How do scientists know the history of the Egyptian pyramids?

People were not entirely sure how old they were (except that Herodotus wrote about them in the 5th century BC and they were already old then). But the French scholar Jean-François Champollion deciphered ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time in the early 1800s, using the Rosetta Stone. read more

Until the Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered starting in the 1800's, nothing definitive was known about them. With the decipherment of the writing system, the history of Egypt became quite literally an open book. They wrote on every imaginable surface. Everywhere. read more

” The ancient Egyptians had neither wheels nor work animals, so the giant blocks, each weighing at least 2.5 tons, had to be moved through human muscle power alone. read more

No cameras were around thousands of years ago when the ancient Egyptians built the three pyramids of Giza, for each of three pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure. And so scientists have had to piece together clues as to how these towering monuments were constructed. read more

Though some popular versions of history held that the pyramids were built by slaves or foreigners forced into labor, skeletons excavated from the area show that the workers were probably native Egyptian agricultural laborers who worked on the pyramids during the time of year when the Nile River flooded much of the land nearby. read more