Tagged “quarry”
The Baalbek Trilithon
How did Roman builders quarry, move, and set three roughly 800-tonne stone blocks into a temple podium wall with such precision, and why did they cut blocks so far beyond what the structure needed?
1st century CE (Roman, atop an earlier tell) · Baalbek, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon
Longyou Caves
Who carved a million cubic meters of stone into two dozen precisely tooled underground halls, roughly when the Han dynasty ruled China, and left absolutely no written trace of doing it?
estimated c. late Qin–Han dynasty, roughly 2,000 years ago · Shiyan Beicun, Longyou County, Zhejiang Province, China