While I love the futility of disproving a photo from "ancient Egypt" using math rather than actual history, the data you used isn't actually correct. The 25kg you mention is, as is stated in the screencap you showed, considered as the "safe upper limit" and it in no way represents the average of what people could lift above their head, but rather guidelines for safe lifting, something which I would assume slaves in ancient Egypt would not be held to. Even so, even if we quadruple that to 100kg, and assume that the people lifting are well trained athletes at their physical peak, the block is still far above the level of what is reasonable to lift.
But, ancient Egyptians were super strong, you know, so yeah, that was totally real! I even met the guy who took the photo! (Super chill. Travels to the past from time to time.)
I've been watching your videos for a while and I like the way you break things down to a much simpler form to solve it mathematically. I had never thought that there'd be a time when I'll enjoy spending my time watching math problems to be solved. How exciting!
you can also just picture cutting the block into a column for each person and it becomes immediately visually clear that one person could not lift that weight
Not that the outcome would change but 25kg would be far from the max imo. That's only about 55 pounds and I could easily carry that much with 1 arm. I would think the max would be closer to 60 kg, maybe a little lower as they were malnourished slaves tho.
I saw the title and was like "whoa, Andy does debunking videos and not just math videos now?" and to my surprise, the answer was yes, and also no. How exciting.
Today I am going to prove the ancient Egypt photo is not authentic and i can prove it: In ancient Egypt they did not have camera's, so the photo is not authentic. How exciting.
Well, the block is obviously hollowed out and filled with Egyptian helium gas (the production plant was right next door, actually). The guys are not trying to lift it; they're trying to keep it from flying away. :-)
It was a sarcophagus, so the block was empty inside. I saw it on another foto. Can't find it anymore. Also the second guy has double arms. He can lift up to 50 kg! Did you notice that pushing some heavy things is easier than lifting them? Guess what? About half of the men are pushing the block. So they don't have to lift it that much.
@@AndyMath The quote said "maximum safe load". This is some work safety/worker's compensation-type guideline. Most men (especially someone used to heavy work) could probably to more like 40-50kg (100lbs or so). This said... 1. The loads are still hundreds of times more than what is possible. 2. Even if people could lift large loads there would be no reason not to use rollers. 3. This wouldn't explain how the block got lifted up above their heads or how they plan on lowering it while they are under it. 4. They didn't have photography in ancient times.
Funny as it is, there is one big mistake in your calculations. 25kg is not an average for how much can a person lift, it's a maximum of how much SHOULD a person lift i.e. at work in construction. It's much more than 25kg for an average male and even though people were probably weaker and smaller, that still should be 50+ kg.
You can tell this picture is a fake because the guy in the middle of the photo has a coin in his pocket that says 50BC on it, and we all know that they'd have no idea what "BC" meant at that point.
@@zettde Well it wouldn't be a cybertruck, as the block would only be 2.4 ant heights tall. Maybe the bigger question would be if the ants are positioned to be standing vertical, horizontal, or somewhere in between.
Considering photography wasn't invented until the first half of the 1800s - in the 1830s or so - then it is definitely photoshopped. BUT, having said that I Do love your Math Proof! Bravo! 🎉😂
I saw this thumbnail for a few days thinking that he could prove that this was fake with math, but intuitively I knew the stone was too heavy to lift so I didn't click on it. I just got around to clicking on it and now I realize that there's a much easier way to prove that this is fake 😩
