Geopolymer in Ancient Egypt- - Ben Van Kerkwyk Isn't So Sure - Megalithomania - YouTube

I think intuitively there are certainly, I mean people can land on a, there's some subtle differences like geopolymer is kind of, I think of that as the idea of like a modern cement, which is a geopolymer, right? It's essentially a slurry or a powdered substance. You wet, it sets and it forms, you know, a hard surface and cement is a geopolymer. Another kind of angle people can take it, and this is like an intuition you get looking at architecture in places like South America, Sacred Valley of Peru. It's like some sort of form of stone softening where it's not, you're not really a geopolymer, but somehow the stone is being softened like a toffee and it's pushed into place and that's like just intuitively given the curves and the flowing design of those stones. It's like, maybe it's like they did that. We don't, if that's the case, we don't have a lot of evidence or any evidence really for how that might have been done. Specifically with geopolymers, I don't dismiss the idea. I try to remain open to it. In fact, there is some good evidence for it in places like Tiwanaku, like there's some interest and I think it's something that should be looked into further. I do have some challenges with that concept in Egypt, particularly when you're talking about things like granite. You know, granite, it's just not, it's literally what I say about it's just, it's not how granite works. Like granite, you try and melt it, it actually is, you know, it's a conglomerate or it's made up of all these other constituent minerals that have different melting points. They have different hardnesses. People that have tried to melt it and, you know, they're focusing it, the sun or they're putting heat on it, that it tends to just explode, blow apart. You can't just form it into some sort of lava or slurry and then have it re-hardened back into granite, naturally granite. You know, it takes millions of years of heat and pressure to actually form it. You have crystal growth in the granite, like these quartz crystals actually grow in it. Furthermore, in places like Egypt, you know, and a lot of other sites around the world, we literally have quarries. We have bedrock quarries where there are still objects attached to the quarry that were being carved out. So it seems pretty clear to me that, you know, a lot of this is stone that's coming from bedrock. It's being cut out and transported. You also have machining, you know, witness marks and tools for how it's being shaped. Similarly, the limestone's also a bit of a challenge to me. When people talk about the limestone in particular being a geopolymer in Egypt, it's tricky because it's numelitic limestone, like there are numelites in it. It's fossilised. There are fossils in the limestone. And in fact, in places in particular, I noticed this at the Sphinx Temple, you know, limestone's a sedimentary stone. So it's laid down, these sediment layers get laid down again over millions of years and they harden and you have variations in those different layers in terms of hardness. And you can see that. So in the walls of the Sphinx enclosure, for example. So we know that the blocks for like the big blocks that some people claim a geopolymer, they were cut from these quarries because the ancient Egyptians, whoever built these things, I'm not sure it was the dynastic Egyptians, but the big giant blocks of it that they took out and they, you know, they built these temple, the internal masonry of the temple structures from, you can actually see they lined up those sedimentary layers. So you can see it in the stone from one block to the next. These layers, they actually said, okay, we're going to take these blocks that were next to each other in the quarry and line them up. You see these sedimentary layers. So I don't think if it was a powder or it was some slurry, you wouldn't have fossils, you wouldn't form into these sedimentary layers. So yeah, I have some challenges with it. You know, obviously also all the blocks are a different shape and size. The way we look at, you know, how we use modern geopolymer today, cement blocks, they're all the same shape and size. That's the most efficient way to do it. That's not to say that there isn't any merit to it. I do think that it's an interesting topic for explanation. I think there is some evidence for it in places like Tiwanaku that bears more research going into it. And I try to keep an open mind about it.