What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: The Great Pyramids

This week, there has been a lot of chatter in the weirder parts of the online world about the supposed discovery of a hidden complex of underground chambers beneath the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. It seems a team of researchers announced they'd used SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) to reveal a number of underground buildings beneath the Khafre Pyramid.

This discovery could offer proof the ancient Egyptian civilization was far more advanced than is generally believed, and possessed technology that rivals our own. It could change everything we think we know about humanity itself! In other words, big if true. 

Spoiler: It's not true though. All signs point to the “discovery” being an especially elaborate example of pyramid-based misinformation, another in a long string of untrue claims about the ancient Egyptian monuments that never seems to end, because cranks just love making up stories about the pyramids.

What was supposedly discovered under the Great Pyramids? 

I gotta give the “researchers” behind this "discovery" an A for effort. The supposed results of the SAR-based research were shared with the world at a press conference held in Bologna, Italy, on March 15, and it all looks very official. Here’s a video of the event:

It’s in Italian, and there are no English translation available yet, so I’m relying on other people’s translation work, but the gist is that the GIZA Project involves a team of “researchers, historians, archaeologists, and technologists” using high tech imaging techniques. They say they've discovered five identical structures connected by “geometric pathways,” eight “structures resembling vertical wells, surrounded by descending spiral pathways,” and “two large cubic structures measuring approximately 80 meters per side at a depth of 648 meters” at the site of the Great Pyramids.

The conference featured multimedia detailing the supposed discoveries, charts and graphs, people acting very serious, and all sorts of “this is real science!” frippery, so as you’d expect, the easily fooled were fooled, easily. Alex Jones touted this as “greatest archeological find in HISTORY.” Others wondered if the structures under the pyramids are part of a massive power plant, or maybe an ancient super weapon, or part of the “legendary Amenti,” a subterranean city “linked to ‘universal knowledge of humankind and its ultimate spiritual transformation.’”

Or maybe the entire thing is nonsense and nobody discovered shit.  

Where does this new pyramid research come from?

Many of the claims made in the press conference aren’t based on any published research, so it’s just people saying stuff in Italian, but the facts that can be checked are largely based on a research paper published in the journal Remote Sensing in 2022. Corrado Malanga and Filippo Biondi are listed at the top of a paper named “Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography Reveals Details of Undiscovered High-Resolution Internal Structure of the Great Pyramid of Giza.” It’s a dense read, full of technical information and equations like this:

Credit: Remote Sensing

Don't bother plowing through it and checking the math: The paper’s most notable feature is that it’s not peer reviewed, so you can safely ignore it for now. No independent expert in imaging has looked at this paper in a serious way to determine if SAR could even work like this, and radar experts doubt you could penetrate 648 meters through limestone bedrock. No archeologists have substantiated these claims. Neither have any historians or sociologists. Bottom line: without peer review, there’s no reason to take this paper more seriously than you’d take wild claims made by a random person on a bus. 

And that’s the generous interpretation. A less generous view is expressed by established Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass, who wrote on his Facebook:

All this information is completely wrong and has absolutely no scientific basis… the claim that a radar was used inside the pyramid is false…These people who announced this wrong information, they used techniques that are not approved nor validated, the details announced would never have been seen by using this technique.

Until actual scientists have a look at this research (and I wouldn’t hold my breath) it’s safe to file it under “pyramid misinformation,” a hearty mind-weed that’s been around forever and seems impossible to kill. But pyramid myths are at least fun, so here are some other common things people get wrong about them.

Myth: The pyramids were built by slaves or aliens

Conspiracy theorists often argue that “mainstream” archeologists and historians shouldn't be believed because they have a compelling interest in rejecting new ideas to maintain the academic status quo. But until relatively recently, many historians, archeologists, and most of the general public believed the pyramids were built by slave labor—specifically by the Jews. This is probably because Egyptians enslaving Jews is mentioned in the Bible (though the pyramids are not) and because Greek historian Herodotu reported that slaves were building the pyramids when he visited in 450 B.C. 

Even though it challenged the orthodoxy of their field of study, archeologists uncovered new evidence and reexamined existing evidence to change the conventional wisdom. It turns out the pyramids were not built by slave labor, at least not as we understand slavery today. Instead, the archeological evidence suggests the the pyramids were built by around 20,000 Egyptians who were paid, well-fed, had the equivalent of medical care, worked seasonally, and even left graffiti behind bragging about how awesome their work crew was compared to the others. This evidence also helps us cross "aliens" off the list of potential pyramid-makers. (Giants didn’t build the pyramids either.)

Myth: Ancient people could not have moved the pyramids' heavy stones

We don’t know exactly how the stones they used to build the pyramids were moved into place, but we have evidence that the ancient Egyptians loaded the stones on barges, floated them down the Nile, then dragged them on sledges over pathways they’d made of of slaked lime or tafla, probably using water to reduce friction. No advanced technology or extraterrestrial help was needed, and there’s no evidence at all to suggest they were employed. A lot of people working together can accomplish great things, especially if they have all been given enough beer.

Myth: Pyramids existing independently in different prehistoric societies is evidence of a common culture

From Mayan pyramids in Central America to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, many disparate ancient civilizations built pyramid-shaped monuments, leading some to suggest they had a common culture or there was an ancient means of communication between groups. Some think there’s something inherently “spiritual” in a pyramid’s shape.

While some ancient civilizations did communicate and trade with each other, the main reason pyramids all look similar is the same reason sand castles all have a vaguely pyramidal shape: It's the most stable way to build anything upwards, no matter where your ancient civilization is located. 

Plot-twist: A real anomaly was discovered near the Great Pyramid

This news was not breathlessly tweeted by Alex Jones, but in 2024, real scientists announced they’d discovered a mysterious structure under the royal graveyard near the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Using ground penetrating RADAR and electrical resistivity tomography, researchers from Higashi Nippon International University and other institutions identified an L-shaped structure that is about 33 feet long and is buried 6.5 feet deep. Maybe that's not as impressive as a city-sized proto-battery under hundreds of meters of limestone, but beneath that there's a "highly resistive anomaly!"

It's totally unknown, so you can pretend it's an alien spaceship if you want, but scientists think it's probably a mix of sand and gravel or “an air void.” It’s not an underground city or the remains of an ancient battery, but at least it’s real.