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Stele Weights, "Stone Teeth" & the Longyou Caves with Mark Leithead — Part 2 of 4 | Classics Rotation
Mark Leithead and the host weigh the official sign at Yangshan Quarry against the sheer size of its unfinished stele, then move south to the hand-cut, water-filled Longyou Caves. Listen for why Mark doubts the "abandoned because it was too big" story, what the sign says the nubs were for, and how he thinks the sandstone caves could have been carved.
Asked for his intuition about the site, Mark says he goes by what the signs say: about 6,000 tons for the base, 2,600 for the body, and 800 for the head, compared with the largest stele he knows of in China at roughly 929 tons. He shares footage…
The skinny
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