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Chasing Mummies – evidence and truth

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Chasing Mummies is kind of like a cross between the reality showness of Deadliest Catch and History’s Mysteries. I like these kind of shows. My kids like these shows. It’s win-win.

The basic idea of this show is to follow this dude, Zahi Hawass- he is like in charge of all the Egyptian museums. Here is a youtube clip that gives a pretty good overview.

However, I do have a beef – well maybe it is just a small quibble. At the beginning of one show, Zahi is all pumped up about some new discovery. They found some tombs near the great pyramids that seem to be the tombs of workers that did all the construction. Zahi then goes on a small rant (it seemed like a rant to me) to the media and press claiming that THE BUILDERS OF THE PYRAMIDS WERE NOT SLAVES!!!! He seriously looked angry.

Before I go on, let me make something clear. I am not an archeologist – although I have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark like 200 times. So, the stuff I am talking about here is not really whether the builders were slaves or free. I want to talk about science. There are couple of things that Zahi keeps bringing up.

  • Truth
  • Prove

Let me go ahead and re-use my favorite Indiana Jones quote:

i-531feef82a60ef08da57335c09d89423-indy-truth.jpg

“”If it’s truth you are looking for, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is down the hall”

Science is not about the truth. Science is about building models. So, maybe Zahi is supporting the historical model that it was not slave that built the pyramids. I am ok with that. But is it the truth? I guess we will never know – alas, but that is the way of science. This also goes along with the use of proof (or prove).

There is another small problem. Suppose the previous model of pyramid-buildingology says that it was slaves that built them. There must be some evidence for this, right? And not you get just one piece of evidence that says it might not be slaves, what does that mean? Actually, in this episode, Zahi goes on to show some other evidence regarding the builders – but when he talks to the media, he focuses on just these tombs.

The bonus is when Zahi explodes at one of his research students for suggesting the pyramids were built by aliens. That was golden.


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