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Pyramid allignment?

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  Posted by skunk1 (U2931572) on Tuesday, 10th January 2006

  I see that the accepted theory for how the Pyramids were alligned so precisely is now that they used (b-Ursae Minoris and z-Ursae Majoris)as points of reference.
  I just wondered if this were truely the case because this would of meant that they would need prior knowledge that these stars were infact perfect for their purpose.Would this not of meant that they would of had to observe the night sky every night and map it precisely? More, this process would have had to of continued for a minimum of two Years and with no point of reference to begin with, probably much longer.So, one has to assume that they were astronemers first and great builders second.
  Am I just being pedantic or are these possible flaws in the theory?
  
  

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  Posted by pan shoshana (U2337882) on Tuesday, 10th January 2006

  Guess they would have had the time and opportunity - no Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ messageboards or light pollution to distract 'em.

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  Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 10th January 2006

  Well, look at it this way, humans have been interested in the movement of celestial bodies for the whole of recorded history, even if it was sometimes frowned upon by those who objected to attempts to divine the future and the Gods' wll at various times. It is not such a huge leap to imagine that they would have held similar significance for pre literate communities. As such there appears to be more than enough time between the settlement of the Nile Valley and Eurasia by anatomically modern humans and the costruction of the pyramids for the night sky to go through one if not two succesions. As such it is not a flaw but reaffirmation of the idea as it would require detailed observation of the nioght sky in order to locate to the central static point around which the stars appear to rotate when viewed from the earth.

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  Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Thursday, 12th January 2006

  I see that the accepted theory for how the Pyramids were alligned so precisely is now that they used (b-Ursae Minoris and z-Ursae Majoris)as points of reference.
  I just wondered if this were truely the case because this would of meant that they would need prior knowledge that these stars were infact perfect for their purpose.Would this not of meant that they would of had to observe the night sky every night and map it precisely? More, this process would have had to of continued for a minimum of two Years and with no point of reference to begin with, probably much longer.So, one has to assume that they were astronemers first and great builders second.
  Am I just being pedantic or are these possible flaws in the theory?
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  No flaws, there's evidence of Egyptian astromomy which predates the building of the pyramids at Giza (the well aligned ones). Early pyramids and enclosures attempted to align on a north-south axis but are frequently off-set. All the evidence is the Egyptians were measuring the movements of stars form an early date and that as time went on the alignment of ceremonial structures improved.

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  Posted by profhitchins (U2978046) on Tuesday, 17th January 2006

  No, you are far from being pedantic. it would not have been immediately obvious that, when the two stars you mention are vertically aligned, that they pointed North.
  Just how they determined the usefulness of this alignment is not clear. One way might have been to determine true north by the laborious method of marking the rise and fall of stars from a fixed observation point, and then bisecting the included angle. If this is done with several different stars, a good value of true North can be established. Once true North is known, then - and really only then - would the ancient astronomers/astrologers have observed, and made use of the chance alignment of the two stars. I say chance, because the alignment was only really accurate at the time of the 4th Dynasty pyramids. Of course, once they noticed the alignment, it would have been a great time saver...

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