Stoned, For All Eternity: Part One

A great deal has been written about and made much of in alternative archaeology books about how and why our technologically primitive ancestors were able to carve out, transport and erect massive multi-ton stone blocks into megalithic monuments of well, monumental size. The implication is that since there is no doubting the existence of these structures, our ancestors must of in fact possessed an advanced technology or had assistance from those who did (i.e. – ‘ancient astronauts’). That runs contrary to the standard model of scholarly archaeology. But the questions remain. 

Perhaps I’d better say what I mean by massive multi-ton stone blocks. I mean stones that are at 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’s not the record however for there is, apparently, a stele base in China that weighs in at 16,250 tons. I mean these are stones that aren’t trivial to toss around, even today. And while not all major continents and countries have megalithic stone monuments, like North America (USA & Canada) or Australia (including New Zealand) that still leaves a lot of places, and well known places, that do.

How and why these megaliths were constructed is no trivial matter. For our ancestors to go to 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 instead of wood or even 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?

As to the why, presumably, for starters, if you decide to use stone, then it’s important enough a material serving a purpose(s) that necessitates lasting for all practical purposes an ‘eternity’. If you build something to last, at least back then, you use stone, the larger the better. But 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 build things that were relatively peripheral to 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 - often called Ramesses the Great), stele and obelisks. The Parthenon in Athens was just a shrine to one of the Greek deities (Athena), and similar observations could be extended to the thousands of other monumental megalithic temples and monuments around the world which were mainly ceremonial in function.

It’s difficult to figure out how Stonehenge contributed to the basic survival needs of the local population – you don’t need to construct something of that magnitude just to tell you what season it is! If you need to mark, say the Summer Solstice, all you need have is a traditionally and permanently well marked and easily identified Point A, where you can observe some fixed structure like a rock on the Horizon, that’s Point B, and when the Sun arises directly over Point B, that’s the longest day of the year. There’s no need to engage in any sort of backbreaking toil or construction whatever. 

If a society can afford to spend time and effort 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 (health care), then you have to conclude that that society was well off given that they could divert basic resources from primary projects to undertake projects of a secondary nature. Either that, or that which 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

There’s also the logistics problem. You need a large workforce that had to be fed and clothed and housed and cared for, especially fed. There wasn’t exactly a nearby supermarket where endless supplies could be purchased. Further, while employed on these quarrying, transporting and construction projects the workers couldn’t be gainfully employed elsewhere to provide basics like hunting and gathering for food or even tending to 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 of this carving, transporting and construction were not just busy work designed to keep the rabble off the streets and out of trouble, and slave labour wasn’t usually in vogue either, contrary to many popular Hollywood images. Of course in the case of the Giza Sphinx, it was carved, but wasn’t transported, nor constructed per say. Still, the logistics in caving that massive stone statue from a rock outcrop would 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 often 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 Great Pyramid at Giza. Phase One: each block had 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.

To me the major mystery is not so much how you get something from the horizontal to the vertical, like an obelisk, (that was demonstrated on the NOVA TV series “Secrets of Lost Empires”), but how you get a massive multi-ton stone block raised straight up, say 20 to 30 to 40 or more feet to act as a lintel, like those at Stonehenge or on all 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 a far more labour intensive and an all-round major project in its own right. For example, constructing a sand ramp to haul those multi-ton stone blocks for the Giza pyramids would require a greater volume of material to be put into place (and of course later removed) than that of the volume of material required to build the pyramid in question in the first place. Of course if the project is that important, and if there is just no other way – well there’s always those hard options.

To illustrate as an example of just how bad our knowledge of our remote ancient ancestors really is, here’s 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 their 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 indeed housed and fed the large, highly skilled workforce required to build them, so efficiently is unknown.” 

So, now let’s look at alternatives as offered in some alt-archaeological texts.  

To be continued…