The limestone mud was carried up by the bucketful and then poured, packed or rammed into molds (made of wood, stone, clay or brick) placed on the pyramid sides.
How many buckets per stone?
How long would it take the builders to pour that many buckets into one 2-70 ton stones mold?
How long does it take to cure?
You can't really stack the stones too high while the bottom ones cure, so how long in between pouring, and curing, did they have to wait? How much time does that add? Is 20 years sufficient?
It's 92 million cubic feet of material. 20,000 workers working 300 days a year gets you 6 million man days per year. It it takes one man day to mine, mix, and place a cubic foot of concrete (~150 pounds) that's a bit over 15 years for that. For reference a cubic foot is less than two 5 gallon Home Depot buckets, so this is not a lot of material for 8 hours of work.
As far as drying time, it's 481 feet high and the upper layers have a block height of about 1.5 feet, so worst case it's 320 layers thick. It takes 3 days to reach 40% of it's 28 day strength (99% of ultimate strength), so worst case you spend 960 days waiting for it to cure. But in reality the base blocks were substantially taller and there was a lot more material at the bottom, so it's likely if you worked in sections by the time you finished the last part of the bottom layer the bulk of the other stuff had already dried sufficiently to do the next layer. So it wouldn't be until you got closer to the top that the drying time might cause you to have to wait.
None of this is beyond the realm of possibility. 20,000 can do a stupid amount of manual labor over 20 years.
Doesn't that same link you shared also state that many people working so closely together wouldnt work? As in logistically and spacially it'd be a nightmare
I imagine a large number are off mining materials to actually make the concrete. As for the rest, the bottom layer was over 550,000 square feet. That's a lot of room for 5 or 10 thousand people. As you build up you need less people. And you can always work in shifts to spread out the people.
How many buckets per stone?
How long would it take the builders to pour that many buckets into one 2-70 ton stones mold?
How long does it take to cure?
You can't really stack the stones too high while the bottom ones cure, so how long in between pouring, and curing, did they have to wait? How much time does that add? Is 20 years sufficient?
It's 92 million cubic feet of material. 20,000 workers working 300 days a year gets you 6 million man days per year. It it takes one man day to mine, mix, and place a cubic foot of concrete (~150 pounds) that's a bit over 15 years for that. For reference a cubic foot is less than two 5 gallon Home Depot buckets, so this is not a lot of material for 8 hours of work.
As far as drying time, it's 481 feet high and the upper layers have a block height of about 1.5 feet, so worst case it's 320 layers thick. It takes 3 days to reach 40% of it's 28 day strength (99% of ultimate strength), so worst case you spend 960 days waiting for it to cure. But in reality the base blocks were substantially taller and there was a lot more material at the bottom, so it's likely if you worked in sections by the time you finished the last part of the bottom layer the bulk of the other stuff had already dried sufficiently to do the next layer. So it wouldn't be until you got closer to the top that the drying time might cause you to have to wait.
None of this is beyond the realm of possibility. 20,000 can do a stupid amount of manual labor over 20 years.
Doesn't that same link you shared also state that many people working so closely together wouldnt work? As in logistically and spacially it'd be a nightmare
I imagine a large number are off mining materials to actually make the concrete. As for the rest, the bottom layer was over 550,000 square feet. That's a lot of room for 5 or 10 thousand people. As you build up you need less people. And you can always work in shifts to spread out the people.