Said Leif Ristroph, an NYU math professor, quoted in "Did Nature Have a Hand in the Formation of the Great Sphinx?" (NYU).
The work centered on replicating yardangs—unusual rock formations found in deserts resulting from wind-blown dust and sand—and exploring how the Great Sphinx could have originated as a yardang that was subsequently detailed by humans into the form of the widely recognized statue.To do so, Ristroph and his colleagues... took mounds of soft clay with harder, less erodible material embedded inside—mimicking the terrain in northeastern Egypt, where the Great Sphinx sits.
They then washed these formations with a fast-flowing stream of water—to replicate wind—that carved and reshaped them, eventually reaching a Sphinx-like formation. The harder or more resistant material became the “head” of the lion and many other features—such as an undercut “neck,” “paws” laid out in front on the ground, and arched “back”—developed.
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If you google "Michael Jackson Sphinx" you will find this NPR story.
And Steve Martin has a song.
File this under "Enough monkeys (or enough tries with water) can "create" shakespeare (or sphnixes)
This not a new idea at all:
The rate at which the lacustrine deposits are deflated varies from layer to layer according to slight differences in resistance to weathering and erosion. Degree of cementation, bedding and jointing patterns are among the controlling factors of rock resistance to wind erosion. The resulting wind-sculptured landform is known by a variety of highly evocative names such as mud lion, recumbent lion, sitting sphinx, and sphinx hill. (Yardangs of the Western Desert M. J. Grolier, J. F. McCauley, C. S. Breed, N. S. Embabi The Geographical Journal, Vol. 146, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 86-87)
What's really amazing is the wind somehow carved the Egyptian neme headdress on the sphinx. Would be cooler if it was a cowboy hat. The facework...wow.
NYU is also theorizing that the Great Pyramid of Giza was formed during an asteroid shower.
One thing is clear. The Egyptians were smarter than anyone credentialed at NYU.
This information is as old as I have read about the Sphinx, at least 30 years.
A large rock the size of a small sphinx!
JSM
Now do the pyramids.
"This not a new idea at all...."
They aren't claiming to have thought of the idea. They are showing the results of an experiment using flowing water to replicate wind erosion. They were "replicating yardangs."
I am just as sure an ancestor of Jada Pinkett Smith and Earth, Wind & Fire's did it, and I'm standing by that 100%.
White people don't know anything.
They then washed these formations with a fast-flowing stream of water to replicate wind that carved and reshaped them, eventually reaching a Sphinx-like formation.
Alternatively, there are those who posit the Sphinx actually dates much further back to the end of the ice age, because the pattern of erosion of the rock looks like it was formed by vertically cascading water from heavy rains that only took place in that region back at the end of the last ice age.
The Mystery of the Sphinx is a 1993 television documentary about the Great Sphinx of Giza. It deals mainly with the conflict between egyptologists and a handful of fringe theory proponents of the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. Charlton Heston is the host of the documentary, which features John Anthony West, geologist Robert M. Schoch, and writer Richard C. Hoagland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmVuWxkUc1o
The large number theory of probability. That said, there is order in chaos.
Yardang - a word new to me - formation in a lab setting is a neat accomplishment. Now do room temperature superconductors that are formed and work outside the lab, and you'll have something!
I am just as sure an ancestor of Jada Pinkett Smith and Earth, Wind & Fire's did it, and I'm standing by that 100%.
Great album, great cover, and a cast of musicians bigger than the cast of Ben Hur.
Not sure how Jada Pinkett Smith got involved?
Sphinx created by flowing water? Somewhere, Graham Hancock is jumping for joy!
A more dramatic result would be taking a brass statue of the Sphinx,coating it with library paste then placing it in fast running water.
Wow! Look at THAT!
I'd come closer to believing the Vienna statue was carved by unthinking/natural forces.
“ Somewhere, Graham Hancock is jumping for joy!”
I thought about that having just heard Joe Rogan and Elon Musk discussing this theory that the Sphinx shows water erosion, and therefore must be much older because you’d have to go back to a time when Egypt was watery, but the yardangs in question are caused by wind and so water is not needed to support the theory that the scientists were testing. They used water to simulate wind, they said.
The answer is blowing in the wind
Putting environmentalists in a bind
Cat in cradle on a hot air balloon
Moon rabbit, moon maiden and silver spoon
Stipe loved Andi Kaufman from the moon
In paper scissors water beats wind.
Granted, I'm not a scientist, like Fauci.
Congratulations, they discovered erosion.
Once, when I was sitting under an apple tree, an apple fell on my head and I had this incredible idea why that actually happened.
But then I drank a bunch of wine and ate some fig newtons, and when I woke up I'd forgotten.
Although this experiment is evidence that wind can cause yardangs, the question is whether wind can cause the erosion marks present at the Sphinx. According to Hancock, the wind cannot make those erosion marks, so they must have been made when water was plentiful at that location, which was many thousands of years before the traditionally accepted timeframe for the construction of the Sphinx.
Whatever. Leif Ristrof is a pretty cool name, however.
Ristroph.
Why isn't it Leiph Ristroph?
Ristroph.
Why isn't it Leiph Ristroph?
It's like "license," which I always spell as "licence." It's the same sound! In the same word!
Per Grammarly: "in any other English-speaking country, you will spell it licence when you use it as a noun and license when you use it as a verb."
Now I'm really confused.
Although this experiment is evidence that wind can cause yardangs...
The actual experiment "washed these formations with a fast-flowing stream of water," which provides no evidence that wind can cause yardangs. Not sure what other evidence there is that wind alone (or wind and sand) can do so, but this experiment shows only that water, not wind, could create these formations. Hancock would say that "scientists" extrapolate this data to show that wind could do it because they are blinded to the ide that the Sphinx could be much older than thought, created at a time when water flowed throughout the region.
Listening to Graham Hancock on Joe Rogan is a delight. He was scorned by academia and has been racking up successes over tenured archeologists ever since.
Somehow the Jews were involved.
They stole the Sphinx.
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