Why Has the Pyramid Suffered Almost No Damage from Earthquakes? RK:  These stones are cemented together, however. If they didn’t have the adhesive cement in there—you couldn’t slip a news paper between them. That’s how smooth these things were. One of the components of the adhesive was oxen blood. Of course, they had to slaughter a lot of oxen to feed all those people and, therefore, there was plenty of that around. But you know, Elmer’s glue is made with things that are very similar to that so far as stickiness is concerned. Except that their adhesive is very powerful. It really has lasted through all these many millennium. Incidentally, there are relief vents in it that absorb some of the stresses of the weight of the blocks and to help save it in the event of earthquakes. It is an absolute marvel of engineering. And this wasn’t something where they just piled of bunch of stones up. As a matter of fact, the limestone base started out as a spherical section, before they laid down the very first course. It is not a very highly raised spherical section. In other words, the radius is very large through that section. It was so engineered that when the massive weight of stone was finally finished and they put the last piece on the top, it compressed the limestone base to a perfect flat.
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