Precession Problem

What do you mean precision?
Do you mean the earth slowly shifting off its axis over the years or that fact that they wouldnt have had a compass handy?

If NSEW is defined by the sun then it must be easy to align the pyramids.The sun rises in the east and sets in teh west.

I heard that the pyramids were positied to depict star constellations, like a mirrored image.

Also that the stones were moved by mind power!!

From the little I understand/remember, precession is like a wobble in the axis of Earth, but one which happens very very slowly, like over thousands/millions of years. It basically means that if you drew a line from the south pole to the north pole and out into space, and recorded what part of space it was pointing at on a certain day of the year, then did the same thing a thousand years later, they wouldn't point at the same place. Or something like that!

As for the constellation-thing, I think that the 3 pyramids of Ghiza (sp) - the famous ones - are arranged on the ground in exactly the same shape as the 3 stars of Orion's Belt. The different sizes of the pyramids even matches the different brightnesses of the stars.

Maybe the directions were only a bit off course but were precise enough to give 'scientists' the idea that they were based on NSEW.

Didnt know the sizes were related to the brightness of stars.Very interesting.

I reckon it's pretty cool. Here's a pic of Giza:



And Orion:



I know that the Orion photo is upside down cf. the pyramids, but you can clearly see how the sizes and allignment (not exactly straight) are the same. Spooky...!

Lots of people use absolute terms such as exactly for things that are plus or minus a few parts per million. In the case of the pyramids we have adjusted for 4500 years of precession of Earth's poles and the position change of the belt stars of Orion and found the line up too close to be a coincidence in most people's opinion. Neil

I've seen the documentary about the theory of the pyramids at Giza being aligned to Orions belt, and I agree it seems too much too be a coincidence, however that isn't what I'm trying to get at,

if precession accounts for a shift of 1% per century then wouldn't that mean that the ancient Egyptians didn't align the pyramids accurately according to the cardinal points of the compass? Or am I misunderstanding precession?

The Earth's precession (wobble) takes about 41,000 years to go full cycle. Since this is represented as the artic circle (about 23.5deg north) and is equivalent to the angle of planetary tilt. So this precession represents about 23.5deg/22,000yrs*100yrs/cent=0.06deg/century. S

Since the pyramids were built about 50 centuries ago the celestial N/S error accounts for a present orientation error of 2.9deg. And even a slop like that is a pretty good precision considering that these guys orientated these rock piles using a sighting stick.

BTW the magnetic poles move much faster, both annually and with position, than the celestial error used for pyramid orientation. That's how Columbus landed in the West Indies thinking it was India.

Rap

If the narrator had been referring to actual Grid North of the Earths Axis, then there would be very little change. Magnetic North does change however & also so does the position of the Celestial North Pole due to Precession as you rightly said. If the pyramid had been aligned with the stars as evidence suggests some of them were, then they it be out of position today. I think that the narrator should have been more specific about his definition of North.