What People Get Wrong This Week: the Great Pyramids
There has been a lot of talk in the strangest parts of the online world this week about the supposed discovery of a hidden complex of underground chambers beneath the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. It seems a group of researchers have announced that they have used SAR (synthetic aperture radar) to detect a series of underground buildings under Khafre’s pyramid.
This discovery may prove that the ancient Egyptian civilization was much more advanced than commonly believed, and had technologies that could rival ours. This could change everything we know about humanity itself! In other words, big, if true.
Spoiler: Although this is not true. All signs point to this “discovery” being a particularly elaborate example of pyramid-based misinformation, another in a long line of false claims about ancient Egyptian sites that never seems to end because weirdos just love making up stories about the pyramids.
What was supposedly discovered under the Great Pyramids?
I have to give the “researchers” behind this “discovery” an A for effort. The purported results of the SAR-based research were presented to the world at a press conference held in Bologna, Italy, on March 15, and it all looks very official. Here is the video of the event:
It’s in Italian and there’s no English translation yet, so I’m relying on other people’s translation work, but the gist is that the GIZA project involves a team of “researchers, historians, archaeologists and technologists” using high-tech imaging techniques. They say they discovered five identical structures connected by “geometric paths”, eight “structures resembling vertical wells surrounded by downward spiral paths” and “two large cubic structures measuring approximately 80 meters on each side at a depth of 648 meters” at the site of the Great Pyramids.
The conference featured multimedia materials detailing supposed discoveries, charts and graphs, people acting very serious, and all sorts of “this is real science!” trinket, so that, as might be expected, those who were easily deceived were deceived very easily. Alex Jones called it “the greatest archaeological find in HISTORY.” Others have wondered whether the structures beneath the pyramids are part of a huge power plant, or perhaps an ancient superweapon , or part of the ” legendary Amenti “, an underground city “associated with the universal knowledge of mankind and its ultimate spiritual transformation.”
Or maybe it’s all nonsense and no one has discovered a damn thing.
Where does this new pyramid research come from?
Many of the claims made at the press conference are not based on any published research, so it’s just people saying things in Italian, but the facts that can be verified are mostly based on a research article published in the journal Remote Sensing in 2022. Corrado Malanga and Filippo Biondi are listed at the beginning of the article entitled ” Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography Reveals High-Resolution Details of the Undiscovered Internal Structure of the Great Pyramid.” Giza “. This is a lengthy read, full of technical information and equations like:
Don’t bother studying and checking the math: the most notable feature of the article is that it is not peer-reviewed, so you can safely ignore it for now. No independent imaging expert has taken this paper seriously to determine whether SAR can even work this way, and radar experts doubt you can penetrate 648 meters deep through limestone rock. No archaeologist has confirmed these claims. Neither historians nor sociologists. Bottom line: Without peer review, there is no reason to take this article any more seriously than the wild claims made by a random person on a bus.
And this is a generous interpretation. A less generous view is expressed by renowned Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass , who wrote on his Facebook :
All of this information is completely incorrect and has absolutely no scientific basis… the claim that radar was used inside the pyramid is a lie… These people who announced this incorrect information used methods that are not approved or tested, the details stated would never have been visible using this technique.
Until actual scientists look at this research (and I wouldn’t hold my breath), it’s safe to classify it as “pyramid misinformation,” a powerful mind weed that’s always there and seemingly impossible to kill. But pyramid myths are at least funny, so there are still some common mistakes people make about them.
Myth: The pyramids were built by slaves or aliens
Conspiracy theorists often argue that “mainstream” archaeologists and historians should not be trusted because they have a vested interest in rejecting new ideas in favor of maintaining the academic status quo. But until relatively recently, many historians, archaeologists and much of the general public believed that the pyramids were built with the help of slave labor, especially Jews. This is likely because the Egyptians enslaving the Jews are mentioned in the Bible (although the pyramids are not mentioned), and also because the Greek historian Herodotus reported that slaves were building the pyramids when he visited them in 450 BC.
Although this challenged the orthodoxy of their field of study, archaeologists discovered new evidence and revised existing evidence to change the conventional wisdom. It turns out that the pyramids were not built by slave labor, at least not in the sense that we understand slavery today. Instead, archaeological evidence suggests that the pyramids were built by approximately 20,000 Egyptians who were paid, fed, had the equivalent of health care, worked seasonally, and even left behind graffiti bragging about how tough their work crew was compared to others. This evidence also helps us cross “aliens” off the list of potential pyramid builders. ( Giants didn’t build pyramids either .)
Myth: Ancient people could not move the heavy stones of the pyramids
We don’t know exactly how the stones they used to build the pyramids were moved into place, but we do have evidence that the ancient Egyptians loaded the stones onto barges, lowered them down the Nile, and then dragged them on sleds along paths made of slaked lime or tafla, probably using water to reduce friction. No advanced technology or extraterrestrial assistance was required, and there is no evidence that they were used. Lots of people working together can achieve great things, especially if they’ve all been given enough beer .
Myth: Pyramids existing independently in different prehistoric societies are evidence of a common culture.
From the Mayan pyramids in Central America to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, many disparate ancient civilizations built pyramid-shaped monuments, leading some to speculate that they shared a common culture or had ancient means of communication between groups. Some people think that there is something inherently “spiritual” about the pyramid shape.
While some ancient civilizations did communicate and trade with each other, the main reason why all pyramids look the same is the same reason why all sandcastles are vaguely pyramidal in shape: it’s the most stable way to build something on top, no matter where your ancient civilization is located.
Plot twist: a real anomaly was discovered near the Great Pyramid.
Alex Jones quickly tweeted the news, but in 2024, real scientists announced that they had discovered a mysterious structure beneath the royal cemetery near the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Using ground penetrating radar and electrical tomography, researchers from Higashi-Nippon International University and other institutions discovered an L-shaped structure about 33 feet long and buried at a depth of 6.5 feet. It may not be as impressive as a city-sized protobattery buried under hundreds of meters of limestone, but underneath it lies a “high-resistance anomaly!”
It’s completely unknown, so you can pretend it’s an alien spacecraft if you want, but scientists think it’s probably a mixture of sand and gravel, or an “air void.” It’s not an underground city or the remains of an ancient battery, but at least it’s real.