is a room with an unleveled bottom. This is strange, because all the other rooms are perfectly aligned. Perhaps there was a warehouse in it, so they did not bring it to perfect condition. The room has a tunnel leading upstairs. Most likely, an elevator was moving through the tunnel, transporting substances from the warehouse.

And the aliens moved inside the pyramids using special elevators, like capsules through numerous tunnels. It’s not for nothing that all these tunnels have such precise dimensions.

How did aliens build the pyramids? It can be assumed that they moved the stone blocks not manually, but through the air using special rays that were generated by alien ships.

Why is information about aliens hidden?

There are two main reasons why information about an alien civilization is so carefully hidden.

The first reason is to prevent the population from panicking. It is known that the US government created a special project “ Blue Book" According to official information, he was supposed to study alien phenomena. In fact, he developed various ways to hide the fact of the existence of aliens from the inhabitants of the planet.

Another reason is that world powers are trying to outdo each other in the field of research into alien technology. By studying high-tech equipment, you can gain the opportunity to apply extraterrestrial knowledge to produce unsurpassed types of weapons.

Despite such secrecy, an increasing number of the planet's inhabitants believe that we are not alone in this Universe.

Version about the construction of pyramids by a highly developed civilization

This theory is also not officially recognized, but boils down to the fact that the pyramids were built by people.

Proponents of this theory believe that once upon a time there was already a civilization on Earth with a high level of consciousness and technology.

According to one theory, such a civilization were the Atlanteans (inhabitants of Atlantis), who built the pyramids or assisted the inhabitants of Egypt in this.

According to another version, the ancient inhabitants of Egypt were able to find and apply technologies from past civilizations to build pyramids. Again, historians know nothing about the existence of such civilizations.

Another theory is that the ancient Egyptians themselves stood at an extremely high level of development.

Conclusion

To summarize, we can come to the following conclusion: whoever built the pyramids of Egypt clearly had high level developments in technology. Only an extraterrestrial civilization, or as we usually call them - Aliens, could have such a level of knowledge.

Conan Doyle version

The theory that the pyramids are material traces of some more ancient technologically advanced civilization has not been put forward today. For example, in 1929, the “father of Sherlock Holmes” Arthur Conan Doyle published the fantasy novel “The Abyss of Marakot”, the heroes of which end up in a certain city - an island that sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean thousands of years ago. When one of them examines the underwater buildings, he notices that: “The columns, platforms and stairs of this building surpassed anything I had ever seen on earth. Most of all, the building resembled the remains of the temple of Karnak in Luxor, in Egypt, and, amazingly, the decorations and half-erased inscriptions in small details resembled the same decorations and inscriptions of the great ruins near the Nile.”

The Sphinx is 5000 years older?

It is not clear on what Conan Doyle based his conclusions. But he now has many followers. For example, the head of the Laboratory of Alternative History () Andrey SKLYAROV, who has visited Egypt several times, claims that most local historical monuments were actually created by representatives of an ancient civilization:

If possible, specific examples...

When the gods ruled...

According to Andrei Sklyarov, the ancient Egyptians themselves built something. But they built their buildings on the basis of ancient structures.

Why, besides the buildings, were there no other material traces left?

Why isn't there any left? For example, in the Giza Desert we came across something that resembled iron dust. They took samples and brought them to Moscow. It turned out that it was iron oxide with a high content of manganese. The percentage corresponds to high-alloy manganese steels, which are now used in tank tracks and as a material for stone crushing machines. In how many years could this extremely strong steel turn into dust in a desert where there had been no decent rain for 8 thousand years?

But what kind of mysterious civilization left us these artifacts?

They worked with granite like styrofoam

Fragment of the obelisk at Karnak. It lies 10 meters from the hiking trail. There are strange holes on it with a diameter of 1 cm and a depth of about 10 cm. They were obviously made to attach some kind of decorative plates: gold or copper. But some of them go deep into the granite not perpendicularly, but at an angle of 10 - 20 degrees: this is impossible to do manually. It turns out that they were drilled into granite, just as we turn holes with a drill in soft wood. What kind of drill did the ancient Egyptians have that could go into granite like it would into butter?

Listen to the full audio interview with Andrey Sklyarov

Probably, the cult of ancestors is in the blood of modern man. Our childhood is filled with stories about fabulous times, always beginning with the words: “Once upon a time...” Antiquity makes us tremble. The ancestors were wiser, they lived correctly, they probably possessed “secret knowledge” that their frivolous heirs lost. We sigh respectfully when we touch a piece of the past - be it a piece of stone, a fragment of a pot, or a copper coin. Gray-haired antiquity excites the imagination - it is full of secrets. Well, curiosity is good... Add a little more critical thinking and a little more knowledge. But the last point is really bad. What does a modern Russian remember from history? A mixture of skipped school lessons, adventure films and stories from tourist guides. Stories ancient world I was especially unlucky: at school they take it the earliest, in the 5th grade. By the time an 11-year-old becomes an adult, even this meager store of knowledge will dry up. Meanwhile, the Internet and television tirelessly regal the gullible viewer with sensations “hidden by official science.” Thus, scientific knowledge is finally supplanted by myths and misconceptions.

Although I do not have strict statistics, analysis of letters, online comments, questions from listeners, as well as expert advice allowed me to compile the top five “most-most” common misconceptions in Russia about ancient history. So…

1. The pyramids were built by someone unknown using mysterious technologies

So, the leaders of our hit parade are the Egyptian pyramids. Why, you ask? What is the success of the popular brand “pyramid - mysterious structures ancient civilizations"?

Firstly, the pyramids are truly amazing in their size. The height of the Cheops pyramid is 140 m; until the Middle Ages it was the tallest architectural structure on the planet. Being nearby, a person feels his insignificance, our mind gives in to the stone hulk.

And they are also very ancient. The Pyramid of Cheops is 4500 years old! At that time, it seems, mammoths still roamed the earth?

When the first wave of admiration has subsided, a logical question arises: why is all this? We are told that this is just the tomb of the pharaoh. But, gentlemen, you claim that thousands of people spent 20 years building it. Did they have nothing else to do? And were there so many people in that era? For a modern city dweller who changes jobs every six months and cannot cope with two migrant workers in the country, it seems absurd that somewhere and sometime - and especially in ancient times - it could have been different.

Egypt - in the recent past, extremely popular resort. Millions of Russian citizens swam in the Red Sea, took a ride to Cairo, and took pictures with the Sphinx in the background (you have to place your palm as if you were touching its beautiful stone face). And local energetic guides tried to entertain tourists - to the best of their imagination and poor knowledge of the history of their native country. With the help of enterprising tourists with video cameras, their pleasure trips turned into “research expeditions to the unsolved mysteries of Ancient Egypt.”

Why are we told that the Egyptians we know about from textbooks “couldn’t”? Well, firstly, the Egyptians did not have iron, and it was impossible to work with hard rocks with copper tools - how were granite blocks for the pyramids mined? How were multi-ton stones transported over long distances? Manually, on yourself? Okay, you can cut, drag, and fit several blocks to each other, but there are more than two million of them in the Great Pyramid! It is impossible to imagine such colossal work!

This is only a small part of the arguments adopted by the “pyramidiots” (the term was proposed by Egyptologist Barbara Mertz), but these points are enough to defeat an unprepared opponent.

However, Egyptologists, hearing such questions, are in no hurry to faint. The pyramids were not built from granite. Main material Great Pyramid For example, limestone is a fairly soft stone. The quarries where the bulk of the limestone for the pyramid was mined are located 200 meters from it - they even have the markings preserved. The probable technology for extracting limestone is described by Clark and Engelbach in the book “Construction and Architecture in Ancient Egypt" Using copper or stone tools, vertical grooves were knocked out along the contour of the block, and wedges were driven from below, through which the block was separated from the rock. In a number of ancient quarries, in the lower part of the unfinished blocks there were recesses into which wedges were inserted.

Experiments show that moving a block weighing 2.5 tons (which is the average weight of a block from the Great Pyramid) is quite possible for a group of people using wooden rollers or sleds. On an ancient Egyptian fresco you can see people dragging a 60-ton statue of Pharaoh Djehutihotep on a sled along special beds. On another fresco we see a stone block with a sled pulled by oxen.

Of course, the topic of building pyramids does not end there. It would be worth talking about the technology of granite mining, and how materials for construction were transported along the Nile on ships, and how the Egyptians could drill and saw stone with copper tools with abrasive - such experiments were successfully carried out by experimental archaeologist Denis Stokes, and also Russian enthusiast Nikolai Vasyutin. Of course, many questions remain open. How exactly were the stone blocks raised to the required height when building the pyramids? How did the Egyptians fit the pyramid blocks to each other? Records and images of these processes have not survived. However, Egyptologists are looking for and finding answers to these questions - while remaining within the framework of science, without involving aliens from Alpha Centauri. There is special literature on this topic - alas, the pyramidiots for the most part are not aware of its existence.

What to add? Pyramids - greatest monument human labor. 20 years of joint efforts by thousands of Egyptians is truly difficult to imagine. Can you imagine the construction of the Great Chinese wall— its length is more than 10 thousand kilometers? Imagine the work of nameless stonemasons who, over the course of 90 years, carved a 70-meter statue of Buddha into the rock in Leshan (China, 8th century AD).

Maybe we just don’t know what an organized team of people is capable of with good positive (and negative) motivation?

2. Man is a product of genetic engineering of aliens

I have traveled a lot around the country and I can responsibly say: every taxi driver at the airport knows that humans were brought to our Earth by aliens. The “alien” hypothesis is so popular that it invariably appears in various Internet surveys on the topic “How man arose” along with the “evolutionary” and “religious” versions, and even found its way into some textbooks. Well, let's say thank you to the TV!

In 2016, a continuation of the famous “ X-Files“—so we should expect another surge of interest in the topic.

So, we are convinced that man did not arise in the process of natural evolution, but is the result of experiments on a certain “blank” - a monkey or Pithecanthropus, into whose DNA alien genes were planted. The famous hunter for “ancient astronauts” Erich von Däniken directly states that the “autograph” of aliens is hidden in our genome.

Däniken argues that creatures that combined parts of different animals - sphinxes, people with animal heads and other ancient Egyptian mythical characters - are actually mutants, victims of genetic experiments.

But the idea of “man is a GMO” is most fully substantiated by another adherent of paleocontact, who gave us stories about the Anunnaki from the planet Nibiru, Zecharia Sitchin. This author uses arguments typically used by “classical” creationists. Look how different humans are from apes, says Sitchin. If normal evolution took place, then where is the transitional link? Why did man arise so quickly, so unexpectedly? We are the only species on the planet that has intelligence. Who gave us such a gift? According to Sitchin and his followers, the answer is contained in ancient texts - you just need to be able to read them!

In Sumerian mythology, the gods create man from a mixture of clay and the blood of one of the gods. Sitchin is a master of interpretation. He boldly states that the word "clay" in the ancient text can be read as "egg." What is an egg? Well, of course, a female egg! Here is a description of a genetic experiment: the “blood” (sperm) of a deity fertilized the egg of an ape.

But reading between the lines is not enough for Sitchin: he spotted genes of extraterrestrial origin among the results of the first sequencing of the human genome, published in Science and Nature in 2001. And to this day, on various “ufological” sites you can find the statement that geneticists have found in human DNA “223 genes that are not found in anyone else on this planet,” and, therefore, we got them from aliens...

Alas, Sitchin either did not understand the results of the geneticists, or he cheated (most likely, both). Geneticists have reported genes specific to vertebrates, not just humans. Since a significant portion of these genes are widely present in bacteria but absent in invertebrates, scientists hypothesized that the genes came to vertebrates as a result of horizontal transfer from bacteria. But the alien version is much more beautiful!

True, then we would have to talk about the extraterrestrial origin of all fish, amphibians and reptiles.

So, what is the soul behind the supporters of “alien GMOs”? Poor knowledge of anthropology, misunderstood genetic data and questionable interpretations of ancient texts. With this approach, you can see references to aliens - spherical xenomorphs - in the fairy tale about the bun...

3. Very ancient giants found

The power of media is amazing! Questions about “ancient giants” are regularly asked by educated people, including even a biologist (although this only happened once). Giants, cyclops, people of enormous stature are the heroes of numerous epics and legends. These creatures also found a place in the “mythology” of the 21st century. And these are not only articles on the Internet with colorful pictures. “Popular science” programs about ancient giants were shown on quite respectable television channels. And in 2014, news spread across yellow news feeds: allegedly, according to a ruling of the US Supreme Court, the Smithsonian Institution must release classified documents about thousands of giant skeletons destroyed by “official scientists.” “Competent sources” reported: publication is scheduled for 2015. 2015 has passed, and we still haven’t seen the announcement...

But do supporters of the “ancient giants” really have real evidence? There are, and some more!

Firstly, spectacular photographs of skeletons of enormous size and perfect preservation. Ant men are swarming nearby, so the scale of the find immediately becomes obvious.

Secondly, eyewitness accounts - for example, peasants who once found huge bones right in their garden. True, then these bones usually disappeared somewhere, but “I remember as now, the skull was so-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.” The reason for the disappearance of giant bones is often cited as the machinations of “official scientists” who took away priceless finds and disappeared in an unknown direction.

Thirdly, quotes from chronicles and diaries of medieval travelers who described encounters with giants on an exotic island, in Patagonia, in the snowy Himalayas or somewhere else at the end of the world...

Beautiful? Very. However:

— It’s easy to see that the photographs of “huge skeletons” (usually the same, from article to article, from film to film) are a banal photomontage.

“In some cases, even the author of such pseudo-documents is known. Thus, the popular photo of the “excavation of a huge skeleton” received a prize in the 2002 photo collage competition “Archaeological Anomalies - 2”. Then the illustration ended up in the yellow newspapers, which accompanied the photo with a story about “sensational finds in India.” As a result, the author of the collage, a Canadian artist with the nickname IronKite, was forced to tell National Geographic magazine in detail about how he prepared this hoax.

- The tales of a peasant, even a colorful old man with a mustache, as well as the memories of sailors 500 years ago - alas, are not evidence. Otherwise we will have to believe in the existence of a “gate to hell” in Pacific Ocean, whales masquerading as islands to which ships moor, and other fables that are replete with the “true” stories of medieval travelers. The honest eyes of an eyewitness cannot replace the main thing - the finds themselves - giant human bones or teeth. Words are words, but show us at least something tangible and, most importantly, properly documented! Alas, at this point the adherents of “alternative science” for some reason become very shy: there are finds, but they cannot be presented.

Is a giant even possible from a scientific point of view? It follows from the laws of physics that a person who grew to several meters would not be able to move normally. His legs would break, crushed by the weight of his own body. Take a look at real giant animals - elephants or at least gorillas, at the shape of their bodies, at the thickness of their limbs. A primate that grew to the size of an elephant, and even walked upright, would have completely inhuman proportions.

So let the giants remain where they belong - in fairy tales and science fiction films.

4. Russia is the cradle of humanity. All descended from Russians

In moments of crisis, when there are no special reasons for pride around us, we can only look for something to be “proud of” in the past. Patriotic citizens raise the flag to the merits of their great-grandfathers and the exploits of past centuries. Historical myths are used. The subject of special pride is the “national ancestral home”. It is THIS country that should be the place where the state, writing, mathematics, medicine, language first arose - and where man was born in general. Probably, claims to “primogeniture” have been made at least once by representatives of any state that has the slightest national ambitions. Be it the UK, Korea, China, Georgia, Armenia, Israel... and, of course, Russia. Patriotism in itself is not a bad thing.

But when history is seasoned with patriotism, historical science for some reason tends to end.

Isn’t it nice to know that the people to which you belong are the oldest on the planet, and the human race arose not just anywhere, but within the Moscow Ring Road or, at least, on the territory of the Russian Federation? With a strong desire, this can always be proven - if you use a certain approach to evidence. It is enough that at least some kind of archeology exists on the territory of the country - preferably, of course, more ancient. Now we need to proclaim this monument as the oldest in the world, and its creators as the direct ancestors of the current population. For Russia, the approach works great. We have enough antiquities. It is enough to mention such Stone Age sites as Kostenki (Voronezh region, more than 40 thousand years old) and Sungir (Vladimir region, 30 thousand years old).

On the Internet it is easy to find a classic reconstruction of a Sungir man, accompanied by a pretentious signature like: “Slav, 30 thousand years ago.” Kostenki is famously called an “ancient Russian settlement” in publications on nationalist websites. It comes to funny things. The pseudoscientist Andrei Tyunyaev took from an archaeological article a plan for excavations on the territory of the sump of a sugar factory (the village of Byki, Kursk region). On this plan, the boundaries of the settling basin were outlined with a contour, and the Stone Age sites were marked with dots. Without blinking an eye, Tyunyaev passed off the septic tank diagram as a plan for an ancient Russian settlement of the Paleolithic era...

But jokes aside! Of course, our country has something to be proud of. However, come to terms with this: the most ancient people of the modern type - whatever one may say - were found in Africa. These are, for example, the famous finds in the Omo (195 thousand years) and Kherto (160 thousand years) locations. And the status of the most ancient sapiens of Eurasia was “stole” from us by the Israeli Manot (more than 52 thousand years old. Oh, these Israelis).

But this is not even about that. Let's cool down the patriotic fervor a little more - we are looking for scientific truth, and not stroking our pride, right?

Let's imagine that somewhere in a vacant lot a Stone Age site is found. Does this mean that the teenager living in a high-rise building a few kilometers from the parking lot is a direct descendant of the Cro-Magnons who hunted here in time immemorial? A teenager, of course, would like to think so... But his parents remember how just 20 years ago they flew here one and a half thousand kilometers to earn money. In ancient times there were no airplanes, but since the Paleolithic the population in this area most likely changed many times. Back in the 19th century, archaeologists understood: migrations and wars sooner or later affect almost any inhabited part of the land, and genes are mixed in any way. In recent decades, this idea has been repeatedly confirmed by paleogenetic data.

Strictly speaking, we cannot even determine the racial identity of the people of the Upper Paleolithic - what can we say about their “nationality”? Any anthropologist will tell you that this concept is generally inapplicable to such a distant era.

So, looking for one particular ancestor of Russians in ancient times is a lost cause. Each nation has many ancestors, and if one of them is found, it will most likely be the ancestor of many more nations.

5. Our Earth is 6 thousand years old

The word “Young Earthers” sounds proudly - similar to the heroes of the “Young Guards”. However, if there is anything heroic about “young earth creationism,” it is its heroic ignorance of the facts.

Proponents of the “young Earth” insist on a literal interpretation of the process of creation as described in the Bible. At the same time, they importantly call their ideology “scientific creationism.” In fact, the “young earthers” have a set of scientific proof that they are right. However, the core of this set has not changed for 100 years, and the starting point is not scientific data, but unquestionable religious dogmas.

Therefore, although the “young earthers” love to talk about science, “scientific” here can only be used in quotation marks.

Many interesting things follow from the statements about the “young Universe”. There was no evolution. Transitional forms are fakes. Humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs, trilobites, beast-toothed reptiles and other fossil creatures. All dating methods that point to an ancient age of the Earth and the Universe give erroneous results. The existing geological column, the distribution of fossils in geological layers is explained by the result of the Flood - a global catastrophe that completely transformed the appearance of our planet.

It would seem that in the 21st century one can only sympathize with these poor people. However, the “young earthers” are not going to give up. They have their own conferences, institutes, museums, and in Russia they even published the creationist “Orthodox textbook of biology”, although it did not receive the stamp of the ministry.

The approach of the “young earthers” is typical of “oppositional science”: these figures look for blind spots, problem areas in paleontology, geology, astronomy, and physics, which they interpret in their favor.

However, if we accept for a moment that the world was created, according to Scripture, in six days 6 thousand years ago, we are faced with a much larger pile of insoluble scientific problems.

- How can we see the light of distant galaxies that are millions or billions of light years away from us? After all, it turns out that when this light was emitted, the Universe should not have existed yet?

— One or another dating method may produce an error. But how can we explain that the agreed ancient age of the same object is given by two different methods at once? Are both results incorrect? This can be compared to the probability that two clocks chosen at random are both on the same wrong time.

For example, samples from the volcanic ash layer below which the famous Australopithecus Lucy skeleton was found were sent to two experts. The first determined the age by the potassium-argon method, the second by the fission track method.

Dating using both methods gave approximately 2.6 million years. Coincidence?

— Why do the remains of extinct animals occur in geological layers not haphazardly, but in a certain sequence? Creationists have a ready answer: they say, this is a consequence of the antediluvian “zoning”: large reptiles—dinosaurs—lived in the lowlands, and mammals lived in the highlands; and so they sank, each at his own height. However, such a trick does not explain why marine animals are distributed in a similar way - plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs lie in layers with other Mesozoic dinosaurs, and whales are higher, along with Cenozoic mammals. The successive replacement of some organisms by others in sediments is also preserved within individual groups of animals - be it birds or flying lizards, amphibians, sea urchins. This is true for plant spores and pollen as well. By the way, since spores and pollen are found in abundance in sedimentary rocks, they are often used to date geological rocks. Pollen penetrates everywhere, can be carried by the wind over vast distances, and hardly “escaped the flood at different speeds.” Why do spores and pollen from plants from different eras naturally replace each other in geological layers?

However, any argument is easily broken down with the help of two short phrases: “It was the will of the Creator” and “Conspiracy of scientists.” The idea of a world created by a prankster Creator along with dinosaur bones lying in the ground and light flying from distant galaxies is witty in its own way. And the evil Darwinists who glue “transitional forms” from the bones of people and monkeys in the basement are good for scaring children.

However, both the first and second statements cannot be refuted, and therefore this is definitely not science.

…………………………………………

Does the list of popular misconceptions seem funny to you? Well, how can you believe in this nonsense! Friends, this is what I thought just a few years ago. But I had to face reality. Travel outside your metropolis. Go among the people. Turn on the TV. Pseudohistorical mythology is closer than you think. She's waiting for you on your Facebook feed. On the evening TV show. In a book with a bright cover. In the tales of tourist guides. In a conversation overheard in the locker room of a fitness club.

In the comments to the articles of the science department of Gazeta.Ru...

Pyramidiots, where are you? Aw! Your exit!