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Creation 14(3):5, June 1992

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Letters to the Editor

 


Ready-mix pyramid feud heats up

Dear Editor,

Lambert T. Dolphin’s letter to the editor in Vol. 14 No. 1 says that Joseph Davidovits is wrong in claiming that the pyramids were made from pre-cast concrete blocks.

picture of a pyramid

Dolphin states that he wrote to Davidovits many years ago asking if the latter had ever visited the pyramids, and that Davidovits answered that he had not. The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved describes Davidovits’s research at Giza in Chapter 8; Davidovits took the photographs featured in our book himself, and he appears in some of them. He has made at least four trips to Egypt for research to date.

Dolphin may have ‘spent many months climbing and crawling around the pyramids’ but he is a physicist and not a limestone geologist; limestone geologists have admitted to requiring a 400X microscope just to distinguish industrially made geopolymers from natural stone. Alkali-activated limestone (imitation pyramid stone) would be harder to distinguish. How is it that Dolphin can make a determination with the naked eye?

There is evidence suggesting repairs at many levels during antiquity. Researchers unaware of the natural stone applied later have wrongly used such repair blocks (distinguishable by worm holes) to declare that the theory is wrong.

Dolphin cites ‘evidence’ such as locations where stone comes from, informs that the blocks contain fossil shells, and claims that the size of the quarry is sufficiently large enough to have supplied the stone. He apparently does not realize that an aggregate (containing fossil shells) was required to make the concrete. Where does he think that rock aggregates for making concrete would come from?

As far as the size of the Giza quarries are concerned, they have been measured to be about equal in size to the monuments. Limestone has a high breakage rate when quarried; probably one in four or five blocks might be cut without cracking or breaking. In that case, the quarry should have measured to be at least twice as large as it has been.

I have not been in the robbers’ niches of the Great Pyramid, so I cannot interpret the feature Dolphin refers to. However, geopolymeric concrete can also be handpacked like early adobe (made without moulds), which can give it a rough or unhewn appearance. Tool marks can be left on blocks from robbers hunting for treasure. A minority of outside blocks exhibit parallel quarry grooves. However, these match the grooves on the quarry walls placed by the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II, known to have restored major pyramids 1,000 years after the Great Pyramid was built.

The mortar Dolphin observed is irrelevant, since it has no adhesive power in blocks the size of those on the Great Pyramid. It was used to cushion the blocks against stress and also to level them, if necessary. Thus mortar has no bearing on how the blocks were made. Independent limestone geologists in the United States (e.g. E.J. Zeller of the University of Kansas) have confirmed that a sample from the Ascending Passageway of the Great Pyramid is indeed synthetic rock.

Dolphin’s criticisms are not legitimate.

Margie Morris, Assistant Director, Institute for Applied Archaeological Sciences, Detroit (Michigan), USA.


Learns something new every issue

Dear Editor,

Every time I read your publication I learn something new. It has been a great help to me in my Christian growth. I eagerly wait for each issue. There is also joy in my heart when I hear of so many souls who are brought to Jesus through your inspired magazine. I count it a privilege to receive this kind of magazine.

Pastor Nwije Francis, Ondo State, Nigeria.


Nose first

Dear Editor,

I thought you may be interested in something I heard on the radio.

The announcer was lauding the merits of a particular car engine filter. He explained he used it on his 4-wheel-drive vehicle and forgot to clean it as you are supposed to do occasionally.

Nine years later he took it off and was surprised to find it in such good condition. He rang the manufacturer and arranged for a spokesman to speak on air about the product.

He was asked how it was made and what design they used. The spokesman said they studied the human nose and found it was the best design for a filter.

David Thornton, Grays Point, New South Wales (Australia).


Adam no animal

Dear Editor,

Congratulations on a superb magazine. I particularly enjoy the beautiful nature articles you present.

How do you answer someone who says that the real meaning of Adam being made from the dust of the ground is that it means he evolved up through the animal kingdom?

Tracey Karmous, (aged 13), Paddington, New South Wales, Australia.

God said to Adam, ‘for dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return’ (Genesis 3:19). If coming from dust meant he was to evolve through various animal stages until he became man, then surely returning to dust would mean he ‘evolved’ down again through these stages when he died. Such an explanation has no backing from either Scripture or science.