Why 432 in Ancient World?

To believe those are random numbers, though plainly derived from the measurable rate of precession, is akin to believing that some pharoah surveyed the dimensions of the GP by the length from his elbow to fingertip, and that structure just happens to be half a nautical mile of base perimeter length, and aligned to true north with an accuracy of 0.5%, you're trying to avoid the obvious, dragon.

 

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just a coincidence.

 

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Like 2 + 2 = 4 is a coincidence.

 

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don be silly.

 

What are the odds that those numbers are a coincidence?

 

probability

Hello to you all and thanks to the SciForum organisers. This is my first post and a fascinating discussion (I apologise in advance for the polemic)...

That the Sun is approximately 400 times the Moons' distance from the Earth, and the Suns' diameter is approximately 400 times that of the Moon, does not imply that 'design' has created the conditions for a Total Solar Eclipse to occur - it is coincidence and that is a matter of probability.

The combination of variables that create the Total Solar Eclipse may seem an incredible coincidence from the perspective of Earth but in universal terms solar eclipses may occur at many coordinates.

The need to invest coincidence with meaning was/is important at some stage in human evolution or may be a by-product of other perceptual mechanisms. It is human nature to recognise patterns and elaborate them e.g. dragons or dolphins in the clouds. The architecture of human perceptual processes is a product of evolutionary cosmological patterns - the same patterns that dictate the probability of eclipses being visible or the probability that different human cultures will adopt similar methodologies...so it is not suprising that recognition occurs and meaning is invested in significance.

The original posting raised the question (in reference to the relationship between the dimensions of Great Pyramid and Earth): '...so what is this connection in the ancient world, was it coincidence, or could they measure the Earth, and if so, how did they do it..?'

My answer is: the same perceptual mechanisms that developed artifacts in the ancient world are the same perceptual mechanisms that perceive coincidence. Coincidence and synchronicity stand out as a pattern of certainty in a random universe; Probability dictates coincidence but it is human nature that invests these events with meaning.

When we see synchronicity we subconsciously recognise the patterns of our own human (and truly universal) nature.

 

What strikes me as way beyond coincidence is that the rate of the slow wobble of the Earth's axis is just so for humans to be able to measure the dimensions of the Earth by it, right down to the length for the Egyptian royal cubit, derived from this cartographically valuable rate of a wobble of the Earth's axis in 25,920 years, quite a design.

 

The Egyptian Royal Cubit (ERC) is of similar length to a forearm (e.g. the division of the ERC is to seven palms of four digits): the fact that there is a relationship between the forearm and axial wobble is a coincidence.

 

Apologies for the sophistry; just a mechanism to elucidate an approximation of 'truth.'
Is a conspiracy a sinister plot or an inevitable outcome of history? In the beehive is it really the worker who is enslaved? They appear to have greater freedom than the queen.

Perhaps it is humans who create coincidence and not the natural world...

 

What does all that have to do with the ancient precession mapping of the Earth?

 

For a start we can apply Occam's Razor - which is more plausible: the cubit was based on the forearm or 'ancient precession mapping of the Earth'?

 

I have demonstrated how the ancients established the length of the royal cubit from the circumference length of the Earth, now you must explain how the ancients supposedly used some guy's elbow to fingertip length to survey the Great Pyramid to be aligned within 0.5% of true north, and why they chose 440 royal cubits per base side, and 280 royal cubits for the height.

 

North would have been discernable through astronomy or magnetism without establishing the circumference length of the Earth e.g. needle points that way (North) through 'magic' unseen power (magnetism/gods)...lets align a monument that way...; and Occams' Razor would suggest that the dimensions of the pyramid were limited by practical structural and logistic reasons. E,g, Stonehenge could not have been built larger as there was a limitation on manpower and materials.

I'm not totally against your premise (I don't believe that historically knowledge lies on a linear vector); it would greatly help me understand your case if you could re-explain how the Egyptians deducted the 'measurement' to enable calculation of the circumference of the Earth. What points, A-to-B, did they measure?

 

They triangulated the position of a star, and then, knowing that at 72 years/degree, in the future, the star would appear at a specific position after a specific number of years, so they measured the circle of the Earth by measuring the circle of the sky.

They subdivided 1/6th of the way around the Earth by 7,200 to establish the base perimeter length for the Great Pyramid.

 

That sounds entirely plausible and concurs with my understanding of plotting co-ordinates using geometry (although this is always in need of updating).

However, if one subscribes to anthropic-type theories based on the premise that proportionality exists throughout the universe (e.g. Gribbin and Rees: ....the size of the human is the geometrical average figure between the size of an atom and the size of a planet is the geometrical average figure between an atom and the Universe), the forearm cannot be ruled out as a template for the cubit even though the cubit conforms to other patterns of coincidence.

 

It's supposedly elbow to fingertip, I used to call it forearmetry, but it really is elbow-to-fingertipmetry

 

It is well documented that the 1/4 base-perimeter of the GP is 440 Royal Cubits. The number 440 shows up in other intriguing ways too, such as the 1/4 mile is 440 Yards. Clearly, there is likely a link in those relationships. Likewise, 6 X 6 X 6 X 2 is 432, so our 1/2 day of 12 hours, X 60 minutes to the hour and 60 seconds to the minute also gives that intriguing relationship.

It is plausible that initially the ancient Egyptians measured the circumference of the Earth, though not accurately, but off by 0.5%, as is the value given by Ice Age. They then used that as the value for computing the Royal Cubit.

The common man, however, would likely have known none of that in those days, and because the Royal Cubit was coincidentally about the same as the elbow-to-fingertip for the average person, in the field that would have been a common method for giving a rough measurement (just as today we use fingertip-to-fingertip is roughly 2 yards, or one human foot is roughly one lineal foot).

As they improved their measurement capabilities, and as they enhanced their knowledge, they devised instead the Scientific Cubit, which again the common man would have known nothing about. That was thereafter encoded in the GP, as per the prior posts I've given on that topic on the GP.

Clearly, the magnetic north was not used to align the GP, since it is so very closely aligned to the astronomical north, and not close to the magnetic north.

Ice Age, what are your other sources/references for the use of the number 432 (or 43200) in other cultures. Clearly, that likely predates the Egypt of the pyramid building era; how did it get spread into the 'legends' you reference?

 

The Norse legend of Valhalla, the Hindu yugas, the 72 conspirators against Osiris, the Hung League numbers, all reflect the widespread knowledge about precession mapping, they all spread from the Middle East and Egypt, in patterns and etymologies generalized in Genesis 10.

 

In about 240 BC, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth fairly accurately. His method was excellent. See

• http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/eratosthenes.html

I do not think there is any record of an earlier successful attempt to measure the size of the Earth.

It seems silly to believe that the Egyptians who built the GP much earlier had a clue about the size of the Earth. We have a lot of translated documents from ancient Egypt, with none mentioning any estimate of the size of the Earth, or describing it as a sphere.

I think that ancient sailors knew the Earth was a sphere. However, prior to the Golden Age of Greece, I do not think there are any records of a culture describing the Earth as spherical.

 

So you would have us believe that those numbers are just coincidence, whatever.