We talked about many different subjects in class this semester that all had their share of importance in archaeological history and history in general. Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, the Franklin Expedition, the Incan and Mayan empires to name a few. All were HUGE discoveries* in history and have helped us learn about the past of the human species in their own unique way. The only thing is though, I don’t think any of them are close to the significance of the ancient pyramids of Egypt.

The pyramids of Egypt were my favorite subject that we learned about this semester for many reasons. The first reason that stuck out to me was how long it took to build some of the pyramids. The pyramids would’ve have taken around 200 or so years to build, so multiple worker’s lifetimes, multiple  pharaoh’s lifetimes, and anyone else on the Earth for that matter before they were finished. It is insane how they could accomplish such a task that took so long but nonetheless, they did it. Not to mention how big the stones they used were! No stones were less than 2 tons and it’s been estimated that some even weigh around 50 tons! How do you move stones of that size nowadays, let alone hundreds of years ago!

Another reason I find the pyramids topic so important and magnificent is the question of who built them. If you walked down the street and asked random people who built the pyramids, you might hear answers that range from aliens to magic to  God himself. A lot of people would probably say slaves built the pyramids, and for some reason, this is the popular answer that society generally gives. The funny thing is though, slaves didn’t build the pyramids. It’s quite the opposite actually. It’s believed that skilled, paid laborers built the pyramids. This hypothesis kind of makes sense more than others though because the design of the pyramids is very intricate. Workers with advanced knowledge in architecture would be needed for a task like this.

These two reasons don’t even give enough merit to the significance of the pyramids in history. The reasons why I think the pyramids were the most important archaeological site we talked about go on and on past these two with each one compounding upon the other.

*discoveries in the sense that they were archaeologically researched. Kind of hard to hide some of these places.