Latest / Lost Civilizations: Ancient Aliens & Forgotten History / Baalbek: Who Moved the 800-Ton Stones?

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Baalbek: Who Moved the 800-Ton Stones? · Lost Civilizations: Ancient Aliens & Forgotten History

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Imagine standing in a valley in the eastern
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Lebanon.
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Around you, mountains rise toward the sky and
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the air is dry and clear.
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Before you lie the ruins of what was
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once one of the largest temples
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of the Roman Empire.
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Six 20-meter-high granite columns still reach
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toward the sky.
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Mark Twain visited the site in 1867 and
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wrote that "a race of gods or giants
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must have inhabited this place."
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He said he had seen the
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hull of a steamboat that was smaller
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than one of these stones.
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"Men like the men of our day could
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hardly rear such temples as these," he wrote,
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but it's not the columns that make
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engineers fall silent.
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It's what lies beneath them.
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Right there, in the western wall of the
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temple platform, sit three stone blocks.
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They are 19 meters long, 4 meters high
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and 3.6 meters thick.
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Each weighs about 800 tons.
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That is the combined weight of two fully
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loaded Boeing 747s compressed into a single block
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of limestone. And they don't sit on
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the ground.
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They were lifted 7 meters into the air
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and placed with a precision so perfect that
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you cannot slide a sheet of paper between
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them.
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That is the beginning of the story of
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Baalbek, a place that has made archaeologists, engineers
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and conspiracy theorists scratch their heads for over
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2,000 years.
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Who built this? And how?
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That is what we are going to find
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out.
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Here's why Baalbek still fascinates us.
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It's not because the site is beautiful, although
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it is. It's because the stones are
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too big.
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They don't fit into our understanding of
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what ancient people could do.
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We know that the Romans built impressive things,
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aqueducts, roads, amphitheaters, but their largest cranes could
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lift about 60 tons.
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That is a tenth of what a single
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Baalbek stone weighs.
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So if it was the Romans who placed
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the stones, they had a technology we do
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not know anything about and if it wasn't
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the Romans, who was it then?
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There's something else that makes Baalbek special.
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About 800 meters from the temple lies a
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quarry.
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There lies a stone that was never moved.
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It is 20 meters long and weighs about
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1,000 tons.
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For many years, it was thought to be
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the largest worked stone in the world.
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In 2014, archaeologists found something even bigger.
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Right beneath the first stone lay another 1
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,650 tons.
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That is more than two fully loaded Boeing
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747s compressed into a single block of limestone.
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Why was it never moved?
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Was it too heavy? Or did the work
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suddenly stop for some other reason?
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And this is where the mystery begins.
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The official story of Baalbek is fairly straightforward.
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The Romans conquered the area in the first
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century before Christ.
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They built a large temple complex dedicated to
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Jupiter, which they called Heliopolis or the City
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of the Sun.
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The temple was completed around year 60 after
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Christ.
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We know this because one of the stone
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masons scratched the date into one of the
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columns.
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And the three large stones in the wall?
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Yeah, they are part of the temple's podium.
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The Romans built the platform and the stones
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are part of that construction.
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That is the official explanation.
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Archaeologists have several pieces of evidence for this.
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First, there is the temple's style.
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The Corinthian columns, the decoration, the way the
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stones are dressed, it's classic Roman.
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Second, Roman coins and pottery have been found
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in the soil layers around the temple.
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Third, there is an inscription on one of
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the large stones showing a drawing of the
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temple's pediment, a construction drawing that Roman
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foremen often scratched into the stones.
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There's also a graffito on top of one
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of the columns dated to August the 2nd,
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year 60 after Christ, proving that the temple
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was nearly completed at that time.
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So the case seems closed, right?
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The Romans built it. Period.
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But there is a problem.
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The Romans were notoriously thorough when it came
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to documenting their achievements.
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They wrote about everything.
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Roads, aqueducts, bridges, even the smallest construction projects
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were recorded.
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But about Baalbek — one of their largest temples —
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there is not a single
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Roman document describing how the large stones were
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moved.
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Nothing.
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Not a single line.
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That's strange.
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If you had built something that required moving
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800-ton stones, wouldn't you have written about
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it?
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Wouldn't you have been a little proud?
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There's something else.
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The Romans typically used so-called "Lewis holes" —
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holes they chiseled into the
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stones to lift them with cranes.
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They are not found on the Trilithon stones
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in Baalbek.
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And there is the quarry itself.
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If the Romans could move 800-ton stones,
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why did they leave one of 1,650
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tons behind?
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Why carve it out of the mountain if
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they couldn't move it?
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That does not make sense unless they weren't
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the ones who carved it out in the
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first place.
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There's also an architectural issue.
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Beneath the six large columns that still stand lies
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a podium that archaeologists have called Podium I.
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This podium is built of significantly smaller stones
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than Podium II, the podium containing the Trilithon
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stones.
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Podium I has precise, finely dressed stones with
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smooth edges, suggesting it was meant to
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be visible.
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If the large stones were built first, why
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go through the trouble of building an entirely
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new podium inside it?
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It only makes sense if Podium II, with
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the giant stones, was built later and was meant
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to enclose and hide the older Podium I.
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And this is where the alternative theories come
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into the picture.
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Let's dive into the quarry, because that is
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where the mystery truly unfolds.
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About 800 meters from the temple complex lies
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the so-called "Stone of the Pregnant Woman
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Quarry."
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Here lies a stone that has become known
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as the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, Hajar
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al-Hibla in Arabic.
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It weighs about 1,000 tons and is
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about 20 meters long.
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According to local legend, a pregnant woman
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once tricked the people of Baalbek into believing
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that she knew how to move the stone,
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promising to share the secret if they fed
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her until she gave birth.
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In the 1990s, another monolith was rediscovered in
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the same quarry, the Stone of the South.
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It weighs 1,242 tons. But it
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was in 2014 that the truly big discovery
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came.
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A team from the German Archaeological Institute, led
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by Dr. Marguerite van Ess, was working to document
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tool marks and quarrying techniques when they uncovered
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something the textbooks had missed.
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Buried directly beneath the Stone of the Pregnant
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Woman, concealed under meters of accumulated sediment, lay
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a third monolith, larger, much larger.
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It measured 19.6 meters in length, 6
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meters in width, and at least 5.5
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meters in thickness.
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The German Archaeological Institute confirmed in their official statement
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that "the level of smoothness indicated
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the block was meant to be transported and
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used without further cutting."
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This was a finished engineering component shaped to
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final specifications.
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When they calculated its weight, Dr. van Ess immediately
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requested independent verification.
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The number came back identical every time:
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1,650 tons, the largest precisely carved stone
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block ever discovered in human history.
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To put that in perspective, the Statue of
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Liberty, including its pedestal, weighs approximately 27,000
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tons.
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This single block of limestone represents 6%
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of Lady Liberty's entire weight. One stone, carved
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from bedrock, by hand.
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When the German team examined the tool marks
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on these quarry stones, they found something remarkable.
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The forgotten stone's surfaces were not roughly hacked
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out of the bedrock.
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They were worked to smooth, flat planes with
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extraordinary consistency.
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The cutting precision visible on the narrow side
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that had already been fully dressed
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matched the quality of finished architectural stonework.
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These were not trial cuts or rough extraction
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marks.
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They represent the same level of craftsmanship you
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would expect on the visible face of a
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completed temple wall.
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Whoever carved this stone intended it to be
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seen.
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They intended it to fit against other stones
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with the same hair-thin precision.
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The positioning of the three monoliths — stacked and
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adjacent — reveals a systematic mining operation of industrial
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scale.
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The builders were not opportunistically pulling random blocks
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from convenient outcrops.
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They had identified specific beds of high-quality
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limestone within the geological formation and were extracting
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from them in a deliberate sequence, planning multiple simultaneous
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extractions of objects that each weighed more than
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1,000 tons.
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This requires geological knowledge.
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It requires structural engineering knowledge, because removing a
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block of that size from bedrock without causing
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the surrounding stone to fracture demands understanding of
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stress distribution and load transfer.
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It requires project management on a scale that
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challenges modern industrial planning.
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The alternative explanation goes something like this.
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The Romans didn't build the foundation. They found
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it.
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According to this theory, the large stones of
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Baalbek are remnants of a far older
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civilization — one that existed 10,000 or 12,000 years
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ago, right after the last Ice Age.
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This civilization had advanced technology that we no
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longer understand. They built the platform, and
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the Romans built their temple on top.
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What is the evidence?
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First, there is the construction itself.
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The large stones are carved with a precision
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that is difficult to explain with Roman tools.
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The joints are so perfect that you cannot
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slide a piece of paper between them.
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This requires a level of workmanship that goes
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beyond what is normally associated with Roman
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craftsmanship.
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Second, there is the quarry.
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If the Romans built the foundation, why did
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they leave the unfinished stones?
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Perhaps because they were unable to move them,
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perhaps because the stones had been carved out
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by an older civilization and the Romans gave
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up on using them.
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Third, there is the platform's composition.
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Beneath the Roman temple lies an older podium.
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Architectural historian Daniel Lohmann has documented an older
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construction five meters below the Roman level.
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The building style does not resemble Roman work.
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It resembles something from Herod's time in Jerusalem
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or even older.
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Lohmann wrote that "the unfinished pre-Roman sanctuary
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construction was incorporated into a master plan of
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monumentalization.
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Apparently challenged by the already huge pre-Roman
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construction, the early Imperial Jupiter Sanctuary shows
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both an imperial design and construction technique."
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In other words, the Romans found an existing
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megalithic platform so impressive that they
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built their largest temple on top
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of it rather than starting from scratch.
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And the masonry of this earlier platform bore
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striking technical parallels not to Roman methods but
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to Herodian construction practices in ancient
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Judea.
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The stone cutting, joint fitting, and
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structural engineering match techniques used at the Temple
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Mount in Jerusalem. This was not a vague
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stylistic resemblance.
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It was specific, measurable technical
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correspondences, identified through LiDAR analysis of joint geometry
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and tool marks.
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Author Graham Hancock has visited Baalbek and points
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to another problem.
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If the Romans knew about the stones in
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the quarry, why didn't they cut them into
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smaller pieces and use them?
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They were left behind.
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This suggests the Romans didn't even know
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they were there.
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The stones had been buried under soil for
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millennia.
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So the theory is that an advanced civilization once
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existed and built the platform, then disappeared perhaps in
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a catastrophe and the Romans found the ruins
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millennia later and built on top.
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It's a fascinating story, but does it hold
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up?
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The rabbit hole.
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The story of Baalbek gets bigger the more
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you dig.
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First, there are the connections to other megalithic
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sites.
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The precise stone joints in Baalbek resemble those
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found in Peru, at Sacsayhuamán, where
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stones over 100 tons are fitted together with
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the same impossible precision, and in Egypt where
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the great pyramids are built of stones weighing
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up to 80 tons.
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Is that a coincidence or is it a
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connection?
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Some researchers point out that the same construction
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techniques appear across continents.
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Techniques that cannot be explained with the tools
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we normally attribute to ancient civilizations.
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Then there are the granite columns.
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In Baalbek, you don't only find limestone, you
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also find rose granite.
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The granite comes from Aswan in Egypt.
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That is over 1,000 kilometers away.
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And the columns are not built from multiple
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pieces as the Romans typically did.
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They are a single stone, ground to
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perfect roundness.
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How do you grind granite to perfect roundness
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without modern tools?
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Some believe it requires a lathe, a giant
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lathe that the Romans did not possess.
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Brian Foerster, who has visited Baalbek numerous times,
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notes that the granite columns have surfaces that
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are "perfectly smooth, perfectly polished," and that they must
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have been turned on "giant lathes."
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He points out that the technology to shape
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granite to this fineness and high polish was
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only developed once diamond tool technology emerged
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in the late 19th century.
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And then there's the sound.
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The temple of Baalbek has acoustic properties that
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amplify voices in a way that feels
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otherworldly.
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Researchers have measured that certain megalithic chambers around
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the world resonate at 110 hertz, a frequency
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that affects brain activity and can induce
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feelings of awe and transcendence.
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Was this intentional? Did the ancient builders
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create spaces designed to affect human consciousness?
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There's also an astronomical dimension.
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Archaeoastronomer Giulio Magli of the Polytechnic University of
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Milan conducted precise orientation measurements of the temple
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of Jupiter and found that its axis aligns
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with sunrise around May the 1st and
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August the 12th.
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These solar alignments are subtle but intentional.
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The ancient name Heliopolis, the City of
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the Sun, was not merely poetic, it was descriptive.
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This is where the story begins to resemble
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something from a sci-fi movie.
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But let's take a step back because there
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are also good arguments that all of this
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can be explained without resorting to lost civilizations
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or advanced technology.
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First, the Romans were brilliant engineers.
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They had techniques for moving heavy loads that
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we still do not fully understand.
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They used ramps, rollers, capstans and thousands of
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workers.
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They built roads that stretched across the entire
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empire.
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Moving an 800-ton stone over 800 meters
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is not impossible, it's just very, very difficult.
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French engineer Jean-Pierre Adam calculated that 512
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workers with wooden rollers and capstans could theoretically
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move a 557-ton stone.
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That is smaller than the Baalbek stones, but
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the principle is the same.
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Scaling up requires more people, but the Romans
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had access to enormous workforces.
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Second, the unfinished stones in the quarry don't have
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to be evidence of a lost civilization.
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They could be failed attempts.
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Perhaps the stonecutters discovered a crack in
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the stone and gave up.
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Perhaps funding ran out.
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Perhaps the emperor who commissioned the project died.
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Third, the absence of Roman documents is not
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proof that the Romans didn't build it.
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It's simply an absence of evidence.
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Archaeologists are constantly finding new documents.
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Perhaps a Roman construction ledger is waiting somewhere
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to be found.
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Skeptics also point out that alternative theories
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often rely on assumptions that cannot be proven.
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Yes, the stones are big.
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Yes, the joints are precise, but that doesn't
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mean they were built by a lost
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civilization.
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It just means the builders were skilled.
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There's also the question of the comparison with the
21:31
Thunderstone in Russia.
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This 1,250-ton stone was moved in
21:37
the 1770s from Finland to St. Petersburg, but
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was moved with iron rails, bronze ball
21:49
bearings, and screw jacks.
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Technologies the Romans did not have. So although
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it's impressive, it's not evidence that the
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Romans could do the same.
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Brian Foerster, who advocates for the alternative theory,
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also faces criticism for some of his claims.
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His argument that the Romans could not have
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worked granite because it requires diamond tools is
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actually incorrect.
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The Romans had iron and steel and they
22:20
could work granite with those tools.
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Iron hardness on the Mohs scale is about four
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to five, while granite is seven.
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But with abrasives like quartz sand, they could
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grind and polish granite.
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It took a long time.
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It will take a long time, but it
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could be done.
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Recent years have brought new technologies into the
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picture.
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A UNESCO-supported project brought together a multidisciplinary
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team from Lebanon, Taiwan, and Belgium to
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conduct the first comprehensive three-dimensional laser survey
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of the entire site.
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Using terrestrial LiDAR scanners, the team captured millions
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of data points per second with sub-centimeter accuracy.
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They generated exhaustive point clouds of every surface,
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every joint, every structural element across the entire
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temple complex.
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When AI-assisted processing algorithms analyzed these massive
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datasets, patterns emerged that no human eye could have
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detected through centuries of visual inspection. The
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scans revealed previously invisible construction phases buried within
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the platform walls.
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Distinct masonry styles layered on top of each
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other, each representing a different era of building,
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different techniques, different tools.
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The AI pattern recognition algorithms, trained to detect
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geometric anomalies in the scan data, identified
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systematic differences in stone cutting angles between the
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lower and upper courses of the platform
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wall.
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The lower megaliths were cut with techniques that
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left characteristic tool signatures unlike anything found in
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Roman stonework.
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Elsewhere in the empire, the upper Roman additions
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by contrast, showed standard imperial-era chisel patterns
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well documented at sites across the Mediterranean.
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Two completely different construction traditions separated by centuries
24:43
or millennia, stacked one on top of the
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other.
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The platform was not built in one campaign.
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It was built in stages by builders who
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didn't even use the same tools.
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The three-dimensional models also revealed something remarkable
25:00
about the substructures beneath the Great Court.
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An extensive network of vaulted passageways and chambers
25:08
runs underneath the visible temple complex.
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These subterranean spaces, which most tourists never see,
25:17
are engineering marvels in their own
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right.
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Their vaulted ceilings support millions of
25:29
tons of stone above them, while creating usable
25:32
interior spaces that may have served as
25:35
storage, processional corridors, or ritual chambers.
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The German Archaeological Institute, which has conducted fieldwork
25:47
at Baalbek since 2001, combined these scanned data
25:52
with decades of excavation findings to produce
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they call "Baalbek Reborn," a hyper-detailed digital
26:01
reconstruction covering 38 individual locations within the temple
26:07
complex.
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In collaboration with Flyover Zone, a company specializing in
26:14
virtual reconstructions and with the Lebanese Directorate General
26:20
of Antiquities, they released this digital experience in
26:25
March 2021, showing what the site
26:30
looked like at its third-century peak.
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If we weigh the evidence, then we can
26:41
say that Baalbek is not proof of
26:44
anything.
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It is not proof that the Romans
26:48
were superhuman engineers, nor is it proof that
26:51
a lost civilization with advanced technology existed.
26:55
It's a testament to the incompleteness of our knowledge
26:59
about the past.
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What do we actually know for certain?
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We know that the Romans built the temples
27:06
that stand on the platform today.
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Graffiti, building style, and archaeological layers confirm this.
27:13
We also know that the stones in the
27:16
wall are enormous, 800 tons each, and we
27:19
know that there are unfinished stones in the
27:24
quarry that are even larger, up to 1,650
27:27
tons.
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We don't know how the stones were moved.
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We have no Roman documents explaining it.
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We also have no evidence that a lost
27:37
civilization built the platform, but we do
27:41
have indications that there may be older layers
27:44
beneath the Roman level, layers that have not
27:48
yet been fully excavated.
27:50
The latest LiDAR scans and AI analyses have
27:54
shown that the platform contains at least two
27:59
different building phases with vastly different techniques.
28:04
The lower layers show working methods that do
28:08
not resemble anything known from Roman craftsmanship.
28:12
The upper layers are typically Roman.
28:14
This suggests that the Romans built on top
28:17
of something that was already there.
28:20
How old the older layer is remains unknown, but it
28:26
is older than the Romans.
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So what is the most likely explanation?
28:31
Many archaeologists believe the Romans built the
28:34
entire platform, but that they used techniques
28:39
we still don't fully understand.
28:40
Perhaps there were ramps that have since disappeared.
28:44
Perhaps they used water to reduce friction.
28:46
Perhaps they had some form of crane larger
28:49
than those we know from other Roman
28:52
building projects.
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Other researchers, including architectural historian Daniel Lohmann, believe
29:00
that there is an older layer beneath the Roman one —
29:04
that the Romans built on top of an
29:06
existing platform that was far older.
29:09
How much older?
29:10
Unknown, but perhaps several thousand years.
29:13
And then there is the question of the
29:15
1,650-ton stone in the quarry.
29:19
That stone was never moved.
29:22
If the original builders, whoever they were, could
29:26
move 800-ton stones, why couldn't they move
29:32
the 1,650-ton one?
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Perhaps it was too big.
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Perhaps it was the limit of what they
29:39
could do.
29:40
It is a reminder that even the most
29:43
advanced ancient civilizations had their limits.
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We tend to believe that we understand antiquity,
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that we have control over the chronology, the
29:54
technology, the people.
29:56
But Baalbek reminds us that there are gaps
29:58
in our knowledge, large gaps, gaps large enough
30:02
for us to project our own theories into
30:05
whether it's Roman engineering, lost civilizations, or visitors
30:09
from other planets.
30:10
What makes Baalbek fascinating is not that we
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don't know how the stones were moved.
30:18
It is that we know they were moved
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by humans with tools we do not fully
30:23
understand.
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And that leaves us with a question bigger
30:26
than the stones.
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What else have we misunderstood about our own past?
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Baalbek is not an answer.
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It's an invitation to keep asking questions.
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And that is precisely why the site still fascinates
30:40
us, 2,000 years after the last stones were
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laid.