The Impossible Stones of Osaka Castle

How do you move a stone weighing 108 Tons?
Huge mf cranes, that's how.
How do you move a stone weighing 108 Tons with primitive technology?
You don't.

Construction on Osaka Castle began in 1583, though it is unclear [to me at least] whether these megalithic stones were already in place or were constructed at the time. Either way, there wasn't technology to move 108 ton stones in 1583 or 20,000 BCE. So you have a frame of reference, a semi-truck has an on road weight limit of around 22 Tons. This "Octopus Stone" as they call the big one, would be five full Semi Truck loads in Weight.

This is a new photo of the stones of Osaka Castle.



Osaka Castle's Mysterious Giant Stones

One of the most interesting discoveries I made during my visit to Osaka Castle is the special interest of the constructors for giant stones. The wall surrounding the castle includes 5 colossal stones over 100 tons and 15 stones over 50 tons! And the method of construction, how these giant stones were assembled together, is still a mystery…

Did the builders discover a new way to manipulate impossibly heavy stones? Did they build upon stones that were already in place? How were these giant stones created? They have been cut in some places to only a meter in depth, while covering an enormous surface area - enough to still weigh 50-108 tons each.

Anyone care to add information about Osaka Castle and it's construction?

yea that is crazy.. but have you ever seen this?

Slaves....lots of slaves.

Who knows? I doubt we will ever know to be honest. But the most logical way would be to use thousands of slaves to move the rocks.

Your semi trucks are only 22tons....are you sure?? Our lorries here in the UK...i like to call them Safeway lorries (old supermarket here in the UK)...weigh 40tons laden.

reply to post by loves a conspiricy


Around 22 tons is the weight limit in Texas for a "standard" rigged trailer load. This can be increased by adding extra tires on the ground. Also, depends on the weight of the truck / trailer how much is left for carry weight. I would know, I arrange semi-truck freight loads of raw materials.

And I was talking about carry capacity not total load.

People forget that with enough labor you can accomplish a great many things.

I was able to move a shed with the help of 1 friend with 3 pvc pipes and my car.

Needless to say with 20 friends we could of picked it up and walked it to a new position.

Also too the Romans created the coliseum. They didn't have heavy equipment. But they managed it.

Originally posted by grey580
People forget that with enough labor you can accomplish a great many things.

I was able to move a shed with the help of 1 friend with 3 pvc pipes and my car.

Needless to say with 20 friends we could of picked it up and walked it to a new position.

Also too the Romans created the coliseum. They didn't have heavy equipment. But they managed it.

Did it weight 100 tons?
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they had cars in 1583...
Just sayin.


The "slave" theory is so completely unfounded.

Originally posted by grey580

I was able to move a shed with the help of 1 friend with 3 pvc pipes and my car.

Needless to say with 20 friends we could of picked it up and walked it to a new position.

Also too the Romans created the coliseum. They didn't have heavy equipment. But they managed it.

Forget the shed how about a huge barn

Are you deliberatly ignoring Fisherr's post?
Just about anything heavy could be moved using these methods.

Well that barn is probably... I dunno maybe 5 Tons max.
Show me a group of people that can shape, cut and move a 100 Ton stone across wilderness and lift it into place with other 50 ton stones to construct something using only materials available before 1600.

Seriously, if you can show me that, then I'll believe. It's also possible these stones are from thousands of years prior to the construction of the castle. So, let's see a group of people do that with stone age tools.

Cool video with the guy that moves blocks, though those are WAY lighter, he moves them on modern surfaces like concrete and uses modern materials to "prep" the stones. Not the same thing.

The wall containing the large stones was built in 1624.

The wall created by the stones including the Takoishi Stone provides a further level of protection to the Hommaru (Inner Bailey) of the castle. The wall was built in 1624 (Edo period) by Tadao Ikeda, a feudal lord of Okayama, who was placed in charge of this key part of Osaka Castle by the Tokugawa shogunate.

www.japaneselifestyle.com.au...

The Romans moved much larger stones than these long before. Rafts/boats, levers and wheels. Simple machines can accomplish a lot. See the obelisk of St Peter's Square, moved at the same era as those of Osaka.

It is also possible the stones were there and used/shaped.




Elephant Rocks State Park, Missouri. The belief is the glaciers left these.
source-googlesearch

The thing about some of the megalithic construction that gets me is the ones where the quarries are hundreds of miles away. I don't recall the site in Central America, if it was Macchu Pichu or what where they apparently moved 60+ ton blocks of Dolomite (next hardness to diamond I think) through 500 miles of rain forrest and up a 14,000 ft mountain. There would have been plenty of wood, but it just boggles the mind how this was done by supposed hunter gatherers. Personally, I feel like there was a worldwide civilization of a master stone carving people, be it ancient-astronauts, or just human civilization that was wiped out in a mass extinction.

But, this is proof of what the human mind can accomplish given the desire, ingenuity, and time. Probably back when the megalithic construction was built, they were not distracted by all the things that distract the human mind today like TV, Computers, Games, etc. The people spent all their time analyzing the natural world around them.

If that castle was built so recently, (the 17th century wasn't THAT long ago) surely there should be written records of exactly how they did it. And I bet the parts with the giant odd shaped stone blocks fitted perfectly together without mortar were somehow already there and they built the castle atop them.

If something were to happen right now that wiped out most of the population of the Earth, basically knocking the remainder way back to the Stone Age, it would take easily ten thousand years to build back up.

In a mere ten thousand years, there would not be one relic of this civilization left. Not even two molecules stuck together. Steel will rust to nothing, wood and paper rot, pottery and concrete crumble to dust. Even plastics and old tires and old circuit boards and Gulfs of Mexico full of oil will actually biodegrade in about a thousand years into dust. The Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes would have long ago corroded into green dust. The only things that would last would be......

Things made of giant blocks of stone. And unless they were cleverly fitted together without mortar, even that would fall apart. And, strangely enough, all the mysterious megalithic structures in the world are made that way. Hmmm.

I think it fairly obvious that there were previous civilizations as advanced or even more advanced than we presume ourselves to be now. And they somehow were knocked back to the Stone Age, or knocked themselves back to the Stone Age like kids playing with dynamite. Kind of like we might do any day now if the wrong buttons get pushed. And most likely, this has happened more than once. I think this is not our first rodeo.

Maybe this time we can hang on for the full eight seconds and make it past the "getting knocked back to the Stone Age" stage.

reply to post by CaptChaos


"In a mere ten thousand years, there would not be one relic of this civilization left. Not even two molecules stuck together. Steel will rust to nothing, wood and paper rot, pottery and concrete crumble to dust. Even plastics and old tires and old circuit boards and Gulfs of Mexico full of oil will actually biodegrade in about a thousand years into dust. The Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes would have long ago corroded into green dust. The only things that would last would be..."

Exactly, that's why when a series of huge comet strikes generated vast tsunamis and blast/shock waves around 12,000 years ago (thereabouts), the existing relatively advanced "non-hydrocarbon" civilization collapsed and we have practically no record left of it, except verbal descriptions of the event and its aftermath found in the "myths" of nearly every culture on the planet.

Sure the Japanese could have moved it or it was a stone already naturally in place

The heaviest stone moved without mechanical means was the thunderstone which weighs in at 1,250 tons

Read down to 'thunderstone'

For other heavy stoned moved by man

List of the largest stones moved by man

To the 'everything gets wiped out' unfotunately lots of stuff remains,

400,000 year old wooden javelins

Old javelins

The myth that 'everything disappears' is promoted by the fringe whichs uses it as a weak excuse of why their favorite fringe myth isn't supported by actual evidence........the odd thing is these disasterous natural disasters besides wiping out civilizations never seem to remove the stone tools, bones, pottery of other people who happen to actually be there...

My question for the naysayers has always been, "if it is that easy and explainable then why has no one done it again?" Its always a much smaller scale and never a complete structure. "See, we're moving 1 stone 1/10th the size used in the pyramid on timbers and lifting it 3 feet in the air. Thats how they did it."

Howdy Ludshed

Originally posted by ludshed
My question for the naysayers has always been, "if it is that easy and explainable then why has no one done it again?" Its always a much smaller scale and never a complete structure. "See, we're moving 1 stone 1/10th the size used in the pyramid on timbers and lifting it 3 feet in the air. Thats how they did it."

The answer lies within your question. You wouldn't be satisfied until an entire pyramid was built, by men using materials only available in 2500 BCE and you probably wouldn't accept that.

Here is what you and the fringe world should do - get together a few million dollars and offer a prize to move a 300 ton (or whatever size you think is appropriate) x distance using material available in Y century by Z people - then people will be motivated to do it or in your world view - not do it.

Question why do you deny the evidence for the thunderstone or the the obelisks raised in historic times?

reply to post by Hanslune


You honestly think that with all the fortunes and ego in the world someone wouldn't have done that already. Look at what some of these oil sheiks do with their money. The ancients drove a ferrari but we're driving this model T because we like it. What ever.

reply to post by ludshed

My question for the naysayers has always been, "if it is that easy and explainable then why has no one done it again?"

Refer back to the links Hanslune posted, as many cultures across the globe managed to move large monolithic stones. It's not as rare an event as you believe, multiple cultures felt the need to move and/or build on a grand scale. As to why they did it, that's like asking why do modern societies build taller and taller skyscrapers - maybe it's a libido thing. I think Ayn Rand touches on that in The Fountainhead.

The reason we don't do it today is more a matter of economics than engineering. That, and safety issues (building the Brooklyn Bridge casements cost many worker's their lives, one can imagine how many laborers in ancient times were killed moving large blocks).

Its always a much smaller scale and never a complete structure. "See, we're moving 1 stone 1/10th the size used in the pyramid on timbers and lifting it 3 feet in the air. Thats how they did it."

The physics are the same, and the principle can be demonstrated at a smaller (and cheaper) scale. Also consider that ancient quarries that produced these massive blocks are no longer available, and the enormous costs it would take to undertake such an operation. Would you want to pay our several hundred million or even billions, just to prove a point? For the ancients, these were national endeavors, in the case of the pyramids at Giza, potentially hundreds of thousands of laborers were marshaled, kings and pharaohs would drain their treasuries to underwrite such projects. If you want to replace democracy with a new pharaoh or god-king and dedicate your entire life to serving their whims while living in near poverty, then perhaps we could build a pyramid or Stonehenge easily - in fact imagine the United States dedicating it's entire budget (defense, social security, medicare, etc., trillions of dollars) and then committing our entire military force personnel along with all our factory workers, farmers, and even imported migrant workers to building some monumental edifice - say a mile-high pyramid - I think you would see that with that level of dedication, it wouldn't be so impossible at all.

Obviously ancient cultures couldn't marshal any where near the level of force we could today, but for many of them, it was an all out effort.

Originally posted by ludshed
My question for the naysayers has always been, "if it is that easy and explainable then why has no one done it again?" Its always a much smaller scale and never a complete structure. "See, we're moving 1 stone 1/10th the size used in the pyramid on timbers and lifting it 3 feet in the air. Thats how they did it."

Very well said. I actually laughed when I read your post, because it's so true! It would be nice to see someone build a full-scale replica of something like that sometime.