Biggest ancient block confirmed, It's a Monster.

originally posted by: Hanslune
As for carving the stones, lots of work but nothing beyond the masons of the time.

Sure, they could have carved them--I could carve a stone that large simply by rubbing other stones against it. It may take decades, but I could. The main question is, "Why?" Hopefully my previous comment is a decent consideration to answer the "why."

Don't ya just wish they had you-tube?

originally posted by: SlapMonkey

originally posted by: Hanslune
As for carving the stones, lots of work but nothing beyond the masons of the time.

Sure, they could have carved them--I could carve a stone that large simply by rubbing other stones against it. It may take decades, but I could. The main question is, "Why?" Hopefully my previous comment is a decent consideration to answer the "why."

Because they were trying to built the world's largest archaic style shrine to Jupiter and due to the nature of the hilly terrain (for some reason that specific piece of terrain needed to be used - probably because they were building over a bronze age site that was sacred for some reason) they needed a massive retaining wall to the keep the whole, very heavy, structure stable.

That is the best guess we can make - only a tiny fraction of what the Roman's wrote about has survived, probably somewhere they did note the reason, it would have cost a lot and that cost went on for generations, so it was probably discussed at length.

We shall not know the thought process behind the stones - we only see the remains.

a reply to: DrakeINFERNO

correct and something may look square until you put one on it.

a reply to: SLAYER69

'ancient aliens debunked'
link

I see somebody labelled it recently...you know, just in case it got moved around and mixed up with the others.

If the stone was cut on a level and one contained water upon one side, the high/low spots would instantly be noticable.

A famous quote by Archimedes, 287 BC – c. 212 BC.

“Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.”

it's all in the mind, once you break free from the "control" absolutely anything is possible. WE are very powerful beings, our powers are just suppressed.

a reply to: masqua

oh, i really like some of your artwork there masq
if you ever get out lebanon way...
there's this really big stone block there you should paint on

I wonder what they were planning to make with that stone, and how come it was abandoned?

a reply to: rickymouse

what little I read , some stones were abandoned because they were not suitable, and the stones were foundation stones, Mr. Ricky.

These giant blocks from Baalbek and elsewhere have fascinated me for a long time. I have had discussions with friends who argue the the ancients did it, and they picked them up with brute force and rolled them on logs. When I argue that you can't get enough hands on the thing, they offer no explanation. But if we forget about moving them for a minute, here is what I (and my friends) can't get past. If we agree for a minute that they used a saw or chisels or whatever to square off the sides and top, can someone theorize how you would cut the bottom out of the bedrock? Would any tool/blade get stuck by the weight of the the block? Did you ever try a 'saw' a tree down? Multiple that by a gazillion. And if it were chisels, how do you get all the way across the bottom? It's almost 20 feet across.

originally posted by: skunkape23
a reply to: Aleister
I can see the supervisor showing up in the morning, his jaw dropping.
"Can you not read a drawing!? It's supposed to be 64 x 19.6 inches! How the hell are we supposed to move this!?"

Just like Noah must have said.

God: "Noah, you will build an ark measuring 1000 cubits long and..."

Noah: "Whoa boss....What the hell is a cubit?"

Peace

Take a square and build some round wooden wheels on each end to turn it into a giant axle if you want to move it.




This page source of pic gives a good overview.

The article sites Jean-Pierre Adam's, “A propos du trilithon de Baalbek. Le transport et la mise en oeuvre des megaliths" where he documents a Granite block weighing 1250 tonnes ( not as big as the OPs but still impressive) being moved without using modern cranes/heavy lifting gear in 1765 as a demonstration of manpower and ingenuity.

a reply to: Jukiodone

But how do you get it off the ground to get the wood under it? Which begs the question, how do you remove the bottom from the original bedrock/granite it came from? Saw? Chisel? Laser?

a reply to: XP100

Dig a hole or trench underneath it? Just like this man building a replica of Stonehenge in his back yard-all by himself!

originally posted by: skunkape23
a reply to: Aleister
I can see the supervisor showing up in the morning, his jaw dropping.
"Can you not read a drawing!? It's supposed to be 64 x 19.6 inches! How the hell are we supposed to move this!?"

Kinda like Spinal Tap and the under sized model of Stonehenge,but round the other way.

originally posted by: XP100
These giant blocks from Baalbek and elsewhere have fascinated me for a long time. I have had discussions with friends who argue the the ancients did it, and they picked them up with brute force and rolled them on logs. When I argue that you can't get enough hands on the thing, they offer no explanation. But if we forget about moving them for a minute, here is what I (and my friends) can't get past. If we agree for a minute that they used a saw or chisels or whatever to square off the sides and top, can someone theorize how you would cut the bottom out of the bedrock? Would any tool/blade get stuck by the weight of the the block? Did you ever try a 'saw' a tree down? Multiple that by a gazillion. And if it were chisels, how do you get all the way across the bottom? It's almost 20 feet across.

Rope technology attached to a sled or using the Roman method of using windlasses - take a look how renaissance age Romans raised Egyptian obelisks in Rome, they used a network of windlasses.

They leveled the top, trenched around the edges and at the end would have carved away the bottom while supporting it with timber (look up compressibility of wood). You can see in the image below that they had started that but stopped. The lady in green is standing in front of the larger better known one and the newly found one is at her feet.



Of course with these monsters they didn't try and move them but they did move the smaller (half the size ones) .

Very few really large stones were moved - probably because it was beastly hard to do so.

I am guessing the ancients cut the thing, and then facepalmed themselves when they realized that they couldn't move it, hence why it is still in the quarry. Cutting it is not the hard part. Well that is not to say that it would be easy, but it is not back-breaking work like moving such a monstrosity. Now I wouldn't go so far as to claim that it would have been impossible for these ancient peoples to have moved a block of this size...If I've learned anything at all about engineering projects in the ancient world it is that a variety of difficult tasks can be accomplished by sheer will and manpower, along with a little ingenuity. But mostly manpower. Take the pyramids for instance, which were built using sheer determination and the combined strength of the workers, even if they could have used the principles of simple machines.

I know this wasn't the point of the thread, but there are those who like to advance alien hypotheses, or other "out there" ideas as far as the construction of ancient sites goes, but something that I believe often gets overlooked is the fact that at a location like the pyramids we know there were thousands of workers...If there was some great technology in use, wouldn't all those workers be unnecessary? That is partly why I kind of get annoyed with those explanations. I still cannot get over just how large this block is. I just find myself wondering how they planned on moving the thing. I'm not sure that sheer manpower could overcome this particular obstacle to be honest. Unless John Titor went back in time, picked up Ed Leedskalnin, and then went further back in time to help with certain ancient constructions, then went back and dropped Ed off in his regular time, with John finally travelling back to the future. You heard it here first.