How to sculpt ancient pyramids and other ancients stone monuments - Vinegar?

[Longeyes]

Hi Guys

Not sure if anyone thought of this before but it came to me while watching Graham Hancock's 2nd series of Ancient Apocalypse - a possible answer to how they sculpted the massive stones could be much simpler and cunning than we think.
The ancient walls of Sacsayhuaman for instance are made with limestone. What is limestone particularly suceptable to? - Acid Rain, in fact any acid will do including vinegar.

The pyramids are also largely made of limestone and the ancients Egyptians certainly had vinegar and apparently used it to clean things. ie they knew it has a corrosive effect

My thinking is this if you don't have hard metal blades or other hard materials to chip away at the rock what can you do? You're left with only one option - make the rock softer.
If you soak limestone in vinegar is starts to dissolve and is easy to crumble. Simple video shows it.



I didn't realise but the Romans were aware of this but Hannibal used vinegar to help get those elephants over the Alps...
From this site https://www.ponti.com/en/history-of-vinegar/
During the war between Carthage and Rome, the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal (247-183 BC) crossed the Alps at the Little St Bernard Pass with infantry, cavalry and elephants in order to avoid the sea, where the Romans ruled. So much is well-known. Less known is how he did it. The route was narrow and winding, impracticable for the enormous elephants. So Hannibal ordered great branches to be wedged between the rocks that blocked the way, then burned. The soldiers then poured vinegar over the scorched rocks, making them soft enough to be broken, thus clearing the route for the troops and animals.

It seems to me if they used vinegar to soften rocks, then they aren't so hard to break at all. Controlling the application would have to be precise but that's far simpler than bashing away with a copper chisel you have to sharpen after three blows. You can rub the weakened limestone off with your hands.
The South Americans seems to use water as a level for getting perfectly horizontal bases for some of their temples, very cunning. Instead of doing it by eye they figured out that they could fill a courtyard with water and use the water level as a baseline. The same kind of thinking could be used to dissolve perfectly flat surfaces on the bottom of a rock if you could maneuver the boulder into place. They also made wine which would turn to vinegar.

This obviously wouldn't work with all types of rock, and wouldn't explain Stonehenge but it seemed immediately suspicious that both the pyramids and Sacsayhuaman were limestone. Although it's advised you shouldn't clean you granite worktop with vinegar I'm not sure it could explain the Egyptian granite work.

Anyway just a thought.

[Longeyes]

Have a second theory which might be better but I'm not entirely sure about the science behind it.

The Egyptians knew how to make mortar ie with lime. Many ancient peoples knew how to make it, you heat limestone in a kiln upto 840C and it turns into lime. Normally used as a binder to make mortar.
Lime is highly alkaline in the Middle Ages plague pits were filled with it to dissolve the bodies of the dead.

Lime can then be made into Slack Lime or Lime Water when mixed with water, which is still quite alkaline and is used to treat acidic soils for instance. Could it be that some of the trees the Egyptians burnt were used for making Limewater to dissolve limestone.
Does depend on Lime Water dissolving Limestone in the same way as an acid but from my decades old memory of chemistry it should. There's certainly no shortage of trees in the Amazon.

Was writing this and then stubbled across something even easier to use for the Ancient Egyptians another highly alkaline substance they used for mummification - soda.
From this site https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/78467

Another civilization distinguished by a conscious understanding of alkalis salts? importance and their broad medical and pharmacological usage was Ancient Egypt (3000 BCE ? 395 CE). Alkalis salts used by the Egyptians since very ancient times were mineral soda (natron), Na2CO3⋅NaHCO3⋅xH2O, regular salt, NaCl, and sodium sulfate, Na2SO4 [30, 31, 32]. Natural Soda occurs in Egypt principally in the Wadi Natrun in the Libyan desert (Figure 4), and to less extent, at El Barnugi, in Lower Egypt, and at Mahamid, in Upper Egypt.

The Wadi Natrun deposits have been probably the oldest known source of natural soda globally, and they served to supply that commodity for thousands of years. In ancient times there were two soda lakes, which became united when water was most abundant

Soda lakes are highly alkaline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_lake

Again not completely sure on the science regarding alkalines dissolving limestone - can't find anything on that, apart from someone warning not to use bleaches on limestone as they are highly alkanline and will damage it as badly as acids.