This early concrete-limestone’s basic raw materials are lime and diatomaceous earth,
found in abundance virtually anywhere in the world and replicating this method could be very cost-effective, long lasting and would eliminate the roughly 6 billion tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emitted into the atmosphere annually in the manufacture of Portland cement as explained by Michel Barsoum, a National Science Foundation-supported researcher.

This was his conclusion after a year and a half of extensive scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations and other testing together with his research group of the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

Barsoum, a distinguished Egyptian-born professor in the Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University formed the research group together with one of his graduate students, Adrish Ganguly and a colleague in France, Gilles Hug after a two-hour phone conversation with Michael Carell,a friend of one of his retired colleague assessing about the extent of his knowledge of the mysteries surrounding the construction of the Great Pyramids of Giza and further stated that the mysteries had already been solved by Joseph Davidovits, director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago claiming that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of an early form of concrete created using a combination of clay, lime, limestone and water.

The most commonly accepted theory is that the pyramids were made of carved-out giant limestone blocks carried, and arrange piece by agonizing piece using ramps by workers aside from being accepted by everyone, also has a number of inconsistencies.

Barsoum says that if the pyramids were really cast, then someone should have proven it beyond doubt already with just a few hours of electron microscope observations and yet it turned out that nobody had completely proven the idea thereby engaging and devoting himself with the project for five years.

What they’ve found was that the smallest make-up within the inner and outer casing stones were really consistent with a recomposed limestone and the cement binding was either silicon dioxide or a calcium and magnesium silicate mineral and indicating a high content of water which is unusual for the normally dry, natural limestone on the Giza plateau while the cementing aspect of the casing stones (inner and outer) were amorphous almost totally unlike limestones which are seldom, if ever, amorphous and was further proven from the chemistries of the sample which do not exist in nature.

According to Barsoum, the inner and outer stone casing that were examined were improbable of being chiseled from a natural limestone block.

Also the process of casting would consistently explain why some of the stones fit so closely together that even a strand of hair would not slip in between and on how the Egyptians lifted up 70-ton granite slabs halfway up the great pyramids.

Barsoum’s research would matter most today because of the intense energy requirements and excessive green house gases consequent of the production of cement.

The discovery of making paper or papyrus in Egypt had spurred great enthusiasm among the ancient scribes because it imparts ease and speed of transcribing their pictographic scripts which previously were done clumsily through carving into wooden tablets, stones and wet clay pads.

But with papyrus’ potential as an excellent transcribing medium, it still was in those days “writing” in its purest sense of the word was still an arduous task for those scribes.

It takes more than 3000 years until the Chinese Cai Lun, a government official of the Eastern Han dynasty’s invention of the progenitor to our modern paper that another very important discovery which was being developed which eliminated the arduous undertaking of writing scripts came into being.

The discovery of printing during that time though in its infancy was at the time had already automated the process of writing scripts. Block printing which was the earliest process of printing still had so many inconveniences aside from being very time-consuming because this required carving a whole block for each page.

The need for a faster and more convenient way to print spurred the discovery and development of the movable type method of printing which was discovered by Pi Sheng during the Ch’ing-li period (1041 AD - 1048 AD).

This method is done by carving into wood only all of the more than two thousand Chinese characters instead of a whole non reusable block for each page and thus greatly simplified the printing process because it needs only to carve and assemble the carved characters which could now be rearranged and reused many times over and thus hastened the spread of knowledge among the Chinese literates during those days but did not have significant impact on the majority of the people and was only confined within their society.

It was not until three hundred years later on the early part of the 15th century that the development of the movable type in Germany by John Guttenberg spurred the further development of the printing press because it has now made knowledge universal and thus revolutionized the Western World more than what happened in China few hundred years earlier.

Most people today would agree that the discovery of printing dwarfs into inferiority every human invention when compared to it.