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Trilithon stone at Baalbek

Another Brick in the Wall

By Gregon

Overheard conversation between the builders of the Temple of Jupiter and the residents of Stonehenge: “That’s not a megalith….this is a megalith”:

The Baalbek Trilithon at Atlas Obscura.

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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15 Comments

  1. Baalbek
    I’ve read about and followed stories and research on Baalbek for years. Everytime you think you have an answer or a new insight, it suddenly seems like all you have are more mysteries.

    There’s a LOT of ‘splainin left to do.

  2. Pass the goat sack please…
    That image above, of the block of quarried stone, begs far more questions than it answers.

    Somehow, someway during the late bronze age (or early iron, depending on your view of Big Ben)… perhaps during the time of Solomon, a huge megalith was carved out of solid rock. The sheer size of this monster almost immediately precludes its existence. But, there it is.

    Secondly, why would a late bronze age culture even use a device so impossible? They could have done as the Romans did a thousand years later when they built on top of the older structure using far smaller and more easy to manage materials.

    It is my view, just my personal opinion, that the school of archeology has become lazy and almost wholly dependent upon the easy denial. When the most common sense answer to a question is to admit, simply, that we have no idea… science today prefers to cover its collective ass by dressing out tens of thousands of laborers with stone hammers, copper chisels, log rollers and miles of rope. And if that doesn’t work, just mix in more labor as needed.

    We are really missing the boat here.

    1. obviously
      I don’t know, none of this is obvious. How heavy is that thing? And how hard is the material?

      Hacking it out of a quarry probably isn’t a big deal if the stone is not too hard. Moving it sideways on rollers is more problematic, but still doesn’t seem impossible.

      Did they manage to move it far? Or do anything interesting with it?

      1. Unfinished

        Did they manage to move it far? Or do anything interesting with it?

        Seems like they didn’t even try.

        If this was activity of more modern times, I would see it as some kind of protest, you know? The quarrymen’s union having a fight with the leader of the project due to unpaid over-time salaries, or having a grudge with the column-transporter’s union —”let’s see how you manage to move THIS, beeyatch!” 😉

        But since this is from an ancient era, we kind of assume they had a more ‘no-nonsense’ mentality; less freedoms and all that. Maybe that’s where we have it wrong in our assumptions.

        1. Earthquake stabilizers?
          I know I’ve heard the theory somewhere. These huge stones are there to stabilize the wall of the structure. They are not the base course but actually sit on top of much smaller stones. Vibrations trying to propagate through the building suddenly run into the huge stones and are damped by the solid mass. The ancients around the world seemed to grasp the concept that earthquakes are a recurring danger to buildings and took countermeasures against them.

        2. yeah, the ancients
          Yeah, the ancients were famous for that. They send a team of glorious guys, then one of them has an argument with their boss. The whole team decides to take the day off and doesn’t want to play any more.

          Oh wait, that was yesterday.

      2. Trilithon
        [quote=earthling]I don’t know, none of this is obvious. How heavy is that thing? And how hard is the material?

        Hacking it out of a quarry probably isn’t a big deal if the stone is not too hard. Moving it sideways on rollers is more problematic, but still doesn’t seem impossible.

        Did they manage to move it far? Or do anything interesting with it?[/quote]

        That one is around 1000 tonnes – there is another in the same quarry that is estimated at over 1200 tonnes. The actual ‘trilithon’ is the 3 stones used in the temple – these are small ones, ‘only’ 800 tonnes apiece:

        http://static.atlasobscura.com/images/place/baalbek-trilithon.868.large_slideshow.jpg

        (see the two man standing above them for scale)

        They are apparently limestone, probably the easiest stone for them to cut out. Though when I say ‘easiest’, that’s a fairly relative statement. 😉

        The question that always comes to me is not so much the ‘how’, but the ‘why’. Is it as simple as reducing the amount of cutting to an absolute minimum (ie. they found moving easier than cutting)? Was it for stability reasons, or longevity? Or did they just find this rather easy and didn’t think much of doing it in the first place?

        1. 1000 tons
          I would offer to help them carry it, but it looks like they gave up some time ago.

          Perhaps one thing we don’t understand – living in an agricultural society, to what extent did people suffer from boredom? And does that explain some of the things they did?

          1. Boredom
            That’s an interesting question.

            The philosophy of Maslow and his famous pyramid would make one think that boredom is a luxury only attained to those lucky enough to have already covered their major physical needs —hence we see it as a modern social development.

            But then, when we attempt to calculate the average daily work hours of pre-modern societies, we realize that we’re working more and more as we ‘move forward’, while our ancestors enjoyed more hours of leisure.

            True, maybe what they did during those hours wouldn’t compare to the thrill of a few minutes in front of an Xbox… but then if you start computing all the money you need to buy the console —plus the videogames, the energy bill, the Xbox live account, etc etc— it puts things in a proper perspective.

  3. Mars megalith similar?
    Maybe whoever built it also built the megalith on Phobos.. that thing dont look like a natural formation either.. someone had to carve it..

    1. It is just friggin mind
      It is just friggin mind blowing – I mean look at that thing! Even if some advanced and obscure technology did it we still have to ask ourselves why they did it. As a “stone head” myself very much into playing around with the energies of stones and crystals I can see why they would get wrapped up in big rocks, but it is hard to grasp the level of dedication required to make stuff like this. To me the biggest mystery is the psyche of these people.

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