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All around the world we find massive stones—weighing more than 1,000 tons—that have been transported, somehow, by ancient civilizations in the past.

Without the use of modern technologies, our ancestors achieved the unimaginable, moving massive stones that weigh more than one thousand tons.

So, how did they do it? Was it pure manpower?

Or is it possible, as some authors suggest, that our ancestors used lost technologies to achieve these incredible feats?

If we take a look at a number of ancient sites, we will see that our ancestors managed to build incredible temples using stones that range in weight from a few tons, to a few hundred tons and more.

Common sense seems to dictate that these stones were simply too heavy to move for people who did not possess technologies such as the wheel, the pulley, and who did not have the necessary facilities to transport these stones across large distances, so thinking about slave labor and transportation doesn’t really seem to explain all of these achievements.

The Ramesseum

In Egypt, we find a number of incredible ancient sites.

The Ramesseum is arguably one of the most fascinating. Today, only fragments of the base on torso remain of the majestic statue. Experts have calculated that the Ramesseum had an approximate weight of 1,000 tons. More incredibly, the massive boulder is thought to have been transported more than 200 kilometers away, from Aswan to its resting place in Thebes. It is considered one of the largest stones ever transported by man.

How the ancient Egyptians did it remains a profound mystery.

The Colossi of Memnon

In Egypt, we find another incredible achievement. The Colossi of Memnon are two supermassive statues that were allegedly carved from a single piece of stone each. The statues have been oriented towards the winter solstice. According to R.T. Gould, in his work “A Book of Marvels,” he estimated that the statues had a total weight of 1,200 tons.

Incredible, the statues were somehow transported more than 600 kilometers away, over land, without using the Nile River to Thebes.

The Foundation stones at Baalbek

Another incredible ancient site—one of my personal favoirtes—is located in Lebanon.

At the ancient site of Baalbek, at the Temple of Jupiter, we find the so-called Trilithon, a group of three stones measuring around 19 meters long, 4 metes high, and nearly 4 meters wide. The stones are believed to have been hewn from crystalline limestones. Before the transportation, to their resting place, the stones are believed to have ranged in weight from 1,000 to 1,200 tons. They were somehow transported one kilometer. The stones were later redressed to smaller dimensions so they could accurately fit the wall of the temple.

It remains a profound mystery as to how these stones were transported in ancient times.

The Western Stone

The Western Stone, a massive block forming the lower level of the Western Wall in Jerusalem is another supermassive boulder placed in ancient times. It is considered one of the largest building blocks on the surface of the planet, with an estimated weight of 570 tons.

The Great Stele, King Ezana’s Stele, and the Obelisk of Axum

In Ethiopia, we find more evidence of megalithic madness.

The Great Stele, King Ezana’s Stele, and the Obelisk of Axum respectively weigh 520 tons, 170 tons, and 160 tons. The stelae were moved from their original quarry some 4 kilometers away. It remains a profound enigma how this was achieved.

One of the most unusual and mysterious archaeological sites in modern-day Mexico lies on the summit of Monte Alban. The city is believed to have been built sometime around 500 BC, and it features some of the most oddly shaped structures of the ancient world.

Archaeologists estimate that no more than 15 percent of the ancient site has been uncovered so far. The city is located on top of an artificially flattened mountaintop, raising numerous questions and enigmas. 

Monte Alban is a mountain where its top seems to have been literally cut off and leveled, to make an extremely flat tabletop mountain. The most interesting part is that built on this massive flat area, an ancient culture built a huge city.

Monte Alban is considered as one of the most iconic and influential cities to have ever existed in Mesoamerica.

It existed for thousands of years until in the 8th century the entire city was mysteriously abandoned.

The city itself, located on an ‘artificially flattened hilltop’ is located four hundred meters above the altiplano of the Oaxaca Valley. The fact that the city is situated on an artificially flattened mountaintop raises many questions.

How did the builders of the city flatten a mountaintop? Furthermore, where did all the remaining material go to?

What sort of technology was used? Its builders managed somehow to flatten an area the size of more than 50 football fields, resulting in a massive plateau, eerily similar to the one found in Giza, Egypt.

While the origins of the massive city built atop the flattened mountaintop are hotly debated, it is believed that at its peak, Monte Alban was the capital of the mighty Zapotec Empire, and was home to more than 35,000 inhabitants, who lived mostly on the terraced slopes of the mountain dedicated to agriculture.

The ancient name of this city founded by the Zapotecs at the end of the Late Preclassic is the subject of discussions. It is known that the Mexicas called the city; Ocelotepec, which can be translated to Monte Jaguar or Monte del Jaguar.

Its Spanish name of Monte Albán was given by the Spaniards, during the Spanish Conquest due to the similarity of the landscape with the mountains in Italy.

It is also believed that Monte Alban may have been under the control of the ancient city of Teotihuacan during the fourth century.

The city features a wide range of massive buildings and Pyramidal structures. Monte Alban also featured an astronomical observatory.

It is well-known that astronomical observation gave the pre-Hispanic society the necessary knowledge to calculate the cycles of agriculture, the changes of season, the proximity of the rains, the times of collection of medicinal plants; as well as to predict future events and to orient the constructions, streets, avenues, and squares towards the cardinal points.

In the Great Plaza at Monte Alban, we find two buildings that experts say, served as astronomical observatories: Building J and P.

Building J, for example, is located on the center of the main plaza of the ancient city and is characterized by a strange arrow-like shape. Furthermore, what makes it even more mysterious is its orientation: it differs from all other structures built at Monte Alban.

Another fascinating detail about this ancient city is the sheer number of stelae that have been recovered from the site.

So far, archaeologists have identified several stelae in Monte Alban that contain on their surface exclusively written text, in the form of hieroglyphs, which have no animal or human figures represented.

These stelae are located outside the buildings and commemorate important events in the history of the city.

However, the interesting part is that some of these stelae way up to ten tons, which raises the question as to how the ancient managed to transport these massive stone slabs to Monte Alban.

Another fascinating detail is that written on the surface of these massive stelae we find sculpted hieroglyphs which represent numbers.

This fact alone shows that the inhabitants of the region had a great mathematical and astronomical knowledge of which we know very little.

One of the stelae, the largest in Monte Albán, measures approximately six meters in height and is astronomically oriented, perfectly aligned to the north with the Polar Star.

Featured Image Credit: Latin American Studies