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Fresh from winning a defamation lawsuit last year after he inexplicably called a British cave explorer involved in the tense rescue of 12 Thai boys trapped in a flooded underground cave system a "pedo guy," Elon Musk has continued to use his Twitter presence for chaotic evil this year.
For example, where many people at the top of successful companies use their platform for important business updates, industry chatter, or else just a bit of fun, earlier this year the Tesla and SpaceX CEO wiped $14 billion off Tesla's value after tweeting "Tesla stock price too high imo". Er, lol?
Just a few days after the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a pandemic in March, he used his platform to tweet his 37.4 million followers "The coronavirus panic is dumb" and "Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April". By the end of April, the US was consistently seeing over 25,000 new cases per day.
Now, he's turned his twitter feed into a place for conspiracy theorists to gather, with the baiting post "Aliens built the pyramids obv".
Musk followed up the tweet, clearly a joke but certainly taken seriously by some of his fans, by sharing the true fact that "the Great Pyramid was the tallest structure made by humans for 3,800 years," and sharing a link to Wikipedia. (Though why someone who just made history in a scientific field feels the need to bait conspiracy theorists online in the first place is baffling.)
Though the tweets were likely tongue-in-cheek, it prompted a response from Egypt's Minister of International Co-operation, Rania al-Mashat, who invited Musk to come to Egypt in order to see the pyramids for himself, and learn how they were actually built.
Normally when somebody tells you "we're waiting for you" at a tomb you do not accept the invite, let's hope this is an exception.
If he were to go, he would discover the pyramids were not built by aliens. Obvs.
Contrary to another popular misconception, they weren't built by slaves either. The current consensus is that they were built by paid laborers, after a worker's village and cemetery on the Khafre and Menkaure pyramids was uncovered in the 1990s.
The manner of burial of the workers – in mud-brick tombs, with beer and bread to take with them to the afterlife – and proximity to the pyramids suggests that the builders were paid workers. Examination of their remains showed that they had a protein-rich diet, which was unheard of at the time. There was evidence that broken bones had been reset, and one person was even found to have had his leg amputated before living for a further 14 years, suggesting they were given medical care.
As for how they were built, the answer is simple: The Ancient Egyptians were skilled engineers, and put a lot of time and a gigantic workforce into the task. The giant blocks were moved by boat, oxen, and may have been dragged on sleds by workers across wet sand, reducing the amount of force they'd need to move the huge stones. If aliens had built the pyramids, it's unlikely you would see the progression that has been found in the pyramids, with engineers using bigger blocks as time went on. It's a bizarre alien civilization that masters interstellar travel, builds one pyramid, before realizing how to dramatically improve their masonry.
Musk later linked to a piece explaining some of the techniques used in the building of the pyramids, perhaps making Egypt's kind offer unnecessary, though clearly a lot of his conspiracy theory-loving fans could do with a visit.
