Is it true that there are fossilized forminifera in the stones of the pyramids?
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Why yes Pet, there are forams in the limestone blocks of the pyramids of Egypt!\n\nAs a matter of fact limestone holds many marine organisms, most are like that of forams, very tiny planktonic organisms; forams are about 1mm in length.
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The oldest fossil evidence for life on Earth is found in 3.5 billion year old rocks in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Along with rocks of similar age in South Africa these are the oldest well preserved sedimentary rocks known. The evidence for fossil life takes the form of: \n\nstructures called stromatolites which are believed to be the fossilized remains of laminated structures built by colonies of micro-organisms. Modern examples of such colonies are found in Shark Bay in Western Australia \nmicrofossils of individual micro-organisms. \ncarbon isotope ratios indicative of biological activity. \nSome recent results include the discovery of 3.45 billion year old stromatolites by scientists of the Geological Survey of Western Australia, and the reporting of microfossils from a deep sea hot spring deposit of age 3.2 billion years by Birger Rasmussen of the University of Western Australia.\n\nWhile controversy surrounds many of the reports of fossils of this age, it is generally accepted that there is sufficient evidence to be reasonably sure that life was well established on earth at about 3.5byr ago. Older rocks at 3.8byr age in Greenland are too greatly deformed to preserve fossils but have been claimed to show evidence for life in their carbon isotope ratios.\n+\nFUNGI and algae first teamed up to form lichen 600 million years ago, according to newly discovered fossils from China. This makes them slightly older than the first fossils of complex soft-bodied animals, and far older than land plants.\n\nLichens are the product of a symbiotic relationship between algae, which produce food, and fungi, which provide moisture, nutrients and a protective framework. The new fossils come from south China, and were laid down in shallow seawater (Science, vol 308, p 1017).
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Yes it's supposed to be beyond Pluto. It's said that for the different levels of the Great Pyramid of Giza that there is a planet that corresponds according to some old astronomical chart from around c.3000 b.c. and that there is still one level that has a planet that is still unaccounted for.
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The latest studies place the oldest rock formation in the canyon at 1.84 billion years old.  Note that you have to be somewhat careful when discussing the age of the rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon as the dates have become more refined with improved dating techniques while books and literature often quote older, outdated numbers that have since been revised.\n\nOne of the most recent published studies about the age of rocks in the Grand Canyon's inner gorge is that by geologist K. E. Karlstrom and others.  They identify the Elves Chasm pluton (a granite intrusion in the western end of the canyon) as the oldest rock formation in the canyon (and in the southwest US for that matter) at a date of 1.84 Ga (1.84 billion years old).  They also date most of the other rocks of the inner gorge (a variety of schists, gneisses and other granite plutons) over a range of 1.65 to 1.75 Ga (1.65 - 1.75 billion years old).\n\nThese dates place the oldest rocks of the inner gorge near the end of the geologic time frame known as the Paleoproterozic Era (which is the period from 1.6 to 2.5 billion years ago) when the North American continent was still forming and life was limited mostly to simple algaes.  \n\nNote that for many years, the inner gorge rocks were believed to be somewhat older (2 billion years or more) and were once even assigned to the earlier Archean period.  These somewhat older dates and classifications are still sometimes given in books, web pages, etc.\n\nLastly... I have the seen the Vishnu Schist complex that makes up much of the inner gorge added to the phrase mentioned above as 'Know The Canyon History, See Rocks Made By Time, Very Slowly' (Very Slowly = Vishnu Schist).
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Structures resembling remarkably preserved bacterial and cyanobacterial microfossils from ~3,465-million-year-old Apex cherts of the Warrawoona Group in Western Australia currently provide the oldest morphological evidence for life on Earth and have been taken to support an early beginning for oxygen-producing photosynthesis. Eleven species of filamentous prokaryote, distinguished by shape and geometry, have been put forward as meeting the criteria required of authentic Archaean microfossils, and contrast with other microfossils dismissed as either unreliable or unreproducible. These structures are nearly a billion years older than putative cyanobacterial biomarkers, genomic arguments for cyanobacteria, and oxygenic atmosphere and any comparable diverse suite of microfossils. Here we report new research on the type and re-collected material, involving mapping, optical and electron microscopy, digital image analysis, micro-Raman spectroscopy and other geochemical techniques. We reinterpret the purported microfossil-like structure as secondary artefacts formed from amorphous graphite within multiple generations of metalliferous hydrothermal vein chert and volcanic glass. Although there is no support for primary biological morphology, a Fischer-Tropsch-type synthesis of carbon compounds and carbon isotopic fractionation is inferred for one of the oldest known hydrothermal systems on Earth.
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Egyptians did NOT build the great pyramids at Giza but did build many smaller, cruder pyramids.  The Bent Pyramid is one example of the ones they did build.\nThe main question is this: How could the ancient Egyptians emerge from the stone age, build a structure as big as the Great Pyramid at Giza, build a slightly smaller one, then never build another one to match either one?  Supposedly Khufu had the GP built, but there is absolutely not one shred of evidence that he did.  NOt one cartouche, wall inscription, nothing inside it.\nEither Altlanteans or aliens built it.
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If there was sand under the Egyptian pyramids they would have fallen down by now.  Some that were built on poor foundations already have fallen down.  The Great Pyramids near Cairo were built on a rocky plateau and that is why they are still in good condition.  They have burial chambers under them cut into the rock but the chamber under the biggest was not used.  \n\nBy the time these big pyramids were built the ancient Egyptians had a few hundred years experience in building them so they knew just exactly what they were doing.  You can see some of their earlier efforts in this site.\n\nhttp://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/dsteppyramid1.htm\n\nThe only real mystery attached to the Egyptian pyramids is why they put so much resources into them. \n\nThe answer is "rock".
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I'm not entirely sure to what it is you're referring.  Most Egyptian pyramids are built of stone blocks or slabs - roughly dressed on the interior and smoothed on the exterior.  Typically the stone is limestone for the exterior, with the occasional use of granite on lower courses.  Interior chambers in the pyramid itself or subterranean chambers were frequently lined with a different type of stone - granite was a popular choice.\n\nThe peaks of the larger (ie. royal) pyramids are now large flat spaces now that stone has been robbed out and the pyramidia (capstones) have been removed.  The capstones, from what we know from contemporary inscriptions and a few examples that have actually been found were essentially little pyramids in miniature, each face was inscribed with the name of the pyramid  - each royal pyramid was named, usually a name including the nomen and/or prenomen of the king for whom it was built.  Additional inscriptions usually concerned the sun god and/or were specific to the cardinal direction that face of the pyramid faced.\n\nIt is extraordinarily unlikely that Egyptian pyramids serve as radio receivers and even more unlikely that they were designed to do so.  They were tombs.
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Nor inside ANY of the ancient egyptian monuments made prior to the Roman invasion in 52 B.C. The egyptians used another mechanism:Mirrors!\nYes they used a complicated system of mirrors to reflect the day light all the way inside the huge monuments they've built, which were siometimes several hundereds of feet high (like the pryamids, which aremore than 80 pyramids, the most famous of which,the biggest, but not the oldest, are the 3 giza pyramids) or far below the ground(tutemoses grave and other similarly fabulous graves in valley of the kings, or dug several meters deep inside solid granite mountains (like "Dir El Bahary" temple of hatshipsut)\nYes, as agatha christie said,they did it with mirrors :)
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There are more than 60 pyramids listed and generally thery are made of stones or bricks.\n\nThe great pyramid in Giza was a bit different which was constructed of cut and dressed blocks of limestone, basalt or granite. The core was made mainly of rough blocks of low quality limestone taken from a quarry at the south of Khufu’s Great Pyramid. These blocks weighed from two to four tonnes on average, with the heaviest used at the base of the pyramid. An estimated 2.4 million blocks were used in the construction. High quality limestone was used for the outer casing.♥
211411
I dont know them by heart but I do know they are in the book called Popol Vuh (sacred book) and what I could remember is the previous answer, in 2012 we´re history.  You can look it up in the following site:\nwww.sacred-texts.com/nam/maya/pvgm
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The building of royal tombs in the form of pyramids started during the 3rd Dynasty. The Step Pyramid was designed by the architect Imhotep for King Djoser (may also be spelled Zoser; ca. 2620 B.C.) \nKing Snofru experimented with mathematical pyramids (i.e. smooth, without steps). His son Cheops (or Khufu) built the Great Pyramid at Giza. The second and third pyramids at Giza were built by Chefren and Mykerinos (Menkaure) respectively. They were considered as one of the ancient wonders of the world. The above mentioned kings are of the 4th Dynasty (ca. 2575-2465 B.C.), the pinnacle of pyramid building. During the 5th and 6th dynasties pyramids were no longer built of massive stone, but with a core of rubble and on a smaller scale. During the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2040-1640 B.C.) pyramids usually had a core of rubble or mud brick. During the New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.) Pharaohs were buried in rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings, which is dominated by a natural pyramid. \nThe Nubian Pharaohs Piye (also known as Piankhi) and Taharqa built pyramids at el-Kurru in Nubia (ca. 725 and 680 B.C. respectively). Between 250 B.C.-350 A.D. Meroe was the burial site for the kings of the Nubian kingdom, who built pyramid tombs. These Nubian pyramids are smaller in size and more steep than the earlier Egyptian pyramids.
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Pyramids are among the largest man-made constructions.\n\nAncient monuments\n\nThe oldest pyramid is that of Hellinikon in Greece, dating from 2,720 BC. There are more than 16 pyramids spread all over Greece. (See Hellenic Pyramids.)\n \nThe pyramids of Giza. The largest pyramids are Menkaure's pyramid, Khafre's pyramid, and the Great Pyramid. Pyramid-shaped structures were built by many ancient peoples. The most famous are the Egyptian pyramids — huge pyramids built of brick or stone, used as tombs for pharaohs. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest in Egypt and tallest in the world. It is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and the only one of the seven to survive into modern times. The ancient Egyptians smoothed the faces of their pyramids with gold and polished white limestone, though many of the stones used for the purpose have fallen out over the centuries.\n\nTo the south of Egypt the Nubians also built pyramids. They built far more than the Egyptians, but they are much smaller. The Nubian pyramids were constructed at a much steeper angle than Egyptian ones and were not tombs, but monuments to dead kings. Pyramids were built in Nubia up until the AD 300s.\n\nThe Mesopotamians also built step pyramids, or ziggurats. In ancient times these were brightly painted. Since they were constructed of mud-brick, little remains of them. The biblical Tower of Babel is believed to be a Babylonian ziggurat.\n\nA number of Mesoamerican cultures also built pyramid-shaped structures. Mesoamerican pyramids were also usually stepped, with temples on top, more similar to the Mesopotamian ziggurat than the Egyptian pyramid. The largest pyramid by volume is the Great Pyramid of Cholula, in the Mexican state of Puebla. There is an unusual pyramid with a circular plan at the site of Cuilcuilco, now inside Mexico City and mostly covered with lava from an ancient eruption of Xictli.\n\nThere are other pyramid-shaped ancient monuments found in parts of Asia.\n\nPyramids were also found in Greece. One of these pyramids in Greece is older than the pyramid of Cheops, as it was dated to 2720 BC.\n\nThere is a pyramid in ancient Rome. The 27-meter-high Pyramid of Cestius was built by the end of the first century BC and still exists today, close to the Porta San Paolo.\n\nThere are quite a few flat-top pyramids in China. The First Emperor of Qin (221 B.C.~), with the terracotta warriors in vicinity, was burried under a large pyramid outside modern day Xi'an. In the following centuries a dozen more Chinese royalties of Han Dynasty were also burried under flat top pyramidal earth works.\n\nIn October 2005, archaeologist Semir Osmanagic announced that a hill near the Bosnian town of Visoko conceals a pyramid 100 metres high and perhaps 12,000 years old. If confirmed, this would be the oldest pyramid in Europe, as well as the world.\n\nModern pyramids\n \nA modern pyramid, built as a feature and as an entrance to the Louvre Art Gallery. \n \nThe CSU Long Beach Pyramid. An example of a modern pyramid can be found in Paris, France, in front of the Louvre Museum.\n\nThe 32-story Pyramid Arena in Memphis, Tennessee (built 1991) was the home court for the University of Memphis men's basketball program, and the National Basketball Association's Memphis Grizzlies until 2004.\n\nThe Walter Pyramid, home of the basketball and volleyball teams of the California State University, Long Beach, campus in California, United States, is an 18-story-tall blue pyramid.\n\nThe Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, United States, is a 30-story pyramid.
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General History of Pyramids in Egypt and Nubia:\n\nThe pyramid is thought to have developed out of the mastaba tomb. Mastaba is an Arabic word, meaning bench, which was applied to the flat-topped, slope sided superstructures of tombs. The pyramid is also thought to be associated with solar worship and the "ben-ben" stone which played a major role in sun worship and was vaguely pyramid shaped.\n\nIn the 3rd Dynasty, several mastabas were stacked forming the Step Pyramid of King Djoser. By the 4th Dynasty in the reign of Snefru attempts at building a true pyramid were underway. The pyramids of the 4th and 5th Dynasties, including those at Giza, essentially reflect the further refinement of the pyramid, the chambers within it, and the associated temple complexes. Eventually the standard style was an orientation of east to west (significant in Egyptian religion), with a pyramid temple, located directly on the east side of the pyramid, and a causeway leading to the "valley temple" located near the Nile at the edge of the cultivation.\nWhile it is accepted by reputable Egyptologists that pyramids served as burials for kings, the exact details of the theology behind them remains unclear. One idea, popularized I believe by Dr. Mark Lehner, one of the foremost experts on Egyptian pyramids, is that pyramids served as "resurrection machines" providing all the necessary means for eternal life with the gods for the dead king.\nIn the late 5th Dynasty in the Pyramid of Unas at Saqqara, we have the first appearance of formal texts within the pyramid itself - the appropriately-named Pyramid Texts. These texts are somewhat esoteric and are essentially a collection of spells, stories, and guides relating to the Underworld. Initially these texts were limited to royalty. In succeeding pyramids, elements of the Pyramid Texts were included in the "Coffin Texts" of the First Intermediate and Middle Kingdom and in the "Book of the Dead" of the New Kingdom - texts available to a broad spectrum of society.\n\nPyramid construction continued in the Middle Kingdom - again limited to royalty, but not on the grand scale of the Old Kingdom. The last known royal pyramids located in Egypt are that of King Ahmose, founder of the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom (ca. 1550 BCE) and the pyramid-cenotaph constructed for his grandmother, Queen Tetisheri. Both are located at Abydos.\n\nIn the New Kingdom, pyramids came to be part of tombs for reasonably wealthy private individuals - frequently added to the exterior portico area of rock-cut cliff tombs or appearing as architectural elements of brick constructed tombs in varous parts of Egypt.\n\nThe Napatan and Meroitic kingdoms in Nubia (modern Sudan) also used the pyramid for royal burials at sites such as El-Kurru and Nuri. While the Napatan kings ruled Egypt for a time during the 25th Dynasty and were buried in pyramids, those pyramids were located in Nubia proper.\nPyramid Construction:\n\nPyramid construction relied on highly skilled teams of workmen who were housed nearby the pyramid fields - in the Old Kingdom located in the general vicinity of the ancient capital Memphis at sites now knows as Giza, Saqqara, Meidum, and Dashur. A few pyramids in the Middle Kingdom were located near the Fayum, roughly Middle Egypt.\nIn addition to the full-time workmen, there was likely a seasonal labor requirement asked of the lower classes of Egyptian society - a sort of taxation, often referred to by the French term "corvee" labor. This is distinct from slavery. While the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (writing over a thousand years after the construction of the pyramids at Giza) reported that he was told the pyramids at Giza were constructed by slaves, Herodotus was wrong about any number of things in his reports and may not even have visited Egypt in person, so he is usually not taken as a realiable source.\n\nThe book by Mark Lehner mentioned below contains an
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I don't think anybody's sure it IS a pyramid yet.\n\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4912040.stm\n\nHere's more information :\n\nhttp://msnbc.msn.com/id/12402157/
139087
I went and did some investigation. It definitely looks to me like the Cydonia "pyramids" are real features on the surface of Mars. However, the question is, are these natural features, or are they artificial? \n\nOf course they might be artificial, and we won't know until we get more data. However, using Occam's Razor (i.e.,the simplest answer is the best) and erring on the side of caution, I would say that the evidence is that these are just natural formations (including the "face"; see reference). \n\nHuman beings are clearly wired for apophenia (also known as the clustering illusion; seeing patterns that are not really there), and in particular, for pareidolia (experiencing optical illusions). Humans are hired-wired to see patterns, and especially faces. On closer examination, and from different angles, a lot of the resemblance of the features on Mars to regular pyramids, or of the "face" to a human face or a lion's face, just disappear. Some of the features of the face were actually due to artefacts in the imaging system!\n\nHere are some other famous examples of pareidolia:\n\nman in the moon\nold man of the mountain NH (collapsed 2003)\nnapoleon's nose rock formation (north of belfast)\n\nThis phenomenon is the basis of  Rorschach inkblot test, even. \n\nIt is hard to imagine that if there had been life on Mars, that they would have left more evidence than that. Also, surely our tests for life on the surface would have produced better evidence.\n\nThis does not mean that it is absolutely impossible that these features are artificial. However, especially given Hoagland's checkered history (see reference), and the lack of evidence, I would say that it is a low probability event. The threshold for belief that these features are artificial is understandably quite high. For outrageous claims, one needs outrageous proof.
141565
Yes it did exist. The Mediterranean actually dried up around the end of the Miocene, about 5-6 million years ago. This was known as the Messinian Event. \n\nThere are large thick deposits of evaporite minerals like gypsum and halite (salt) that underlie much of the Mediterranean. These deposits were formed when the water in the Mediterranean dried up. Other evidence exists that shows that the Nile River actually cut down to several hundred feet below present day sea level, which would have been impossible if the sea level were not lowered to that depth. At the start of the Pliocene, about 5.4 million years ago, the barrier at the Strait of Gibraltar broke and the Mediterranean was filled again. \n\nI've studied much of this first hand working around the Mediterranean basin. If you want to see some references go to:\nhttp://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/messin.htm\nhttp://www.messinianonline.it/