15,000 years old |
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The Abydos Helicopter & the Golden Section | Stone-Age Horsemen | Top |
The
Thunder Stone - From 1,500 tons down to
400
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A
question arises - how much more weight did the stone lose in
the
following days, before it travelled any significant distance?
This
is
an important question because the stone weighs less than five-hundred
tons presently. I suspect that the stone hardly budged from its place on that first day, if at all; the nobility thought that they saw it move an inch and went back to Petersburg happily, and then its transport didn't really get underway until further substantial weight reduction. Was it cut down to less than 600 tons while still in situ? It would make sense to concentrate on making the stone lighter first; it could be moved along much faster at 600 tons than at double the weight. That's how Falconet had first proposed the project; after the empress went back to Petersburg, he might have done just that. If I were in his shoes, for the sake of efficiency, that's what I would do, and argue with the empress later. Thunder Stone Sailing A higher resolution specimen of the image below is needed - what is that mysterious big square on the far side of the stone? This way, seen from afar, the stone reminds me of a merchant ship in drydock. The big square cannot be part of the Thunder Stone because the preceding image shows how the stone sloped a lot already when getting underway. It seems to me that the stone loaded upon the barge closely does resemble its final form; the higher front protrudes forward as it does today, and the stone slopes down towards the rear. Therefore, its weight must also be nearer the final tally. ![]() Comparisons to what the stone looks like today This photo of the Thunder Stone has a man standing close by it, thus providing a reference. If he were a two meters tall basketball player and stood up straight - he'd take up one-third of the stone's height. It seems realistic to estimate that the stone is no more than six meters tall; it lost one-third of its original height. Of course, if our man turned out average in height - a more likely case - the stone's size would diminish corespondingly. The stone then appears approximately twelve meters long at the base, and just over five meters tall. |
A stunning vistal!
Seen from the back, the stone is about three meters
wide at
the top and six meters wide at the base. If it were shaped
like
a perfect cube, its weight would be 6 x 6 x 12 x 2.7 or some
1,166 tons. But because the
stone slopes on all sides, its weight should not much
exceed
one-third of those 1,166 tons - about 400 tons - a far cry
from the touted 1250 tons. |
Which is bigger - the megalith above or the one below?
This combination of the two blocks on one canvas gives impression that the Stone of the Pregnant
Woman in Baalbek looms close to treble the size of the finished Thunder Stone. |
It's claimed that at 1,500
metric tons the Thunder Stone is the heaviest stone ever moved
by human power alone; and that is supposed to be a proof that no
advanced technology was needed for the transport of colossal stones in
the long gone ages, such as the Baalbek Trilithon or the stones at
Sacsayhuaman. However, unlike Russians in the second half of the 18th century, Romans and their predecessors supposedly had no ball-bearings, iron rails, and metal sledges. Those things are all benefits of technology. As much as one has to admire Falconet's engineering achievement, what he had proved was that technology of the late 18th century was capable of transporting large megalith. In fact, I have no doubts that using the same process, we could transport even much larger megaliths, weighing thousands of tons, by human power alone. Just scale everything up; use more steel tracks to distribute the weight, and put megaliths on large steel platforms riding on steel wheels underneath. Hook it up to a system of capstans and pulleys for mechanical advantage, and then, using just our human power "alone", we could definitely move the whole thing along. After all, it's documented that a single strongman can pull a Boeing 747 with his teeth, under the right conditions... In my article on the Baalbek Trilithon, I laid out some historical facts indicating that Romans could transport only stone blocks weighing less than 325 tons. So, the Trilithon blocks had to be moved in much earlier times and by technology superior to that of Rome. Forget putting the Trilithon blocks, or the Thunder Stone, on wooden sledges and towing them over uneven and unpaved terrain. The final score All in all, the vast bulk of publicity around the Thunder Stone is an embarassement to serious journalism: * The claim by the uncritical, world-wide cut & paste brigade that the Thunder Stone weighs 1250 tons today is utterly laughable! * Not acknowledging that technology made big strides between the first and the eighteenth centuries AD is just bold faced fakery. * Therefore, the claim that the Thunder Stone is the biggest stone block ever moved by human power alone is extremely deficient. During the transport phase, the Trilithon blocks were most likely bigger than the Thunder Stone. Moreover, neither of the aforementioned megaliths was moved by human power alone. |
©
Jiri
Mruzek - May 2016, Vancouver, B.C.
Send me a few words: mynameatyahoodotcom
15,000 years old |
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The Baalbek Trilithon |