第1段

No one knows exactly how the pyramids were built. Marcus Chown reckons the answer could be ‘hanging in the air’.

第1段：

没有人确切知道金字塔是如何建造的。马库斯·乔恩认为答案可能是“悬浮在空中”。

第2段

The pyramids of Egypt were built more than three thousand years ago, and no one knows how. The conventional picture is that tens of thousands of slaves dragged stones on sledges. But there is no evidence to back this up. Now a Californian software consultant called Maureen Clemmons has suggested that kites might have been involved. While perusing a book on the monuments of Egypt, she noticed a hieroglyph that showed a row of men standing in odd postures. They were holding what looked like ropes that led, via some kind of mechanical system, to a giant bird in the sky. She wondered if perhaps the bird was actually a giant kite, and the men were using it to lift a heavy object.

第2段：

埃及的金字塔建造于三千多年前，至今无人知晓其建造方法。传统观点认为成千上万的奴隶用雪橇拖动巨石。但没有证据支持这一观点。现在，加利福尼亚州的软件顾问莫琳·克莱蒙斯提出了风筝可能参与其中的想法。在阅读一本关于埃及古迹的书时，她注意到一个象形文字描绘了一排奇怪姿势的人。他们手上拿着看起来像绳子的东西，通过某种机械系统连接到天空中的一只巨大的鸟身上。她想知道这只鸟实际上是否是一只巨大的风筝，人们是否利用它来抬起重物。

第3段

Intrigued, Clemmons contacted Morteza Gharib, aeronautics professor at the California Institute of Technology. He was fascinated by the idea. ‘Coming from Iran, I have a keen interest in Middle Eastern science,’ he says. He too was puzzled by the picture that had sparked Clemmons’s interest. The object in the sky apparently had wings far too short and wide for a bird. ‘The possibility certainly existed that it was a kite,’ he says. And since he needed a summer project for his student Emilio Graff, investigating the possibility of using kites as heavy lifters seemed like a good idea.

第3段：

对此感到好奇，克莱蒙斯联系了加利福尼亚理工学院的航空学教授莫尔泰扎·加里布。他对这个想法很感兴趣。他说：“作为来自伊朗的人，我对中东科学有着浓厚的兴趣。”他也对引起克莱蒙斯兴趣的那幅图片感到困惑。天空中的物体看起来有着过于短而宽的翅膀，不像是鸟的样子。“它很有可能是一只风筝，”他说。由于他需要一个夏季项目给他的学生埃米利奥·格拉夫，研究使用风筝作为重型起重机的可能性似乎是个好主意。

第4段

Gharib and Graff set themselves the task of raising a 4.5-metre stone column from horizontal to vertical, using no source of energy except the wind. Their initial calculations and scale-model wind-tunnel experiments convinced them they wouldn’t need a strong wind to lift the 33.5-tonne column. Even a modest force, if sustained over a long time, would do. The key was to use a pulley system that would magnify the applied force. So they rigged up a tent-shaped scaffold directly above the tip of the horizontal column, with pulleys suspended from the scaffold’s apex. The idea was that as one end of the column rose, the base would roll across the ground on a trolley.

第4段：

加里布和格拉夫的任务是使用风力以外的任何能源将一根4.5米高的石柱从水平位置竖立起来。他们最初的计算和比例模型风洞实验让他们确信，他们不需要很强的风力来抬起33.5吨的石柱。即使是适度的力量，如果持续一段时间，也足够了。关键是使用一个可以放大应用力的滑轮系统。所以他们在水平石柱的顶端正上方搭建了一个帐篷形状的脚手架，脚手架顶部悬挂有滑轮。他们的想法是，当柱子的一端上升时，底部将在一个滑车上在地面上滚动。

第5段

Earlier this year, the team put Clemmons’s unlikely theory to the test, using a 40-square-metre rectangular nylon sail. The kite lifted the column clean off the ground. We were absolutely stunned,’ Gharib says. ‘The instant the sail opened into the wind, a huge force was generated and the column was raised to the vertical in a mere 40 seconds.’

第5段：

今年早些时候，该团队对克莱蒙斯看似不可思议的理论进行了测试，使用了一个40平方米的矩形尼龙帆布。风筝将石柱从地面上抬了起来。“我们完全惊呆了。”加里布说，“帆布一展开迎着风，立即产生了巨大的力量，石柱在短短40秒内竖立起来。”

第6段

The wind was blowing at a gentle 16 to 20 kilometres an hour, little more than half what they thought would be needed. What they had failed to reckon with was what happened when the kite was opened. ‘There was a huge initial force- five times larger than the steady state force,’ Gharib says. This jerk meant that kites could lift huge weights, Gharib realised. Even a 300-tonne column could have been lifted to the vertical with 40 or so men and four or five sails. So Clemmons was right: the pyramid builders could have used kites to lift massive stones into place. ‘Whether they actually did is another matter,’ Gharib says. There are no pictures showing the construction of the pyramids, so there is no way to tell what really happened. ‘The evidence for using kites to move large stones is no better or worse than the evidence for the brute force method,’ Gharib says.

第6段：

风速只有每小时16到20公里，不到他们预计所需的一半多。他们没有考虑到风筝展开时会发生什么。“一开始的力量非常巨大，比稳定状态下的力量大五倍。”加里布说。这种突然的拉力意味着风筝可以承载巨大的重量。加里布意识到，即使是一个300吨的石柱，也可以用40个左右的人和四五个风帆抬到竖直位置。所以克莱蒙斯是对的：金字塔建造者可能使用风筝将巨石吊装到指定位置。“他们是否真的这样做过是另外一回事，”加里布说。没有描绘金字塔建造过程的图片，所以无法确定到底发生了什么。“使用风筝移动大石头的证据与使用强行方法的证据一样具有说服力，也一样不能说服，”加里布说。

第7段

Indeed, the experiments have left many specialists unconvinced. ‘The evidence for kite-lifting is non-existent,’ says Willeke Wendrich, an associate professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

第7段：

事实上，这些实验让许多专家表示怀疑。“没有风筝吊装的证据。”加州大学洛杉矶分校的埃及学副教授威勒克·温德里希说道。

第8段

Others feel there is more of a case for the theory. Harnessing the wind would not have been a problem for accomplished sailors like the Egyptians. And they are known to have used wooden pulleys, which could have been made strong enough to bear the weight of massive blocks of stone. In addition, there is some physical evidence that the ancient Egyptians were interested in flight. A wooden artefact found on the step pyramid at Saqqara looks uncannily like a modern glider. Although it dates from several hundred years after the building of the pyramids, its sophistication suggests that the Egyptians might have been developing ideas of flight for a long time. And other ancient civilisations certainly knew about kites; as early as 1250 BC, the Chinese were using them to deliver messages and dump flaming debris on their foes.

第8段：

其他人认为这个理论更有说服力。利用风对于像埃及人这样熟练的水手来说并不是问题。而且他们知道如何使用木制滑轮，这些滑轮足够坚固，可以承受巨大的石块的重量。此外，有一些物理证据表明古埃及人对飞行很感兴趣。在萨卡拉阶梯金字塔上发现的一件木制品看起来非常像现代的滑翔机。尽管它的年代要晚几百年，但其复杂程度表明埃及人可能长期以来一直在发展飞行的思想。其他古代文明肯定也知道风筝；早在公元前1250年，中国人就用风筝传递消息和向敌人投放燃烧的碎片。

第9段

The experiments might even have practical uses nowadays. There are plenty of places around the globe where people have no access to heavy machinery, but do know how to deal with wind, sailing and basic mechanical principles. Gharib has already been contacted by a civil engineer in Nicaragua, who wants to put up buildings with adobe roofs supported by concrete arches on a site that heavy equipment can’t reach. His idea is to build the arches horizontally, then lift them into place using kites. ‘We’ve given him some design hints,’ says Gharib. ‘We’re just waiting for him to report back.’ So whether they were actually used to build the pyramids or not, it seems that kites may make sensible construction tools in the 21st century AD.

第9段：

这些实验甚至可能在现代有实际应用。全球有很多地方人们无法使用重型机械，但他们了解如何应对风、航行和基本的机械原理。加里布已经收到尼加拉瓜的一位土木工程师的联系，他希望在无法使用重型设备的地方建造由混凝土拱支撑的泥瓦屋顶。他的想法是先水平建造拱形结构，然后利用风筝将其吊装到位。“我们给了他一些设计提示。”加里布说。“我们只等着他的报告。”所以无论金字塔是否实际上使用了风筝进行建造，似乎风筝在21世纪的建筑工具中可能是明智的选择。