Ancient Egyptian drill holes question

Ok, so I'm having this debate with a pyramidiot and the drill holes keep surfacing every now and then.

It's kinda hard to argue to this specific argument because i can't find almost any scientific conclusions about stone drilling/cutting in Egypt except some pretty vague texts about bronze cylinders/saws and sand. Ok, there are a couple of vieos of reenactment of sawing a lime stone with bronze saw and sand but what about driling holes and especially about granite working?

I don't doubt that they probably used the same approach everywhere but shouldn't there be experimental archaeologyst reenacting these theories? And if there aren't, then why? What seems to be the problem?

Another thing I dont quite get is the quality of the holes, especially in granite, because this is the material repeatedly pointied out. So, we are shown those nice, even shiny holes, some of them with radial grooves that are supposed to prove that they were cut with a step of approximately 2 mm or something like that which should have been impossible by conventional methods.

Well, of course i doubt that the grooves are spiral which the sould be if they were to indicate the drilling speed and step. Has anybody studied them and pointed out if they are just radial or spiral? If radial, i could explain them very simply: after every certain time or drilling depth the workers replaced the old abrasive (sand) with the fresh one. Now the fresh one, being a better cutter either made a wider or narrower cut (not sure yet, which one; I suspect that in time the sand was powderized and got additional volume from both granite and saw itself and it started to cut these wider sections in drill holes because of the expanding volume but who knows (well, really - I want to know who knows, if anybody; that's why I'm here!)) and when it was worn out, it made the opposite cut. But if they really ARE spiral, then we're ********** i guess. I don't see an appropriate explanation for this.
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Of course, even if the secret of these holes remains a secret forever, it doesn't prove that the aliens or ancient hi-tec civilization did it. It's obvious to rational people that if they had a tecnology to powercut granit as we are able do it only nowadays, they must have had other abilities too! It's not like you have a knowledge of power-cutting and you build the whole pyramid with hi-tec tools but you transport the stones on papyrus rafts and break them from quarry with bronze tools and live in mud huts and...well...in general wont leave behind any hard evidence of this at all. You know what I mean... Pyramidiocy is nothing else than a version of a God of Gaps.

But i'll wait for your answers to my questions. Thank you!

Pyramidiots constantly make use of the fact that at this remove in time, it is impossible to be definitive about exactly how the Egyptians actually did it. At best, the evidence may lead to a suggested likely method that was used, but it remains impossible to be 100% certain. This, of course, allows the pyramidots to claim that "science deosn't know" and to be correct in that claim. The onion in their ointment is that science is perfectly comfortable in that position. Science does not claim to have information that it can't possibly know. Pyramidiots, in contrast, actually do flat out claim to know things they cannot possibly know. Much like any other religion.

As an example, some of the Egyptian holes exhibit evidence of a drilling method known as "trepanning" (not to be confused with the similar ancient medical procedure) such as the charactistic spiral in the hole walls and tapering shape. (wiki for a brief description).
The evidence seems to indicate that was used for some holes but one cannot be certain that the Egyptians did not invent a novel method of their own.

This makes me wonder, you know! With all the knowledge we've got, we can't come up with a satisfying solution that would also fit into the historical background? ****! They didn't have much choices, you know. Actually they had almost no choices at all! I mean, there are only a few coices to be chosen between in a bronze era to drill holes into stone.

Trepanning does not seem to be the case cause as much as i understand it, it could not have been done (back then) in subjectively narrow and deep holes.

Welcome Noriahbooks. I wonder if you might actually be playing devil's advocate here, and if your interest isn't so much in debunking but reinforcing?

Noriabooks said:

This makes me wonder, you know! With all the knowledge we've got, we can't come up with a satisfying solution that would also fit into the historical background? ****! They didn't have much choices, you know. Actually they had almost no choices at all! I mean, there are only a few coices to be chosen between in a bronze era to drill holes into stone.

Trepanning does not seem to be the case cause as much as i understand it, it could not have been done (back then) in subjectively narrow and deep holes.

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The archaeological evidence suggests you are wrong. The method suggested is perfectly fine for wider bore holes. Other methods are suggested for other applications. There is nothing about any of them which exceeds the available Egyptian techniques of the time.

If you find these explanations somehow personally unsatisfactory then that is your subjective issue.

I could sped the time looking up the details of a shopping list of different methods, but I suspect that you would find none of them would pass your satisfaction bar.



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MikeG said:

Welcome Noriahbooks. I wonder if you might actually be playing devil's advocate here, and if your interest isn't so much in debunking but reinforcing?

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Oh, if ONLY you knew how bloody I am against all sorts of woo. I just like certainty in my arguments. I don't like going around, smashing with unsupported assertions. I like doing my homework before I enter with any argument. And obviously I want everything to be fair also for the opponent. Which menas that I just try to studuy his side if I see anything at all worthy of studying. The same person also shoots out "arguments" about "energetic fields around pyramids and that probably they were built to protect us from gamma ray burts from The great annihilator (the huge black hole, you know) and there is a bubble of energy around the pyramids that was discovered by some great researcher (i.e. a lunatic)". Well...don't even bother reading those articles he points out cause its an obvious woo.

But as we just learned, the drilling thing IS sort of mysterious. I don't say, it's anything beyond the knowledge people at that era should have had but I'm devastated to admit that i cant give him a satisfying explanation about the technique used and thus debunking those claims of "advanced technology". And that makes me sad. And you don't even try to think that i consider this a point for "them" - no i dont

Noriabooks, is the answer, "we know of several techniques that are adequate to the task and were available to the ancient Egyptians, but it's impossible to determine this long afterwards which technique they actually used", satisfying to *you*?

abaddon said:

The archaeological evidence suggests you are wrong. The method suggested is perfectly fine for wider bore holes.

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I think I said that the egyptian holes are narrow and as far as i understand, trepanning is good for wider holes. But most egyptian holes are not very wide. Well, i know next to nothing about this method and watching pics over the internet gives me no idea what is the difference between core drilling and trepanning after all.

abaddon said:

If you find these explanations somehow personally unsatisfactory then that is your subjective issue.

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Unfortunately I haven't really seen any explanation yet. Maybe we have a different standards about explaining things but when I explain something to someone I try to do is so that he would really understand. That is the reason why I'm asking for information here in the first place. Hopefully I didn't come to a wrong place...

abaddon said:

I could sped the time looking up the details of a shopping list of different methods, but I suspect that you would find none of them would pass your satisfaction bar.

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I don't think that just the shopping list would do. What I was looking for, if you noticed, is a solid research about these techniques preferrably with an experiment. They made clear experiments about sawing limestone with bronze saws and sand. They had an idea, they tested it and voila - the result. You say, they also have an idea for granite drilling? Nice! I'm honestly glad. But why don they reenact it in practice? Or do they? I guess they have tried it but....no public materials....would it be honest to suggest that it was a fail?

And I repeat: I'm not some "undercover" woo guy but a solid rationalis! I'm just honestly interested if someone has already cracked this secret and if not, then why the **** not? If you say, that we have good ideas, it wouldnt be too hard to test them all and get at least close results. If not...why are we even paying them salaries! :-D

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theprestige said:

Noriabooks, is the answer, "we know of several techniques that are adequate to the task and were available to the ancient Egyptians, but it's impossible to determine this long afterwards which technique they actually used", satisfying to *you*?

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I know, we have ideas and theories but why doesn't anybody replicate the same conditions and results? If the egyptians manages to produce lots of holes, then i don't see any reason why we cant produce them also. But we cant and i wonder why? Because I have to explain this to a guy who is talking about pyramids being power plants

Noriabooks,

Interesting topic, I am just spit ballin' here but could they have drilled the hole and then used another type of drill bit to clean up the hole. If the hole was all ready drilled, roughed out so to speak, maybe the spiral tool marks on the side are from a honing bit used to finish the job.

To clarify in archaeology there are few absolutes. We have examples of incomplete cores that point to certain techniques being used and images of them using some of the techniques. No absolute statement can be made as to which one they used (it is also possible that different artist/periods of time used slightly different techniques. What IS missing is any evidence that they used something other than the materials available and the techniques then known.

When dealing with woo they often concentrate on trying to discredit the orthodox view for the simple reason that their own 'view' has little to no evidence.

Noriabooks said:

I know, we have ideas and theories but why doesn't anybody replicate the same conditions and results? If the egyptians manages to produce lots of holes, then i don't see any reason why we cant produce them also. But we cant and i wonder why? Because I have to explain this to a guy who is talking about pyramids being power plants : D

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Why don't you just tell the guy he has ideas and theories but why doesn't he replicate the same conditions and results? But in fact I could care less about the guy and his power plants. He's not here. You and your questions about drill holes are. So let's stick to those for now. Maybe later your guy can join this forum and make his own threads to discuss his own ideas.

As to your drill holes, what makes you think we can't? It's true that we don't, because we have better ways to drill holes, and better things to do with our resources than drill holes using 4,000 year-old methods.

Leaving aside your "guy", why is it important to you to determine which of several possible methods the ancient Egyptians may have used to drill holes?

Noriabooks said:

I think I said that the egyptian holes are narrow and as far as i understand, trepanning is good for wider holes. But most egyptian holes are not very wide. Well, i know next to nothing about this method and watching pics over the internet gives me no idea what is the difference between core drilling and trepanning after all.



Unfortunately I haven't really seen any explanation yet. Maybe we have a different standards about explaining things but when I explain something to someone I try to do is so that he would really understand. That is the reason why I'm asking for information here in the first place. Hopefully I didn't come to a wrong place...



I don't think that just the shopping list would do. What I was looking for, if you noticed, is a solid research about these techniques preferrably with an experiment. They made clear experiments about sawing limestone with bronze saws and sand. They had an idea, they tested it and voila - the result. You say, they also have an idea for granite drilling? Nice! I'm honestly glad. But why don they reenact it in practice? Or do they? I guess they have tried it but....no public materials....would it be honest to suggest that it was a fail?

And I repeat: I'm not some "undercover" woo guy but a solid rationalis! I'm just honestly interested if someone has already cracked this secret and if not, then why the **** not? If you say, that we have good ideas, it wouldnt be too hard to test them all and get at least close results. If not...why are we even paying them salaries! :-D

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I know, we have ideas and theories but why doesn't anybody replicate the same conditions and results? If the egyptians manages to produce lots of holes, then i don't see any reason why we cant produce them also. But we cant and i wonder why? Because I have to explain this to a guy who is talking about pyramids being power plants

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There is no "secret" to crack. We could come up with 50 potential methods, all of which are viable. There is simply no way to be certain which, if any, the Egyptians actually used, or if they used an entirely different method that we never thought of.

The point is that such methods are entirely viable using technology available at the time and utterly mundane. Occam's Razor applies here. Invent unnecessary additional entities in the argument is not on. If they could do it by mundane means, there is no need for "secret" methods or aliens.

Now, in my original response, a little investigooling turned up many different methods for many different types of hole, including the type you now restrict yourself to, some of which I was aware of and some not. It only took seconds. There is no reason why you could not do this for yourself. This indicates to me that you are trying to get people to be your internet monkeys and will reject any response on the basis that it is not "personally satisfying" to you. There is, of course, a term for such efforts. I am sure you can google that too.

theprestige said:

Why don't you just tell the guy he has ideas and theories but why doesn't he replicate the same conditions and results? But in fact I could care less about the guy and his power plants. He's not here. You and your questions about drill holes are. So let's stick to those for now. Maybe later your guy can join this forum and make his own threads to discuss his own ideas.

As to your drill holes, what makes you think we can't? It's true that we don't, because we have better ways to drill holes, and better things to do with our resources than drill holes using 4,000 year-old methods.

Leaving aside your "guy", why is it important to you to determine which of several possible methods the ancient Egyptians may have used to drill holes?

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I suggest to those who think we can't because the art has been lost to offer up a prize of say 250,000 USD for a person who can directly replicate one of the AE methods of drilling. In time it would be accomplished

It takes time and effort to regain a lost art. It took two generations for people to replicate the efforts of stone tool makers.

Example: If you had a time machine and went back to ancient Egypt and handed them a football could they do a forward pass in the style of the best American quarterbacks? Nope not at all - does that mean that a quarterback of the 21st century couldn't do what we have records of? No.

The ancient Egyptians would have to recreate most of the aspects of the American foot ball culture to finally produce someone who could do what a modern quarterback can quite easy do now days. The same applies to getting a modern artist to reestablish the ancient art of stone core drilling.

Its gonna take a lot of time and at present there is little motivation to spent that amount of time to do so.

In usual machining terminology, tubular drilling, core drilling, and trepanning are all basically the same thing. Trepanning is simply drilling a circular pattern and leaving a core, rather than drilling the entire hole. You can make a tubular drill pretty small. I've seen some stuff that suggests it's not that hard to do a hole down to 1/4 inch or so with a tubular drill and emery or other abrasive, and that emery was known of and available. The larger the hole, the more a tubular drill is needed, but if loose abrasive is used, it makes sense as small as you can make it.

If you're determined to be a pyramidiot, it's hard to prove that magic or extraterrestrial technology, or some lost art, did not come into play; but if you can show that the job could be done with the technology we know was available, you have shown that the other things are not necessary.

We can never be sure of some things, but we can get a pretty good guess from fragments that are left, and better yet when the Egyptians drew pictures of what they were doing.

I found an interesting site (archived from an old geocities site) that looks as if it addresses at least some issues.

http://www.oocities.org/unforbidden_geology/ancient_egyptian_copper_coring_drills.html

Noriabooks

About 20 years or more ago, I attended a two-day conference in London, where various speakers talked of how it must of course have been advanced, ultra-sound equipment that was used to make the smooth insides of stone amphorae. Fortunately, I was already very much a sceptic! Then in the mid-2000s I acquired a computer and sort of 'discovered' the Graham Hancock forum and this one. My first posts to both were on this subject. on the Mysteries section of this page of the GH forum there have regularly been long discussions on Egyptian drilled holes. The poster whose feet have remained firmly on the
ground, is ArchaeSolenhofen. (I'm susandoris there.)


It seems to me that, if someone wants to believe that Egyptian stone-drilling skills are (a) impossible to replicate, or (b) must have used some advanced technique, then logical explanations, or 'we don't actually know every detail' simply will not be accepted!

I always find it amazing that the Great Pyramid remained the tallest man-made structure for 3,800 years. Nothing quite motivates the mind like the belief that God wants you to build something cool for him.

Nakani said:

Noriabooks,

Interesting topic, I am just spit ballin' here but could they have drilled the hole and then used another type of drill bit to clean up the hole. If the hole was all ready drilled, roughed out so to speak, maybe the spiral tool marks on the side are from a honing bit used to finish the job.

Click to expand...

I see the tool marks are on the cores as well, so I guess that's not possible.

theprestige said:

Why don't you just tell the guy he has ideas and theories but why doesn't he replicate the same conditions and results? But in fact I could care less about the guy and his power plants. He's not here. You and your questions about drill holes are. So let's stick to those for now. Maybe later your guy can join this forum and make his own threads to discuss his own ideas.

As to your drill holes, what makes you think we can't? It's true that we don't, because we have better ways to drill holes, and better things to do with our resources than drill holes using 4,000 year-old methods.

Leaving aside your "guy", why is it important to you to determine which of several possible methods the ancient Egyptians may have used to drill holes?

Click to expand...

Actually, what makes anyone think that we don't STILL do the same things?

Using sand as an abrasive on much harder materials is still very much in use. We still have sandpaper or files made of basically small hard particles on a metal surface. Sure, they're actually bonded, as opposed to the Egyptians just pouring loose sand and using a copper band or tube to push it around, but it's just a minor evolution of the same thing.

Hell, even using loose sand is still in use, e.g., in sandblasting. Again, it's not the same technique, but an evolution of it, but it's still using sand in the same role.

But on the topic of drilling or widening or smoothing holes in harder materials using sand, yes, it is used today. It's called a spindle sander. You can even do it at home. And there are tutorials all over the web. Not that there's that much of a complicated tutorial, since it boils down to putting a wooden dowel in your drill and using either sandpaper or just sand for it to rub against the hole you're trying to sand.

So, you know, it's not even some lost art. It's STILL in use, 5000 years later. Some DIY guy is probably sanding a hole that way somewhere while you read this.

There may be things from the past -- e.g., Damascus steel -- that are a lost art (or lost and found) but sanding is not it. It's never been lost.

HansMustermann

And the difficulty is, of course, that those who want there to be some 'advanced', 'mysterious', 'lost' technology involved will not see even that they might be wrong.

SusanB-M1 said:

HansMustermann

And the difficulty is, of course, that those who want there to be some 'advanced', 'mysterious', 'lost' technology involved will not see even that they might be wrong.

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You just hit the nail on the head. These people WANT these things to be true, so they will go to extreme lengths to deny anything not fitting their predetermined world view. You can show them how something could have been accomplished with mundane technology available at the time, but they'll never accept it. They'll always find a "flaw" with whatever you present, or invent a flaw if one doesn't exist, in order to hold onto their belief. I really think that there is a large portion of society who has begun to abandon traditional religions only to replace them with a new "religion" of aliens.

bruto said:

.......I found an interesting site (archived from an old geocities site) that looks as if it addresses at least some issues.

http://www.oocities.org/unforbidden_geology/ancient_egyptian_copper_coring_drills.html

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Question answered.

[/thread]

Noriabooks said:

If the egyptians manages to produce lots of holes, then i don't see any reason why we cant produce them also. But we cant and i wonder why?

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We can't? Or we haven't?

Maybe no-one so far has bothered to try. Maybe it's difficult and no-one has managed to get the resources together yet. Perhaps you'd like to try.

arthwollipot said:

We can't? Or we haven't?

Maybe no-one so far has bothered to try. Maybe it's difficult and no-one has managed to get the resources together yet. Perhaps you'd like to try.

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It's even worse for Noriabooks. Such ancient drilling techniques actually have been replicated despite his/her protestations to the contrary that we can't.

Example. Plenty more in the listed references too.

arthwollipot said:

We can't? Or we haven't?

Maybe no-one so far has bothered to try. Maybe it's difficult and no-one has managed to get the resources together yet. Perhaps you'd like to try.

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It took me only a few moments to find this: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/obelisk/cutting07.html

Web content from 16 years ago, describing some practical archaeology carried out for the Nova TV show, including trepanning into granite with a copper tube drill and sand as the abrasive.

So when someone actually tries the technique, it turns out that it works.

Well there you go then.

There is one element still left; the suggestion that the grooves in the drilled holes might be spiral rather than radial:

Noriabooks said:

... of course i doubt that the grooves are spiral which the sould be if they were to indicate the drilling speed and step. Has anybody studied them and pointed out if they are just radial or spiral?

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It would certainly be very surprising indeed if the tool marks left in the drilled holes or the removed cores were spiral (implying a very fast cutting speed) but my first thought is that it would be such a "holy cow!" discovery that somebody would have mentioned it. It's not something you're likely to resolve by searching through still images unless you can get a really good profile picture of a core, clear enough to see that the grooves are exactly at right angles to the cut.

Noriabooks reaction to this complete and utter answer will be interesting. I still suspect we are dealing with a supporter of the nutty alternative theories.

Oh, and Noriabrooks...........you meant helical rather than spiral.

MikeG said:

Noriabooks reaction to this complete and utter answer will be interesting. I still suspect we are dealing with a supporter of the nutty alternative theories.

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That was impression also as I've seen this 'asking questions because I'm debating a nut' approach many times before.

arthwollipot said:

We can't? Or we haven't?

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Neither, really. As I was saying, variants of the basic use of sand to cut or drill through much harder materials have been in use uninterrupted for thousands of years.

arthwollipot said:

Maybe no-one so far has bothered to try. Maybe it's difficult and no-one has managed to get the resources together yet. Perhaps you'd like to try.

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Well, or MAYBE you're just too nice and give people too much credit to know what they're talking about when they say that something can't or hasn't been done. Usually it's more of an (often unintentional) argument from ignorance: they haven't googled it, so obviously it's never been done

The fact is, for just about any ancient technique that you hear hyped as impossible to replicate, or impossible to do better, etc, chances are it has already been done and better. In fact, that's statistically the safest default position to assume.

Most of the reason that kind of thing isn't mainstream, which is really the only reason CT-ers never heard of it, is one or more of:

- it's not really needed any more (e.g., why we don't build bigger pyramids or better katanas)

- it's not very efficient or good bang per buck (e.g., why we use a locomotive instead of people pulling huge stones on sleds)

- we can do much better, so there's no reason to do the old thing (e.g., hell, not only we can build a better pyramid, but so could the Egyptians. Imhotep's first pyramid was a MUCH more advanced design than Cheops's: it used less material AND manpower AND offered vastly more interior space.)

Etc.

Or, of course, as in the case of using sand, we ARE still doing the same things. We're just using power tools because it's cheaper and faster than having some guys do it by hand. But there's nothing special about it, other than replacing muscle power with a motor, really.

In fact, as someone with a bit of an interest in ancient Egypt, here's something that most people don't realize: far from being examples of advanced tech, Egyptian pyramids and generally monuments were SUPPOSED to be pretty much the LEAST efficient use of manpower even at the time.

You want to know what they were? They were the equivalent of the 19'th century follies in the UK. You know, building some castle in the middle of nowhere, or a road leading from nowhere to nowhere. It was the pre-keynesian (only) kind of pseudo-welfare. You wouldn't just give the poor money, because we thought it will just make everyone lazy. So you'd pay them to do some useless construction effort instead.

It was actually a bad thing if the Pharaoh didn't permanently have hordes of people working for his monument, or monuments. So if you finished your pyramid early, you'd start a bigger one. Like Cheops did. Or have people dig some pointless tunnels under it to keep them busy. Again, like Cheops did.

It wasn't even supposed to be some super-efficient use of material or manpower. It was actually just supposed to keep a whole lot of people employed. Even if it was with pointless stuff like digging some tunnels to nowhere.

MikeG said:

Noriabooks reaction to this complete and utter answer will be interesting. I still suspect we are dealing with a supporter of the nutty alternative theories.

Oh, and Noriabrooks...........you meant helical rather than spiral.

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Ya think? Blatant wolf in sheep's clothing. I don't believe this but my friend does? Does anyone buy that for a nanosecond ?

I think not.
Not to mention that our protagist is most shy. Odd that.

HansMustermann said:

Well, or MAYBE...

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Maybe my statement has already been answered.

Once again, the crazy rush to be the first to call "Woo."

Congratulations. We've all seen JAQ trolls, but there's no actual evidence of that, here. Cut the new guys some breaks, kids. We're not attracting new members as it is. The gauntlet of suspicious cynics is not exactly a welcome wagon.

We can at least hope that Noriabooks has traipsed off to woo-land with a pile of crispy new evidence which he will show to his friend, argument by cogent argument, which, if he is a rationalist and his friend a pyramidiot in good standing, will result in a return post saying something like "I showed him all this good stuff and the * didn't believe a word of it."

Eventually he will learn that it's sometimes easier to drill through granite than through belief.

In this article, they talk about the trepanning type holes. The surprising thing is supposed to be the rate of the drilling based on spiral groves in the hole.

I don't have the expertise to evaluate the claim, but it does make you wonder.

http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/cdunn-3.php

marplots said:

In this article, they talk about the trepanning type holes. The surprising thing is supposed to be the rate of the drilling based on spiral groves in the hole.

I don't have the expertise to evaluate the claim, but it does make you wonder.

http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/cdunn-3.php

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What if those spiral grooves are the grooves made by some sort of hollow tube, which was sort of jammed onto the standing pilar in order to grab it tightly (there might be some innuendo in there somewhere) in order to break it loose?

That might explain the apparant rate of drilling.

A bit like they do now with tapping screw threads in holes. The screw threads also don't indicate any rate of drilling.

marplots said:

In this article, they talk about the trepanning type holes. The surprising thing is supposed to be the rate of the drilling based on spiral groves in the hole.

I don't have the expertise to evaluate the claim, but it does make you wonder.

http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/egypt/articles/cdunn-3.php

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Well, you just need to read the next page to realize that the guy is too stupid to be having the conversation, when he says that copper couldn't cut granite because it's not hard enough. Yeah, copper couldn't, but it's not the copper doing the cutting: SAND is. Copper just pushes the sand around.

Basically it's like saying you couldn't polish stainless steel with sandpaper, because paper isn't harder than steel. Yeah, sure, but it's not the paper doing the abrading. The sand is. The paper just moves the sand around.

And his grooves thing is basically more of the same idiocy. Yes, if it were a modern drill, you COULD calculate the rate by the grooves. But it's just abrasion marks left by the loose sand particles. So it's like saying you can measure how fast a brushed steel elevator door was cut by measuring the distance between the brush grooves. It's just stupid.

And I've yet to see any evidence that they're spiral outside the same copy and pasted ASSERTION on pyramidiot sites. Though it wouldn't be a big surprise if it were a bit slanted, since it's a tapered core, and pushing the tube in would push sand and abraded material OUT as you turn the tube.

I mean, as you drill inwards, that material goes out.

So essentially all it indicates is the rate at which stuff got pushed out of the hole.

HansMustermann said:

So essentially all it indicates is the rate at which stuff got pushed out of the hole.

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Or the rate the cutter was extracted from the hole.

As I was saying, the cutting material was loose sand. A hollow copper tube (or a copper band when cutting straight) was just pushing the sand around. So, yeah, pushed out, extracted, or whatever else terminology boils down to the same thing ultimately.

http://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/ancient-egyptian-stone-drilling/

Created the same patterns with a copper tube, crushed emery and water.