French scientists have figured out how the ancient Egyptians managed to build their pyramids. According to the researchers, the giant stone structures were built due to the convenient terrain and the full-flowing branch of the Nile River. About it wrote in Pnas magazine.
“To build pyramids, tombs and temples on the plateau, the ancient Egyptian engineers took advantage of the Nile and its annual floods, using an ingenious system of channels and pools that formed a port complex at the foot of the Giza plateau,” – said physicist-geographer Hader Sheisha.
To make the discovery, scientists conducted a study of fossilized pollen grains from Giza. The team found an abundance of herbaceous flowering plants and suggested that there was a body of water here in ancient times. This helped to recreate the picture of the ancient Egyptian landscape.
Now the pyramids are surrounded by a large sandy plain, and the banks of the Nile are about eight kilometers away. How the Egyptians overcame this distance and delivered huge stone slabs to the construction site was still a mystery. It turned out that at that time the tributary of the Nile was a full-flowing river – this made it possible to transport heavy loads.
