Re: OT: Wheels (Was: Clockwise without clocks)

Rodlox wrote:
> >From: Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...>
> > >   to be fair, it takes a lot of wood to prepare the limestone needed
> > > to
> > > build Mayan pyramids.
> > >
> > > (different type or quality of wood?)
> >
> >Fill me in on the details?
>
> I'll do my best.
>
> >  How is limestone prepared?  In what way?  I
> >thought it was anaturally-occuring stone, and all necessary was to
> >hammer/carve it into shape.
>
> from what I understand - from teh documentary I'd watched - wood was
> burned
> under a pot where the limestone was held...when it was pastey (or
> something), the limestone was placed atop and on the sides of the large
> stones used for construction...and then another large stone was placed
> atop
> that.
>
> I think it was a glue of sorts.  I think.
Unless I'm mistaken, that sounds like the primitive way of obtaining lime
for mortar. Were the Mayan pyramids mortared??? I'd be surprised if they
were. (In pre-industrial Indonesia they burned coral to produce lime, but
small quantities. And isn't burning limestone basically the way cement is
made even today? Cement factories certainly produce a ton of smoke....)
> >
> >
> >To build the ramps needed to get the stone up to the top, that would
> >require a
> >fair amount of wood - and forethought.
>
I wonder. Certainly the tropics don't lack for wood, but it seems to me that
wooden ramps/scaffolding mightn't be strong enough to support the weight of
the building stones being dragged up...  In Egypt, good wood would have been
in short supply, no? So I suspect their ramps must have been built of stone,
and when the pyramid was finished, the stones could be used for some other
project. Just guessing, however. (But as we all know, they had Alien
technology to hoist those stones...:-)))))

OTOH I do recall old photos of skyscraper projects in the 50s/60s in
China/Hong Kong that were using scaffolding apparently made of bamboo; not
anymore, I'm sure

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