Intelligent design (Introduction)

by Abel , Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 21:08 (4757 days ago) @ David Turell

Abel: "So tell me, if you were making payroll David, which man would you hire, the intelligent engineer or the not-so-intelligent craftsman?"

David: "I been to Cuzco and Saysachyhuman. Yes, how did they move those stones, and furthermore, the stone buildings are quake proof? They were great craftsmen."

I had mentioned the tool used to build the pyramids in a previous post about tools that men turned into weapons. By the process of intellectual entropy, the understanding of this weapon's use as a tool was lost. With even further intellectual erosion even that understanding was lost. That tool/weapon is the device that we call the catapult.

It is not really that strange that its' use as a weapon still gets all the attention. But it was once used to build walls not to tear them down. The true power of the catapult is not in its' throwing arm: it is in the rotational torque that can be generated on its' axle. This torque can be used to lift and move massive loads using the occasionally applied strength of a few men.

In reviewing some information on existing obelisks, I realized that force that I suggested be applied to an obelisk would move one ten times larger than was ever quarried in ancient times. Also its' design would be too complex to begin a discussion on the use of the technology. Fortunately I came upon some information on Wikipedea about previous experiments done to move large stones so we have some good numbers to work with. Here is the link the info is at the bottom under obelisk erecting experiments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelisk

For this example let's use the same size stone that they used, and say that you were delivering it to a pyramid under construction 4900 feet away: a pyramid that needed one million of such blocks to be delivered. These workers moved the block an average of 15 feet a day using 130 men pulling and 12 prying. At this rate they would take 327 days to deliver one stone. With time off lets call this delivery time 1 year. So 142 million men can deliver all the stones that you need in one year or 14.2 million in ten. Given that the quarries were miles away from the pyramids, I believe that I could argue, that this was not the way those stones were moved. Fortunately there is a more rational explanation.

Moving these stones could easily be done by two catapults joined with a common axle whose "throwing" arms were also joined with a piece of lumber. The radius of the axle inside the catapult is larger than that of the "pulling axle" between them, gearing the torque generated by the falling load. Ropes repeatedly wrapped around this "pulling axle" can be held in place by a movable hinged "pinch" rod that can be clamped into position once the catapults are cocked for a pull.

These pulling catapults can arrayed down the road that leads from the quarry to the pyramid. Let's say that distance is the 4900 feet that we discussed. Seventy catapults placed seventy feet apart could pick up the load from one and pass it to another, actually pulling the stone under the pulling axle of the previous catapult. Each of these catapults is capable of moving these stones with just two men working it and they would only have to start working on the day that the stone reached the catapult that they had to operate. According to my calculations, which I will explain if you'd like me to, the last catapult would deliver the first stone on day seventy, and another stone each and every day thereafter. So at the end of the year, when 142 hard working men delivered their first stone to the pyramid, there would be 295 stones sitting there delivered there by the same number of men who hardly worked at all. In the second year there would be 365 sitting there and every year thereafter, even accounting for time off.

With larger, longer stones like obelisks, the catapults would have to be larger and spaced more closely together and staged on ramps to vary their axle heights. For these arrays, varied axle lengths will allow the catapults to be spaced more closely together. These arrays of catapults pulling on a singular load would by operated by teams during the pull as a unit. When the catapults are reset for a pull they may be operated in conjoined pairs. During the pull, the obelisk would be being pulled beneath some of the pulling axles and those tightening the rope on these axles would be "riding" the stone as it was pulled beneath them.

To illustrate how much a catapult can lift or move, we will use the example of a man who can move 100 pounds. With a 10:1 lever ratio on the catapult arm, that man could lift 1000 pounds. Given a load ratio of 6:1 on the catapult's axle and a gear ratio of 3:1, means that one man moving 100 lbs can generate 18,000 lbs of pulling torque. Two men can generate 36,000 pounds, which almost enough to lift a 25 ton obelisk much less move it. Those people cited in Wikipedia, were only generating about a third of this force.