Humans did not have the technology or knowledge to build the pyramids

The argument

Proponents of the ancient aliens theory argue that the pyramids at Giza present a problem of capability that conventional explanations do not solve, and that the problem is one of physics rather than of ingenuity. On this account the pyramids were built 4,500 years ago, before sophisticated tools were invented, and the entire structure of the Great Pyramid was made with great precision by unskilled labour. That combination is what proponents find implausible: great precision achieved without sophisticated tools and by workers with no training. They add that even today the pyramids would be difficult to build, so the achievement cannot be dismissed as something that merely looks impressive to modern eyes. The weights are then offered as the crux. The granite blocks weighed on average 2.5 tons, and the beams used in the King's Chamber weigh 60 tons. Many of the blocks were transported from hundreds of miles away. Moving a 60-ton beam over such distances is not a task that scales with the number of workers available in any obvious way, and proponents argue that without machinery or other advanced forms of technology such movement would be impossible rather than merely laborious. From that reading of the evidence the argument proceeds by elimination. If human technology of the period was too primitive to build the pyramids, some other source of capability must account for them. Aliens, on this view, could have used their far more advanced technology either to help humans cut and move the blocks or to move the blocks themselves. The claim is presented as a possibility rather than a demonstrated fact — that aliens could have helped the Egyptians build the pyramids at Giza — and it rests entirely on the prior judgment that the builders could not have done it alone.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is a lot of evidence that humans built the pyramids, including the remains of the workers' houses, and Egyptian documents detailing some of the construction process. The slow accumulation of human knowledge needed to build the pyramids can be seen in early attempts to build smaller versions using different techniques for block-cutting and transportation. Early Egyptian tombs were rectangular mastabas, these were improved upon by the Pharaoh Djoser (reigning from 2630 BC), who built early step pyramids. The Pharaoh Snefru (reigning from 2575 BC) attempted to create smooth-faced pyramids with varying success. The pyramids at Giza were a natural next step in the improvement of engineering techniques. Experimental archaeology has proven that granite can be cut with copper tools in combination with either wet sand or quartz chips, things Egypt has in abundance. Reliefs in Egypt show the Egyptians using primitive drills. Following the principle of Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is preferred when all other things are equal. The existence of aliens needs extensive proof before it can be given as a credible alternative to theories involving human tools.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premises misstate the construction. The bulk of the Great Pyramid is local limestone quarried a few hundred metres from the site, not stone hauled hundreds of miles; the granite for the King's Chamber came from Aswan and travelled by river, which is how heavy stone moved throughout the ancient world. The workforce was also not unskilled — the counter-argument on record points to the excavated workers' settlement at Giza, with bakeries, breweries, accommodation and evidence of medical treatment, and to organised crews identified by name in the record. [Rejecting P2] Direct documentary evidence of the building exists. A set of papyri recovered from a Red Sea harbour includes the logbook of a boat crew ferrying fine limestone to Giza during Khufu's reign, which is a contemporaneous account of the construction written by a participant. [Rejecting P3] The engineering did not appear without antecedents. The counter traces the sequence from rectangular mastabas through Djoser's step pyramid to Sneferu's successive attempts at a smooth-faced form, including the failures — the change of angle at Dahshur being the clearest — which is exactly the trail of trial and error that a technique developed by people leaves, and that an externally supplied technology would not. [Rejecting C] The reasoning is also an argument from ignorance, and the counter names the remaining defect: experimental archaeology has shown that granite can be worked with copper tools together with abrasive sand or quartz, both abundant in Egypt, so the premise's central impossibility claim is false. 'Aliens could have' establishes only that something is imaginable, and an explanation requiring an unevidenced species is not preferred over one supported by the quarries, the tools, the village, the ramps and the written record. (The premises for this argument are also malformed, carrying blank lines between markers and no [P3].)