Commenting on my post about the economics of building efficiently, titled Because it Was Quick and Easy, Steven Baker pointed out the possibility that the stones of the pyramids may have been artificially made.
This video shows how it could have been done.
Note that the finished product is pretty much indistinguishable from natural rock. Over time, as the rocks have hardened further, the difference between the artificial rocks and the real thing has become even harder to discern.
Instead of the multi-ton stone blocks having been cut and transported, and then placed into position with amazing accuracy, they were simply constructed on site, using a wood cast filled with the required material.
This is a technique that makes a lot of sense. It drastically reduces the labor required to construct the pyramids. Any engineer aware of this technique at the time of their construction would have promoted it as a labor saving trick.
However, this does not mean that all the mysteries of the pyramids and other ancient buildings have been solved. There are giant statues, megaliths and obelisks. There are granite chambers and finely worked granite sarcophagi.
The granite walls of ancient Inca buildings in which stones are fitted together as tightly as the stones of the pyramids, suggest to me that they too may in fact have been molded into place. If so, a number of mysteries related to granite would be solved. But could granite be synthesized in a similar manner to that of the pyramid blocks? We know of no such technique today.
If the ancients knew of a technique in which granite could be made soft and malleable like clay, it either stopped working at some point, or it is proof of a lost technology.
It appears that we still have to stick with the hypothesis that rocks have become harder and heavier over time in order to explain all the mysteries of ancient architecture without resorting to giants or lost ancient technologies.
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