Stoned, FOR SEVERAL Eternity

A good deal has been discussed and made much of in alternative archaeology books about how and just why our technologically primitive ancestors could actually carve out, transport and erect massive multi-ton stone blocks into megalithic monuments of well, monumental size. The implication is that while there is no doubting the existence of these structures, our ancestors must of in fact possessed a sophisticated technology or had the help of those that did (i.e. - 'ancient astronauts'). That runs unlike the standard style of scholarly archaeology. However the questions remain.

Perhaps I'd better say what I mean by massive multi-ton stone blocks. I mean stones that are at the very least several tons in weight, up to the largest known carved (but still in-situ and unused) stone block weighing in at roughly 1250 tons. That isn't the record but also for there's, apparently, a stele base in China that weighs in at 16,250 tons. After all these are stones that are not trivial to toss around, even today. And while not absolutely all major continents and countries have megalithic stone monuments, like THE UNITED STATES (USA & Canada) or Australia (including New Zealand) that still leaves plenty of places, and popular places, that do.

How and why these megaliths were constructed is no trivial matter. For the ancestors to visit such lengths and expend such efforts, well these stone monuments were obviously very important to them, and it's important to us to figure out how and why they did it. Using large stone blocks rather than wood as well as small stone blocks or bricks must have served a purpose despite the greater hardships involved. So, why did our ancient ancestors need large stones; and how did they handle them?

Regarding the why, presumably, to begin with, if you decide to use stone, then it's important enough a material serving a purpose(s) that necessitates lasting for several practical purposes an 'eternity'. If you build something to last, at least back then, you utilize stone, the larger the better. But also for what purpose did the ancients need such megalithic giants?

Issues Arising: Purpose

These ancient societies or cultures spent an awful lot of resources to create items that were relatively peripheral with their basic needs. The Easter Islanders could survive without those Moai statues; ancient Egypt would still have been a 'superpower' even without those pyramids, the Giza Sphinx, massive statues of some New Kingdom pharaohs (like Ramesses II - categorised as Ramesses the Great), stele and obelisks. The Parthenon in Athens was only a shrine to 1 of the Greek deities (Athena), and similar observations could possibly be extended to the a large number of other monumental megalithic temples and monuments around the globe that have been mainly ceremonial in function.

It's difficult to determine how Stonehenge contributed to the basic survival needs of the local population - you don't have to construct something of this magnitude just to tell you what season it really is! If you want to mark, say the summertime Solstice, all you have to have is a traditionally and permanently well marked and easily identified Point A, where you can observe some fixed structure just like a rock coming, that's Point B, so when the Sun arises directly over Point B, that's the longest day of the year. There's no have to engage in any kind of backbreaking toil or construction whatever.

If a society can afford to spend effort and time and money on secondary projects, say like in modern society various public art works compared to primary projects like roads (transport), schools (education) and hospitals (healthcare), then you need to conclude that that society was well off simply because they could divert basic resources from primary projects to attempt projects of a second nature. Either that, or whatever looks to us as relatively trivial or unimportant like Stonehenge or Carnac (Brittany, France) or those Easter Island statues or the Sphinx actually held a primary function incomprehensible to us but which rivalled in importance housing and insuring adequate food supplies and similar things vital to their day-to-day survival.

Issues Arising: Logistics

Additionally, there is the logistics problem. You will need a large workforce that needed to be fed and clothed and housed and looked after, especially fed. There wasn't exactly a nearby supermarket where endless supplies could possibly be purchased. Further, while employed on these quarrying, transporting and construction projects the workers couldn't be gainfully employed elsewhere to supply basics like hunting and gathering for food as well as maintaining domesticated livestock and agricultural crops. The workers couldn't have been used for serving in the army, or any other useful and necessary task. All this carving, transporting and construction were not just busy work made to keep carefully the rabble off the streets and out of trouble, and slave labour wasn't usually in fashion either, contrary to many popular Hollywood images. Of course regarding the Giza Sphinx, it had been carved, but wasn't transported, nor constructed per say. Still, the logistics in caving that massive stone statue from the rock outcrop could have been enormous, and the reason(s) for doing so of vast importance to the powers-that-be.

Issues Arising: Ways and Means: The How!

Though our focus and interest is frequently on the construction phase, as in how was that done, that's usually just one-third of the hard yards. Take those 2.3 million blocks that make up the fantastic Pyramid at Giza. Phase One: each block needed to be carved to size. You just didn't hack out rocks at random and put them in place. That carving alone is hard yakka and helped keep up a state of full employment. Hard yakka Phase Two was transporting those carved blocks from the various quarries - some local, some not - to action city, the Giza Plateau. More full employment. The how in Phase One and Two isn't usually all that mysterious - just bloody hard backbreaking work. Anyway, back to the construction - Phase Three.

If you ask me the major mystery is not so much how you get something from the horizontal to the vertical, as an obelisk, (that has been demonstrated on the NOVA TV series "Secrets of Lost Empires"), but the method that you get a massive multi-ton stone block raised straight up, say 20 to 30 to 40 or more feet to do something as a lintel, like those at Stonehenge or on those Greco-Roman and Egyptian temples, like say the Parthenon. One can always conceive of building sand or dirt ramps to haul massive lintels upwards into place, hence removing the sand or dirt after-the-fact, but if you think about it, such infrastructure is really a far more labour intensive and an all-round major project in its own right. For instance, constructing a sand ramp to haul those multi-ton stone blocks for the Giza pyramids would need a greater volume of material to be placed into place (and of course later removed) than that of the volume of material necessary to build the pyramid in question in the first place. Of course if the project is that important, and when there is just no alternative way - well almost always there is those hard options.

To illustrate for example of precisely how bad our understanding of our remote ancient ancestors is really, here is a trilogy of extracts from classical scholar Nigel Rodgers in his text "The Ancient Greek World: People and Places" (2010):

"[T]he Greeks relied on the intellectual powers and their remarkably skilled craftsmanship to erect their buildings. Few details survive of their actual building techniques, however."

"Cranes were almost certainly used to help raise the masonry up to the temples during construction, although no traces of such machinery have been found."

"How the Athenians assembled these temples, and even housed and fed the large, very skilled workforce necessary to build them, so efficiently is unknown."

So, now let's look at alternatives as offered in a few alt-archaeological texts.

One theory sometimes observed in alt-archaeological tomes is these massive blocks didn't start out as massive blocks, just like a brick doesn't start out as a brick, but rather these were poured into place, in a mould, like concrete or cement. Sorry, but modern petrologists' could easily detect such. Often actually the quarry from where in fact the stone originated can be precisely identified, though that often raises the question then of transport, since the distances twixt quarry site and construction site can be hundreds of miles. That's a concern that pertains to Stonehenge and a number of the stonework for the Giza pyramids.

If you actually want to go far-out, star-scout, let's try antigravity! Anti-gravity is obtainable in one form, dark energy. Dark energy is that mysterious antigravity force that's causing the expanding Universe to keep on expanding at ever faster and faster rates, in defiance of gravity that ought to slow the expansion rate down. Alas, dark energy, which while dominant on the scale of the complete Universe, is trivial locally in accordance with Earth's intense gravity field.

Alt-archaeology texts are filled with references to sound energy that levitates (negates gravity) and thus massive blocks of stone could be floated around and placed into place even with just the oomph of a child, just by making the appropriate sound at the appropriate level.. Sound of course can be focused. Everybody knows and appreciate the science of acoustics in theatres. Sound can shatter objects, well at least relatively fragile objects like wine glasses when put through the professional projections of the trained human voice (or equivalent). However, in the event that you crunch the numbers, the power required to negate gravity is way outside the realm of which sound energy can muster. Taking into  click here  of sounds the human race produces daily, you'd believe all of the relevant elements would get together somewhere, sometime and 'just so' as to produce levitation in something, levitation observed and photographed for the record. Alas, not so.

Jigsaw Puzzles

In some constructions, it isn't just a matter of manipulating massive but irregular stone blocks but fitting them together such as a jigsaw puzzle, results which are immediately apparent at sites around the world, like those from the Incan Empire. Precision carving in stone using only other stone or copper tools is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. It isn't simple; it's extremely exhausting and frustrating work. Double that whenever all of your blocks aren't a typical square block size and shape.

What Do Our Ancestors Say?

Pity that although the ancients left all manner of images behind of their daily lives and culture, I think it is amazing that despite all those multi-thousands of images from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Americas, etc. not one shows a genuine half-finished or partly constructed monument, such as a pyramid, or perhaps a temple like the Parthenon that's under construction, or whatever. That's highly anomalous IMHO, though you can find images of ancient Egyptians transporting massive stone blocks.

However, even some of those ancient cultures were puzzled as to how their even more ancient ancestors achieved these megalithic 'missions impossible'.

There's something very odd once the natural descendents of 'primitive' natives resort to tales akin to sci-fi or science-fantasy to take into account how their ancestors constructed, transported and erected massive stone monoliths.

Easter Islanders say that their Moai statues walked by themselves from quarry to their final resting (actually standing) place. Who am I to argue with first hand or on-the-spot observations, except Thor Heyerdahl's "Aku-Aku" team accomplished exactly the same with less elegant but with pure grunt power. Walking stone statues are just a bit too far into the "Twilight Zone" for comfort. Actually for reasons uknown Easter Islanders at some point downed their stone tools and abandoned their statue constructions for reasons not entirely clear other than priorities altered. The abandoned unfinished statues can still be seen today, lying set up, now long neglected.

Also in the Pacific region, Nan Modal can be an ancient city of about 0.75 square kilometres off the coast of the island of Pohnpei in what's today termed Micronesia. The city is comprised of artificial islands criss-crossed by canals, and thus also known as the Venice of the Pacific. Those 'islands' however are built up of massive megalithic stone walls around 25 feet high. How so? Well the stones were continued site on the backs of dragons apparently. In all honesty, that makes as much sense as anything else.

I noted above that allegedly sound could levitate massive stone blocks. That theory or observation is found in both SOUTH USA and ancient Egypt - massive stones are somehow lifted and transported by sound. I still think that's highly suspect and I believe scientists would need an actual modern-day demonstration. I understand I would.

Tentative Conclusions

WHEN I noted above, it isn't the caving or the transport that's the real issue, nor going from the horizontal to the vertical that's a real problem, rather the problem is lifting massive stones directly that I especially puzzle over.

The puzzlement pertains to our own use of stones in building projects. We could I assume, if we wanted to, build our buildings out of mega-ton blocks of stone. But we don't. Your house, if it contains building stones at all, are stones which are probably akin to weights of just several pounds, maybe dozens of pounds; hardly tons.

So do we have a major mystery here? Well yes, particularly when compared to modern society as noted immediately above. Inside our modern high-tech age, when we do use stone as a construction material, it's in manageable equipment. We don't build our homes or office buildings or ballparks or monuments out of multi-ton to multi-hundred ton stone blocks because the ancients did. However when duty called, like when Abu Simbel had to be relocated to an increased elevation once the Aswan High Dam was constructed giving rise to Lake Nasser and the flooding of the historical site, even using modern tools it was still a significant and massive effort.

A Possible Solution

Perhaps we are able to kill two anomalous birds with one hypothetical stone.

Universal One: Once we note, from the Americas (Mesoamerica and SOUTH USA at least); throughout Europe and the Near and Middle East, Egypt along with other elements of Africa, even unto Asia and the Pacific region, there are ancient megalithic constructions using stone blocks in the multi mega-ton range. How did the ancients carve, transport, raise and position such massive stone blocks?

Universal Two: Also all over the world, there's a universal theme of giants, from the Cyclopes in Greco-Roman cultures, to Biblical giants to - well you name the culture and I'll guarantee they will have giants as a core aspect in their mythologies. For samplers, here's just a partial list of giants. Well there's Angrboda (Norse), Argos (Greek), Balor (Irish), Biloko (Zaire), Bungisngis (Philippines), the Cyclopes (Greek), Geryon (Greek), the Gigantes (Greek), Goliath (Biblical), Grendel (Anglo-Saxon), the Hecatonchires (Greek), Hrungnir (Norse), Humbaba (Mesopotamia), the Nephilim (Biblical), Skrymir (Norse), Suttung (Norse), Talos (Greek), the Titans (Greek), and Ymir (Norse). Further, you have all manner of giant trolls and ogres (Scandinavian), various giant apemen just like the Yeti and Bigfoot/Sasquatch and numerous others, along with the Giants of Cornwall (led by Gogmagog).

Well, what's 'mission: impossible' for a young child, is possible for an adult; what's 'mission: impossible' for adult humans may be possible for a huge(s). A giant twice as large as a typical human will have eight times the muscle power, since muscles are 3-D, doubling in length, width and height; and thusly 2 x 2 x 2 = 8.

What Do Our Ancestors Say Revisited?

Ancient Greeks often attributed various massive stone constructions to the Cyclopes, for example. Such massive structures are termed the Cyclopean walls since the Cyclopes and only the Cyclopes may have built these structures. Perseus had them in charge of building the walls of Mycenae, including the Lion Gate; Proitos attributed them building the walls of Tiryns. The medieval Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus cited the Roman ruins as evidence that giants must once have walked the planet earth. And who built the Giant's Causeway on the Northern Irish Coast?

Is this too far out? I'm available to other suggestions, but at least it generally does not require high-tech alien assistance, until those worldwide mythological giants, just like the Cyclopes, were aliens!

Appendix: A few notable megalithic monuments.

1) Some unfinished in-situ megaliths.

*Baalbek (Lebanon) has two unfinished stones weighing in at 1000 to 1250 tons apiece.

*There's an unfinished Egyptian obelisk at Assuan that's all up comes to roughly 1100 tons.

2) Some finished and transported megaliths.

Europe

*Stonehenge: some stones are up to 40 tons.

*The Avebury stone circle, England, has as its largest stone one over 40 tons.

*The famous fortress of Mycenae, Greece has stones close to 100 tons in weight.

*The Parthenon in Athens, Greece has some of its largest stones weighing in at 10 tons.

Pacific Region

*Those Easter Island (Rapa Nui to the locals) Moai can think about to 70, even one around 86 tons.

Ancient Egypt

*The Colossi of Memnon are two Egyptian statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III coming in at 700 tons each.

*Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great) was not shy about erecting statues to honour himself. One of his numerous dozens of monumental statues commissioned to image self (at Luxor) - 100 tons worth of stone. But that's featherweight class.

*Ramesses II was only getting warmed up. There's a statue at Thebes, Egypt, the main Ramessum, the mortuary temple of the pharaoh in question, of 1000 tons. Now that's heavyweight status.

*Egyptian obelisks weren't minuscule. There's one at 227 tons (Luxor); one at 328 tons (Karnak).

*Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt established fact as overkill with regards to constructing a tomb. Though the average weight of each stone block is 'only' 2.5 tons, the largest slabs comprising the burial chamber, come in at 80 tons.

*Apart from the Great Pyramid, other Egyptian pyramids, actually most, if not all other, Egyptian pyramids have some monolithic blocks of over 20 tons, including monolithic roof slabs, plugs and burial vaults, some of which weigh in at over 100 tons.

South and Central America

*Those popular but mysterious Olmec heads in Mesoamerica aren't trivial works when carved right down to some 50 tons all up.

*The Inca city of Machu Picchu, Peru has large stones part and parcel of its construction weighing in from 20 to 50 tons apeice.

*There's an extremely famous Aztec calendar stone at Tenochtitlan, Mexico that weighs considerably more compared to the wall calendar you hang up in the home. Weight, 24 tons.

*Palenque, Mexico is really a famous Mayan site, especially because of Erich Von Daniken. The biggest stones on site weigh 12 to 15 tons.

Further suggested readings

Childress, David Hatcher; Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients; Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois; 2000:

De Camp, L. Sprague; The Ancient Engineers; Ballantine Books, New York; 1974:

De Camp, L. Sprague & De Camp; Catherine C; Citadels of Mystery; Fontana/Collins, London; 1972:

Hancock, Graham; Fingerprints of the Gods: A Quest for the Beginning and the finish; Mandarin, London; 1996:

Hancock, Graham & Faiia, Santha; Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilization; Penguin Books, London; 1999:

National Geographic Society; Mysteries of Mankind: Earth's Unexplained Landmarks; National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.; 1992:

National Geographic Society; Mysteries of the Ancient World; National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.; 1979:

Von Daniken, Erich; Chariots of the Gods?; Souvenir Press, London; 1969:

Von Daniken, Erich; Gods from Outer Space; Souvenir Press, London; 1970:

Further viewings:

NOVA; Secrets of Lost Empires; PBS/WGBH, Boston; 2006:

NOVA; Secrets of Lost Empires II; PBS/WGBH, Boston; 2008:

There's also been a large number of books/videos written/produced specifically concerning the archaeological mysteries of Stonehenge, ancient Egyptian monuments including the pyramids, Easter Island, the ruins of Mesoamerica and SOUTH USA, etc. Consult your local library.