Talk:Mesak Settafet

Pictures
This article could benefit enormously from a picture of the landscape and the researchers in the "pavement" of stone fragments. However, they all belong to the researchers and I couldn't find a CC photograph in my short search. I'm done looking today. Thanks Rvanarsdale (talk) 04:49, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

"Great" pyramids
This should be capitalized, as it's not referring to the quality of the pyramid but rather the specific pyramid in Giza, Egypt called the "Great Pyramid" of Giza. This is my fault for not originally clarifying. I'll fix it. Thanks. Rvanarsdale (talk) 14:32, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Pyramids per square kilometer
Apologies. In retrospect I see that my edit comment was not clear enough. I removed the layer thickness claim not because I personally found it implausible, but because the thickness conflicts with the lithic density data, and because I found a handful of mistakes and imprecisions in the paper.

The average number of lithics is given as 75.22 per square meter, and the average lithic volume as 7 cubic centimeters. That works out to a layer density of 0.5 millimeters. That's a factor of ~10000 less than the pyramid conversion.

I contacted Foley about this in 2015, and he said "I suspect you are right that there is an error in the volume estimate". He promised to redo the calculations, but apparently never got around to it. Last I checked, the paper hadn't been corrected. Let's hope this doesn't become another spinach myth.

BTW, if you want to make sure I see a comment of yours, just ping me, like I did you here. That way you can keep discussions where they belong. ;)

Happy editing, Paradoctor (talk) 12:36, 17 December 2019 (UTC)


 * That helps a lot! I was worried there was some rule of Wikipedia etiquette I was breaking by including some wild-sounding claim even if it was cited, some rule that I would link to here like people casually drop NPOV in talk pages. As you can tell by my ignorance of the ping, I'm not new to the website, but I just don't ever edit pages that become contentious, so I don't have a lot of sub-surface Wikipedia knowledge/interaction. You can also probably tell I am not a mathematician of any sort. May the revert changes button be with you. Rvanarsdale (talk) 16:37, 17 December 2019 (UTC)


 * :D Be WP:BOLD. I've been around a while, and I still have to look up stuff. If someone comes on too strong, let me know. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 18:02, 17 December 2019 (UTC)