Jean-Pierre Houdin spent a cou­ple of decades work­ing as an inde­pen­dent archi­tect around Paris. Then, his career took a big turn. Work­ing with his father, Houdin tried to crack an ancient mys­tery — how were the great pyra­mids of Egypt built?

Through­out the cen­turies, var­i­ous the­o­ries have been put forth. Herodotus, who vis­it­ed Egypt around 450 B.C., spec­u­lat­ed that some “machines” were involved. Oth­ers thought that mounds serv­ing as ramps played a cen­tral role in the con­struc­tion. And still oth­ers have guessed that extrater­res­tri­als were the real builders (seri­ous­ly).

Now Houdin enters into the debate with what Egyp­tol­o­gist Bob Brier calls a “rad­i­cal new the­o­ry.” Using state-of-the-art 3‑D soft­ware, Houdin has con­clud­ed that the bot­tom por­tion of the pyra­mids were built with an exter­nal ramp, and the upper por­tions with inter­nal ramps. Brier sum­ma­rizes the the­o­ry rather well in this short arti­cle.

Houd­in’s work has focused par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Great Pyra­mid of Giza, oth­er­wise known as the Pyra­mid of Khu­fu, built cir­ca 2500 B.C. (See image here). And he has gone so far as to cre­ate a 3D inter­ac­tive film that visu­al­ly doc­u­ments his hypoth­e­sis. We’ve embed­ded a good clip above. You can also head to Khu­fu Reborn to get the full inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence. (Note: You’ll need a PC, 3D glass­es and some down­load­able plu­g­ins to make it all work.)

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