The Trilothon Stones of Baalbek,Located in what is now Lebanon, Baalbek is an ancient Roman ruin dat

The Trilothon Stones of Baalbek,Located in what is now Lebanon, Baalbek is an ancient Roman ruin dating to the 1st and 2nd century AD.  A holy site for thousands of years, Baalbek originally hosted a small Canaanite/Phoenician temple to the god Baal.  Over the centuries as new civilizations occupied the site they replaced older temples to older gods with newer temples to newer gods.By the time Baalbek came under Roman occupation, the site suffered from one serious problem; soil erosion.  Canaanite engineers were happy to build a simple temple with a simple foundation and platform on the hillside.  However bronze age Lebanon was a heavily forested country.  At the time the famous “Cedars of Lebanon” were a precious natural resource that provided the Egyptians timber for building projects such as the pyramids, lumber for Phoenician ships, and wood products for Mesopotamia. This is why the modern flag of Lebanon features a cedar tree. After thousands of years of timbering, the Cedars of Lebanon were all but deforested.  One of the major problems of deforestation is soil erosion.  Where once soil was held in place by strong root systems and where vegetation prevented the eroding effect of falling rain, there is nothing to prevent strong rains from simply washing away the topsoil.  For the Romans, who wished to build a large temple complex on the site, this was a big problem.  Unlike earlier occupants, the Romans could not simply build their temples directly on the hillside, lest their temples end up washed away with the rest of the hill.  To solve this problem the Romans built a strong retaining wall at the north, south, and west ends to hold the soil and foundation in place.  The centerpiece of the retaining wall is the western end which contains the trilithon, a row of three large stone blocks which provide the strength of the retaining wall.  As a rule of thumb for retaining walls, the larger the blocks, the better the wall.  The Romans certainly did their best, as the trilothon stones are each 800 tons in weight, today they are the third largest stones moved by mankind (for the largest click here).  By contrast, the largest stones of the Great Pyramid of Giza weigh around 80 tons.Moving the stones would have been an incredible feat of engineering and some claim that lifting the stones was impossible without outside help (Ancient Aliens).  However the Romans did something so simple that it was utterly brilliant: they quarried the stones uphill from the temple complex.  Thus the Romans only needed to move the stones downhill with gravity doing the most work, no lifting required.  To roll the blocks downhill, the Romans had a tried and true technique which they borrowed from the Greeks.  Before the trilothon stones were completely separated from bedrock, a set of wooden wheels were built around both ends (pictured below). Once severed from bedrock it would have been relatively easy to roll the stones downhill and into place at the retaining wall.  To aid them the Romans had a large number of important tools including capstans, pulleys, and cranes.  Also the Romans built a road from the quarry to the complex as well.  Today at the quarry two large incomplete stones rest that are 1000 tons and 1200 tons respectively.  It is not known why they were rejected.Total construction time at Balbaak amounted to around 200 years, which includes construction of three large temples and a number of other buildings.  It served as a Roman temple complex until the rise of Christianity, at which point it fell into disuse and was used as a convenient source of stone masonry for future generations.  Today it is protected as a UN World Heritage Site.  Much like in ancient times, Lebanon faces serious soil erosion from thousands of years of deforestation.On a final note the fine people of History Channel's Ancient Aliens claim that the moving of the trilithon stones was impossible and that they were the foundation stones of a platform used to land spaceships. -- source link

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