Egypt's Oldest Pyramid Is Being Destroyed By Its Own Restoration Team 246
Taffykay writes The oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Pyramid of Djoserat Saqqara, is being destroyed by the very company the Egyptian government has hired to restore it. The roughly 4,600-year-old structure has been in trouble since an earthquake hit the region in 1992, but in a difficult political and economic climate for the country, those now tasked with preserving the pyramid are said to be doing more harm than good.
Oldest stone complex? (Score:5, Insightful)
Saqqara, in Egypt, is the oldest stone complex ever built by humans
Uh uh...what does that mean? Even Skara Brae is older, and that definitely qualifies as a "stone complex", unless I got horribly wrong what that means, not to mention the assorted individual older monuments in Europe, the Mediterranean, or Asia Minor.
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This happens when writers compulsively replace words with what they think are synonyms. Some writer with thesaurus OCD didn't want to use the word pyramid twice.
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Tell me more about those Muslims from 4000+ years ago.
Btw, citation needed. For example, beat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe/ [wikipedia.org].
Re:Oldest stone complex? (Score:4, Insightful)
It means that inhabitat and gizmodo are not what one might call "reliable" or "fact checked" sources of information.
Re: Oldest stone complex? (Score:3, Informative)
The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just a single quote from one extremist, and unlike in Afghanistan he that doesn't have any power in Egypt. Even the ultraconservative Salafist political party only wanted the statues covered, not destroyed.
Suggesting that normal Egyptian Muslims are calling for the destruction of the pyramids is extremely dishonest; It's a bit like linking to a Westboro Baptist protest and claiming "American Christians are calling for the repression of homosexuals".
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:4, Insightful)
Suggesting that normal Egyptian Muslims are calling for the destruction of the pyramids is extremely dishonest; It's a bit like linking to a Westboro Baptist protest and claiming "American Christians are calling for the repression of homosexuals".
Let's look at the region shall we? Ah forget it, let's look at normal muslims in general. You've got large swaths of sunni's in europe supporting groups like isis. You've got a wide swath across other countries like the uae, saudi arabia and kuwait, including the ultra rich in countries like kuwait and the uae sending money to them. You've got people from all over this rock flocking to support them, and their actions, and their goals.
It's not dishonest, there's something fundamentally broken with many muslims when they're lining up to support a 7th century mentality.
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According to Wikipedia ISIS has around 100,000 people fighting for it. The world's Muslim population is around 1.6 billion. Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.
Interestingly that's around the same percentage of the US population (0.006%) who were convicted of murder in 1994 (source [bjs.gov]), so is Islam really any more broken than, for example, 1994 America?
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:5, Informative)
In 1994 there were 23,730 homicides in the USA source [nytimes.com].
Isis are responsible for way more than 23,730 deaths source [wikipedia.org].
Read in to that what you like :)
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First of all those 23,700 homicides were carried out by around 15,800 people. Scaled up to the size of ISIS (100,000) that makes the equivalent of 150,000 murders in one year.
Secondly where are the annual ISIS figures in that link? The figures quoted by Wikipedia are the combined total, over several years of the conflict, of deaths caused by ISIS, other rebel groups (that the west was so desperate to support) and pro-government forces.
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In 1994 there were 23,730 homicides in the USA source [nytimes.com].
Isis are responsible for way more than 23,730 deaths source [wikipedia.org].
Read in to that what you like :)
In 1994 the US population was 263 million. (1.6billion / 263 million) * 23730 = 144365, almost bang on middle of the estimate range in the Wikipedia article you linked.
But you're using the world's Muslim population for the crimes of ISIS but only the US population for the crimes of the USA. A more realistic figure would be the number of Islamic state (100,000) rather than the whole muslim population, or inlcude all murders by Muslims anywhere in the world.
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Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.
In other words, they won't be missed.
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The bigots are awake early this morning.
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:4, Informative)
Oh you want precise data? Like large support across muslim countries, where terrorism is supported. [clarionproject.org] 20% of muslims support the 7/7 bombings [telegraph.co.uk] 1:4 muslims in the UK say the bombings were justified [cbsnews.com] 31% of muslims in turkey support suicide bombings against westerners [people-press.org] 32% of palestinians support the murder of jews, including children. [ynetnews.com] 55% of muslims support hezbollah [pewglobal.org] 26% of young muslims in america believe suicide attacks are justified [pewresearch.org] 26% of egyptian muslims believe that suicide attacks are justified [people-press.org]
You're now enlightened to this "tiny minority." Which is roughly 25% having extremist views, out of 1.6 billion that would be a "mere" 400,000,000 individuals. You know, I could keep going and posting, so again--there is something fundamentally broken with islam and muslims. And I haven't even gotten to the stuff on specific groups, which vary between 6% as a low to 51% support across muslims. Or the 50-75% that believing that killing apostates is a good idea. I guess none of that is large swaths.
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That's just a single quote from one extremist
Not exactly. Destruction of ancient monuments in Egypt by Muslims and Christians has been sporadically taking place throughout the last two millennia. Where do you think the casing stones of the Great Pyramid ended up? They used them to build the mosques of Cairo. It's great when you can kill two birds with one stone, build your own temples, and simultaneously defile monuments of the cursed pagan religion of old.
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There wasn't a lot of tourism (or respect for monuments by anyone) in 1356, only the most hard-line extremist would want to get rid of the cash-cows that are the pyramids today.
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:4, Interesting)
Where do you think the casing stones of the Great Pyramid ended up?
IIRC, they were taken by looters and builders because they were marble and gold.
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Where do you think the casing stones of the Great Pyramid ended up? They used them to build the mosques of Cairo.
Sort of like pilfering the outer layer of marble from the Colloseum to build St. Peter's. The difference here AFAIK is that contemporary Christians aren't calling for the destruction of ancient pagan monuments in Rome.
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Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is NOT Islam (Score:2)
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Tell me what the difference is between "fighting for Islam" and "using religion as an excuse and justification for their crimes." Honestly it sounds about the same, except perhaps for connotation.
I mean, if someone does something that you personally perceive as a crime, and they do it in the name of Islam, and they justify and excuse it with Islam, then they've ticked both boxes. Why do you think there's a distinction?
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Fighting for something doesn't automatically mean you're committing crimes.
Correct, but that's not the issue. The issue is whether the terrorists who claim to be fighting for Islam could actually be fighting for Islam. OP claimed they are not, they are simply using religion to justify their crimes.
My point is that they are indistinguishable.
And Isis, is of course, the name of a false god and thus anathema to the fundamental tenet of Islam.
I hope you're joking. That's an acronym invented by Westerners. You realize that they use a different alphabet and different words than we do... right? The transliteration of their own acronym is something like "DASH" I believe, not "ISIS."
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Since when did "conspiracy to commit iconoclasm" become a capital offence?
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It is how Neil Degrasse Tyson said when talking about how religion can kill progress "The Arab world was the center of science and mathematics for centuries, and then came Islam"
You mean the Islamic golden age [wikipedia.org]? Which many consider to have ended at the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols [wikipedia.org]?
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It's called the "Islamic golden age" because those advances were done by Muslims in a state ruled by Islamic law. While obviously that doesn't prove that Islam created those advances (I never claimed it did) it does run counter to hairyfeet's dodgy quote (can't find deGrasse saying that anywhere) which claims Islam stopped Arabian progress, when most of that progress happened under Islam.
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all we can do is get as much of history as we can out of their hands and document all that we can't.
Preserve History
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the best thing anybody could ever do for humanity is take every single religious text and destroy them, the evil they cause far outweighs the good.
Destroy History
You are a confused person.
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Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, and a bit off-topic - while i find it abhorrent that the taliban destroyed the buddha statues, after spending a lot of time in southeast asia and visiting many buddhist temples (and being very appreciate of the teachings of the buddha), i always find it remarkably paradoxical that all these statues of buddha exist. They are a part of our human cultural history and should be absolutely preserved, but we should learn from the paradox they present. What many people don't know is that (according to the story), before the buddha died, he left a few explicit statements and instructions.. 1) hey y'all... im NOT coming back. don't wait for a second coming. im OUT. 2) DON'T make any statues of me. im not a god. i don't want to be worshipped. seriously. and 3) if you MUST do something.. you can go visit 4 places that i dig.. birthplace, deathplace, where he achieved enlightenment, and the deer park where he gave his first teaching. (ive been to 3 of the 4 fyi).
people just can't help themselves.. we get a genuinely inspired and evolved human being, he leaves instructions, and people twist and distort it to the point it becomes a religion used to manipulate people instead of inspire to evolve. It's a curious thing that all the 'teachers' that came basically said the same thing.. Judaeo/Christian ten commandments.. don't make graven images.... Islam: Don't make images of the Prophet Muhammed.. Buddhism - no statues. Maybe their original message was the same.. not don't do these things or suffer retribution.. but dont do these things because by doing so, you're missing the point. As the saying goes, 'the finger is not the moon.'
lastly, i like to joke that after buddha died, people looked at each other and said "you know.. he DID say no statues... but did he say no GOLDEN or GIANT statues??? obviously he'd be cool with that! huzzah!"
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More importantly, he didn't say to kill anyone who made statues.
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Egyptian Muslims have already called for the destruction of the pyramids and the sphinx [independent.co.uk], juts like the Buddhas of Bamiyan [wikipedia.org].
A few radicals =/= an entire country/culture. But don't let that get in the way of a good old generalization.
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Your mistake is that it doesn't take "an entire country/culture" to destroy the pyramids, just like destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan didn't take the concerted effort of every Muslim in Afghanistan.
Re:Here Comes Straw Man! (Score:4, Insightful)
It would have been MY mistake to assume it must take an entire culture to destroy valuable archaeological sites. But I didn't so fuck you very much.
Okay I'm glad you are aware of that. It really wasn't clear from your reply.
A more appropriate statements of the fact would have included something like "Some Egyptians Muslims" or "Extremist Egyptian Muslims" or "Egyptian Religious Radicals".
Adding "some" would not make it more appropriate, it's redundant. Adding "some" to every reference of a group is stupid.
Adding the word "extremist" is problematic. Extremist from whose perspective? From my perspective, even mainstream Muslims are extremely religious compared to what I'm exposed to. Extremist from the perspective of mainstream Muslims? Which Muslims? American Muslims? Egyptian Muslims? Do you actually KNOW the proportion of Egyptian Muslims who support the closure of Western tourist attractions like the pyramids? If you're going to attach the word "extremist" to them then you better have some idea. If it's more than a few percent it's not really extremist.
Leaders of the Salafist and Wahabi parties have called for the destruction of pagan idols and the pyramids, and they won about 25% of the seats in 2012 [nytimes.com]. So calling them "extremists" is totally accurate for me and you (hopefully, I don't know you) but that's not the same as "unpopular" or "non-representative."
If I see some White dude with Nazi tats screaming vitriol against minorities, I'm not going to say "White People call for race war".
That's a stupid analogy. If the KKK won 25% of Congress, it would be totally appropriate to say "white people call for race war" even though many or most white people didn't. It's enough.
If you have deluded yourself into thinking only a handful of Muslims in Egypt have a problem with the glorification of pre-Islamic society, that's your problem. It doesn't make you sound smart though.
I never stated that it must take an entire culture to destroy the pyramids. What I said had nothing to do with such a claim.
You said "A few radicals =/= an entire country/culture" in reply to "Egyptian Muslims have already called for the destruction of the pyramids and the sphinx."
What was the relevance of that rather obvious fact if it has "nothing to do" with what we were TALKING ABOUT... the destruction of the Egyptian pyramids?
Look, I'm guessing you just weren't aware of how much support there was in Egypt to destroy the pyramids. It's not 0.1%. It's a pretty big proportion, and it's largely an urban vs rural issue because cities benefit more from the tourism dollars. People out in the country are like "You are making money by glorifying pagans and selling alcohol to infidels, that should stop."
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Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:5, Informative)
Let's not forget that Christians and Muslims are both religions with divergent sects. As such it might be helpful to see the following list:
By that account the Catholic Church is still the biggest religion.
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More like 2.1B Crhistians and 1.6B Muslims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Either way, lots of deluded people IMO.
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Actually, Christianity is the biggest/fastest growing religion in China. And as I've said before and I'll say it again. The last thing the Islamists (ISIS) want to piss off is the Chinese. The really really don't want to go there!
China has no love for followers of Jesus. The only way ISIS will piss off China is if they order weapons from China and don't leave positive feedback on Alibaba.
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a recent poll suggested that three quarters of muslims approve of what muslims extremists are doing.
What poll?
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On of the buildings destroyed in Iraq was Jonah's tomb http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]. You know the guy from the bible that was swallowed by the whale. I would say that is pretty iconic.
Seems the international community did fuck-all to prevent that from happening in Iraq with ISIS destroying ancient buildings, so I seriously doubt intervention would happen here.
The pyramids are pretty iconic. Whatever building were destroyed in Iraq weren't.
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Everybody knows what the Pyramids are. The fact that you had to explain who Jonah was tells me the Pyramids are somewhat more iconic.
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And replaced with inflatable replicas.
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Nice to hear a rational voice. I can see how people get charged up emotional on issues pertaining to culture, heritage, "great art", even natural history, but at the end of the day there are other things that matter. In fact, people who get overheated about rather petty issues are what causes most of the violence in this world. Take a diamond for instance - it is just a compressed chunk of carbon that can be synthesized in a lab, but look at all of the world conflicts that are financed by the trade of th
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I'm in the semiconductor industry, and a large part of my job right now is converting from gold conductors to copper. It is a lot harder to work with, but as you made plain- as long as people like to wear it around their necks and investors/governments like to hoard it, it will keep increasing in value to the exclusion of industrial uses.
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ISIS would be a no-brainer, since we have already seem to have enough reasons to attack them... destroying the pyramids would just be added to the list.
Had Mohammad Morsi decided to destroy the pyramids after winning a democratic election, well that would be different.
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No, probably European. Americans don't sit back and wait for the international community to do something.
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Nature took its path in creating them? What have you been smoking???
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_____________________
Nosce Te Ipsum
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So it's also a natural phenomenon that we restore monuments with the sole motive of tourism income...
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By that logic, no line can be drawn, beyond which one can say humans caused it.
It's somewhat arrogant, but typically, "natural" implies that humans were not involved.
Excellent opportunity... (Score:2)
to build a new one that can resist earthquakes?
Re:Excellent opportunity... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah! With blackjack! And hookers!
Poker. Liquor in the front, poker in the rear (Score:2)
> Yeah! With blackjack! And hookers!
Make that poker instead of blackjack. Liquor in the front, poker in the rear.
difficult, hahaha (Score:2)
but in a difficult political and economic climate for the country,
Yeah, maybe if they would let some competent people into the country to deal with the pyramids again, this wouldn't happen.
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we can also design their government healthcare website for them
I sure wouldn't hand the job over to our federal government... or to one of its contractors.
blatant typo in title!!! (Score:2)
should be "The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara"
spotted it as soon as I saw it..., very poor error to make indeed
Mayan temples too (Score:5, Interesting)
Everything Old Is New Again (Score:4, Interesting)
This reminds me of a documentary I saw at least 20 years ago. It was about how Egypt was throwing out Western restoration experts and putting its own people in to work on some mummies that had been returned from various museums around the word.
One expert was being interviewed while she worked on a sarcophagus. In the middle of her comment about how she and her colleagues were every bit as competent as the "foreigners" who'd been sent packing, she managed to accidentally pry off a big chunk of it, which fell on the floor and broke. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
I see nothing's changed.
Re:Why SPAM? (Score:4, Informative)
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Because it's not +1 Informative, it's +5 Personal Agenda
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I would worry less about global warming and more about the ignorant descendents of those once great Egyptians, who are today practicing a religion that could very well lead them to one day soon decide to demolish [telegraph.co.uk] these relics because their 6th-century child-molesting prophet said they were idolatrous.
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We are all descendents of those Egyptians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXiLMb-OFgY [youtube.com]
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So what you're saying is that there was a group of people minding their own business who built pyramids, but a horde of violent, religious fanatics showed up on horseback, took their lands, scattered the indigenous people, destroyed their civilization, took charge and settled the area in massive numbers that over the centuries crowded out the indigenous peoples, all while trying to force them to convert at the point of a sword. And in recent years the conqueror's descendents have been making money showing
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Prophet my ass. He was a late stage schizophrenic who went off to the mountains, heard voices, and concluded it must be angels (Allah never communicates directly with humans, he is to Other that he uses angels...its in the escape clause of his contract). Modern schizophrenics are typically enamored with religion and also hear angels, devils, Jimmy Carter, Kim Jong-un, the arch-angel Gabriel, and funny talking frogs (think the Loony-Tune's cartoon with the frog singing but only when the owner cannot make any
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Could say the same thing about all sects of Christianity as well. Jesus was a schizophrenic. Moses was a schizophrenic, Joseph Smith was a schizophrenic. All crazy lunatics. Let's just put it out there: All religious people are cowards who need comfort in a higher power in order to not face reality and take any personal responsibility.
Re:... all in the name of "Allah" (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes you think that they do not want to destroy the pyramids, for the same reason?
How about all those tourism dollars? Egypt isn't some moneyless failed backwater state, their tourism industry generates around $13 billion a year, more than the entire GDP of Afghanistan in 2002.
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Last we heard, tourism tanked in Egypt not long after the Muslim Brotherhood took over and good relations with minorities went out the window. Then the recent military takeover made tourism even less stable because the Muslim Terrorist Nutjobs look at foreigners as infidels to killed ASAP.
Re:... all in the name of "Allah" (Score:4, Informative)
Money, including tourism dollars, is very much a motivating factor for the parties involved. I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of the politics, but the locals I talked to reviled Morsi precisely because of his lack of money (and his allegiances). Most visibly, infrastructure and the jobs created in its construction and maintenance, that Mubarak had, was sorely missed.
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Islamists are not interested in Western tourism dollars. You might as well say "Well look at all the money you can make selling pork and alcohol!" The argument just doesn't appeal to them.
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And how are these Islamists going to destroy a monument which is, in essence, a 6 million ton pile of stone? A 6 million ton pile of stone guarded by a military force...
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Get a contract for restoration? If that doesn't work, they cold always turn it into a KFC.
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Except that's exactly what a few of them want.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iv-drip/destroy-the-sphinx-and-the-pyramids-says-egyptian-jihadist-8306477.html
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But there's a god bigger than "allah", "Christ", "zarathustra" and any other one you want to name, it's called moneey, and the pyramids bring a lot of money to them, so, I don't think they are going to destroy them
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But there's a god bigger than "allah", "Christ", "zarathustra" and any other one you want to name, it's called moneey, and the pyramids bring a lot of money to them, so, I don't think they are going to destroy them
Yes, Islamic fundamentalists are quite the promoters of foreign tourism. That's why so many sightseers are queuing up to view the ancient wonders of Afghanistan [colostate.edu].
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Stop being rational!
I say that because the people under discussion banned paper bags in their country... simply because a recycled paper bag *might* contain a fiber or two from a Koran... so rational discourse is clearly irrelevant.
Re:... all in the name of "Allah" (Score:4)
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Unfortunately, some parts of the world just aren't ready for democracy.
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Unfortunately, some parts of the world just aren't ready for democracy.
This is what has to be remembered. The west, especially those countries descended from England, has a tradition of democracy which is why it sorta works. Other cultures not so much so we have situations where the majority are serf like (in Russia actual serfs), and then suddenly expected to democratically govern themselves. This usually results in failure of one type or another. With luck a benevolent dictator, more likely a nutjob dictator or a totally corrupt pseudo-democracy.
Forcing democracy on cultures
Re:... all in the name of "Allah" (Score:4, Interesting)
In my limited observations, democracy doesn't work when a people first try it. They have to get used to it. I also think that a thriving middle class is necessary for a democracy. It needs a large number of people who get some sort of education, have some free time to pay attention to politics, and have something to lose. The upper classes are never enough for a democracy, and people in an oppressed lower class are going to be easily controlled, and may as well vote extremist as they really have little to lose.
Re:a shame but... (Score:5, Informative)
The pyramids being made by slave labour is something of a myth. There's not much evidence available for early pyramids, but there's plenty of evidence that later pyramids were made by skilled craftsmen [wikipedia.org] and not slaves.
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I don't know about slaves specifically but among serfs in northern Europe it was not uncommon to find skilled craftsmen.
Slave and skilled craftsman is not mutually exclusive and there is nothing that says that one can't be both.
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There have been very many types of slavery over the millennia, not just the exceptionally vicious type we're used to from US history. In most, slaves had some rights. In some cases, slaves were known to have accumulated enough money to purchase their freedom. In ancient Rome, there were a lot of highly educated Greek slaves, which were generally treated very well.
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The pyramids being made by slave labour is something of a myth. There's not much evidence available for early pyramids, but there's plenty of evidence that later pyramids were made by skilled craftsmen [wikipedia.org] and not slaves.
My business is steam turbines. Complicated machinery with very tight tolerances, requiring great skill to put together. We use 1 or 2 experienced turbine experts per shift and have a cadre of millwrights (gorillas) to do the dirty/boring/mindless/unskilled labor. There is no need for everyone on a job to be an expert.
Re:a shame but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Looking out through airplane window and realizing a dark patch between city lights of Cairo was actually a pyramid was a mystical experience for me. Having to stand at least a kilometer away to comfortably grasp the whole too.
Size does matter, or as comrade Stalin would say, quantity in itself is a quality. And it was anything but easy, otherwise structures of such size would be built more often in 4000 years since. They truly are a marvel.
Sphinx, though, is overrated.
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Size does matter
That's only when the your ally is not the Force.
Re:a shame but... (Score:4, Informative)
Looking at that picture I wonder how people can be so amazed by it.
That's exactly the problem. Pyramids are like the Grand Canyon. Modern photography may have gotten super good at capturing a likeness of their image, but nothing actually beats going there in person and seeing those things in real life!
Doesn't even sound hard other than the heat (which was called fucking life back then, cause no one had air conditioning).
Actually, don't believe your hollywood movies, Egypt was lush with vegetation and had plenty water (which provided its own natural air conditioning during the time those pyramids were built). Please read this article [pyramids-of-egypt.com] and this article [pyramids-of-egypt.com].
Considering that it was made with slave labor, makes it even less impressive.
Yes, that was the totally unproven interpretation of the Europeans when they first visited Egypt. And as another poster already replied (and provided a reference), they're now finding physical evidence that this wasn't actually the case.
There's these steps in northern california, laid by like 80 japanese slave laborers like 100 years ago...
If you think the work of 80 laborers 100 years ago is equivalent to the work of ~10,000 laborers ~7,000 years ago, then that's your choice. Personally, I can't even visualize a period of 7,000 years. So if you're not impressed by several supremely huge man-made structures that have stood the test of time for 7,000+ years, then let's just agree to disagree because I am surely impressed by them.
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