Scientists Try to Unlock Mystery of Pyramids

June 24 -- It's one of the world's greatest mysteries — how did the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids?

It's as vexing as the riddle of the Sphinx. And the truth is, no one really knows.

But amateur Egyptologist Maureen Clemmons has a theory. She thinks the Egyptians may have used kites.

"If you look at the top center of every monument, you see wings," Clemmons said. "I think the Egyptians have been trying to tell us in pictures for 3,000 years that this is how they built the pyramids."

Kites Lift Tons

Her idea? To build a pyramid you harness the desert wind using kites to lift the stones. She got a team of aeronautic engineers form the California Institute of Technology to help her test the theory.

"At the beginning, we were ourselves very critical of her ideas, but then we started to think more about it and we said, 'Why not? Let's try it,'" said Mory Gharib of Caltech.

The engineers worked out the math and designed a system of nylon ropes and pulleys. Each pulley quadruples the amount of weight a single kite can pull.

"So, we're using one kite in 15-mile-per-hour winds to lift up a three-and-a-half ton block," said Caltech student Emilio Castano.

Yesterday, in the Mojave Desert, they put their theory to the test using a nylon kite, three pulleys and an obelisk that weighs nearly four tons.

The wind speed had to be just right. And miraculously, it worked. There was more than enough force to hoist the obelisk. The total airtime? Only twenty-five seconds.

Skeptics Say No Way

But the fact that it can be done doesn't necessarily mean that's how the ancient Egyptians did it.

"There's absolutely no evidence for kites in ancient Egypt," said Professor Carol Redmount of the University of California at Berkeley. "There's no evidence of pulleys as we know them today."

Redmount says the historical evidence points to the "Charlton Heston method," which basically relies on the theory of the muscle of slaves pushing and pulling huge stone blocks to create the pyramids.