If you're doing the same job every day for dozens of years, that's a lot of time to figure out ways to do the work better.
But whatever they were doing was either so mundane or such a trade secret that they never wrote it down. But they did write down the quarrying and transportation process, so people tend to assume 'mundane' instead. One of the latest theories is cranes using workers as the counterbalance, just having them step on and off a platform to raise and lower the stones.
The pyramid is such a strange shape, which makes some activities that might tell us more about how they were made rather prohibitive. I expected them to find at some point evidence of a pyramid having its dimensions augmented partway through construction but nobody has claimed finding evidence of any such thing. One of the science Youtubers has a video that shows how just under half the volume of a martini glass is in the last 20% of the height.
So imagine you were an Egyptian ruler who has survived many many years, and you're looking at your tomb which is estimated to be finished sometime next year, and you asked the engineers if they couldn't add some more stone around the sides to make it 10% taller. They would look sideways at each other and then explain how many additional years it would take to do that, and wouldn't it instead be better to go for fancier cap stones, and artwork in the King's Chamber, which we have only just begun placing and would be easier to change? Maybe they would even have a little demonstration to show the volumetric difference between pyramids of closely separated dimensions, to save their literal necks.
I have similar thoughts about cave paintings and petroglyphs. Maybe they were done by graffiti teenagers and the elders were complaining about these young vandals.
One of the pigments used for cave painting is also a really good natural sunscreen. So there is probably some truth to that.
Perhaps recorded exploits of either first successful hunts, or hunts that earmarked one of their number for leadership potential later in life. Little village princelings being lauded by their friends.
But whatever they were doing was either so mundane or such a trade secret that they never wrote it down. But they did write down the quarrying and transportation process, so people tend to assume 'mundane' instead. One of the latest theories is cranes using workers as the counterbalance, just having them step on and off a platform to raise and lower the stones.
The pyramid is such a strange shape, which makes some activities that might tell us more about how they were made rather prohibitive. I expected them to find at some point evidence of a pyramid having its dimensions augmented partway through construction but nobody has claimed finding evidence of any such thing. One of the science Youtubers has a video that shows how just under half the volume of a martini glass is in the last 20% of the height.
So imagine you were an Egyptian ruler who has survived many many years, and you're looking at your tomb which is estimated to be finished sometime next year, and you asked the engineers if they couldn't add some more stone around the sides to make it 10% taller. They would look sideways at each other and then explain how many additional years it would take to do that, and wouldn't it instead be better to go for fancier cap stones, and artwork in the King's Chamber, which we have only just begun placing and would be easier to change? Maybe they would even have a little demonstration to show the volumetric difference between pyramids of closely separated dimensions, to save their literal necks.