how did ancient civilizations quarry granite (or any other similar stone- marble), move it around, process it and build with it?
The ancient Egyptians cut it with a sort of saw made of copper. Copper seemed to the only metal that they used for this - they didn't seem to deal with bronze much. A sheet of copper had a handle on each end - and then this was pulled back and forth across the granite (like a cross-cut sawblade) - and somebody would add quartz sand to the groove, and it was this quartz sand which did the cutting. Obviously took a LONG time. I imagine a groove for the saw was initially cut into the granite by bashing it with another granite rock. People must have sat for weeks on end bashing the granite. And this is then how statues were made from the granite too - constant bashing and pulverizing the surface. Lots of man hours in all this.
