Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by AlotOfReading 1065 days ago
I've polished things with sand before and used hammerstones, yes. I'm not a stonemason though, just somone who spent a lot of time as a kid playing with rocks.

Most people will have some familiarity with emery cloth/sandpaper, which are basically the same principle. We don't even need to look at fancy egyptian statues. Carnelian beads were a common trade item across the Ancient near east and Egypt made this way. It's not magic.

2 comments

My issue has always been with the large megaton granite slabs inside the pyramids that you can't even see. They placed these things high up above chambers and rooms like lego pieces.
The stones to which you are referring, and larger that are found in and around other structures, are too large to have been cut with the method that you suggest.
I'm not sure which part you think is impossible, but it's absolutely possible to chisel a stone out of a quarry with stone tools. There were subsequent steps to work that rough shape down into the final product, of which abrasion was one of the last steps. None of them are especially sensitive to the size of the stone. We've found the rocks they used to do it littering known quarries, on obelisks and the like.