Whenever I watch a program theorizing on techniques employed to erect the pyramids, Stonehenge, The Easter Islands statues etc., I invariably see hundreds of men using simple brute muscle along with a series of rollers and ropes. Ive always wondered why ancient engineers didn’t employ powerful animals to do much of the heavy lifting and dragging of those enormous stones.?? Seems a few semi-domesticated African elephants could make easy work of the pyramids stones. It also seems to me, at the very least, transport from quarry to work site could be more easily achieved this way. Yet I’ve never heard it even offered as a possibility. What am I missing?
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!