 In ancient times, there were extraordinary knowledge and building techniques on a colossal scale from massive statues to gigantic foundation stones. We still can't match these achievements today, but we have tried. In 2012, a huge sculpture was unveiled at the Los Angeles Museum of Art. The installation consists of a 340 ton boulder affixed above a concrete trench through which visitors may walk. The nature, expense, and scale of the installation made it an instant topic of discussion throughout the world. But this massive chunk of stone was first conceived in 1968 by Michael Heiser and he first attempted the construction in 1969, but all efforts had been abandoned after the biggest cranes at the time kept breaking under the weight of the rock. In 2006, he again began work on his project receiving tens of millions of dollars in private donations from the art world. In 2012, the rock was complete and ready to be moved. It was loaded onto a 290 foot long, 196 wheeled transport custom built by Emirate International. Because of the transporter size, the boulder could only be moved at a maximum speed of about 7 miles per hour. They had to travel a special 106 mile route through 22 cities and 4 counties in order to avoid overpasses and roads that could not support the weight of the boulder. The rock was wrapped in a high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and an outer layer of super thick plastic before being loaded onto the transporter. The trip took 11 days and the stone is a 340 ton boulder. So now you guys are thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, so what? Great achievement, but what's your point? The point that we are making here guys is that at 340 tons, the rock is nothing but a pebble compared to the biggest carved stones of ancient times. Carved stones of 500, 700, 900 tons are found in their thousands all over the world. So if it was extremely difficult to move a stone weighing a fraction of the weight of the ancient stones, then the question has to be how on earth was it done? Just wait till you hear this. At number 6, the axum stela, also known as the obelisk of axum. This huge obelisk is thought to have fallen around the 4th century. Now fully restored in axum in Ethiopia and weighing about 500 tons, it is a true marvel for that region. Dating back at least 2000 years BC, the carving, construction and the eventual raising of this piece is absolutely astonishing and is one of the heaviest stone carvings from ancient times. But it is nowhere near the heaviest objects as it is light years away from any of the others we're about to mention. Number 5 on our list, Solomon's Temple. The largest stone at the western wall stone from the western wall tunnel is estimated at 11.625 meters long and weighs between 700 and 900 tons. The wall had an original height of from 70 to 140 feet and places it is built from bottom to top of large squared stones, beveled at the edges and varying between 97.5 centimeters and 1.8 meters in height. The stones are laid without cement. The longest until now discovered measures 11.65 meters in length. The massiveness of the work is on par with the Egyptian pyramids and the perfection of the cutting and fitting of the stone is as equal. Again, the finished sizes and weights of these stones is on an industrious scale but not as big or as heavy as our next selection. In at number 4, the Colossae of Memnon. These two giants were built from a single piece of stone each. They are oriented towards the sunrise at Winter Solstice and they weigh over 1000 tons each. The statues are made from blocks of cortisite sandstone which was stone quarried near modern day Cairo and transported 420 miles over land. They are too heavy to have been transported upstream on the Nile and there was once a mortuary temple that once stood behind these two figures that has been completely stripped for its masonry. It is not surprising that the occasional eyebrows are raised about the past concerning the extent of the masonry skills used in ancient times not only were the structures superior in a visionary capacity but also in precision, design and execution. Ancient people in this region of the world heralded a time of extraordinary achievement. It was the age of the pyramid builders when some of the largest and most sophisticated structures of all time were built including the last remaining 7 wonders of the ancient world. The true age of most of these sites predates 12,000 years and built by a completely lost civilization that appears to have spread all across the globe. Although apparently spontaneous, the technology underlying these huge constructions was built on a foundation of science and mathematics which in turn has provided us with traces of their manufacturing processes which are proving totally astonishing. Cuts and holes on hundreds of stones indicating that the ancients drilled into granite with a feed rate that was 500 times greater and deeper per revolution of that of the most powerful modern day tools. In at number 3 on our list the Ramsesium Colossus. Although only fragments of the base and torso remain of this massive statue it would have weighed in at 1300 tons. In front of the ruins is the base of the Colossus. On the granite Colossus' shoulders is an inscription describing Ramses as the Sun Prince. These inscriptions were added during the reign of Ramses, but the actual site itself is actually thousands of years older. The statue fell into the second court and the head and torso remained there, but the other broken pieces are in museums all over the world. Only fragments of the base and torso remain of the Colossus statue which would have stood 19 meters high and weighed at least 1300 tons. The stone for the statue was transported 170 miles over land from Aswan to Thebes. This would have once been the largest statue in the world. Number 2. The Stone of the South Located at Balvik in Lebanon the so called stone of the south at the Temple of Jupiter is of incredible proportions. The highest estimates of this unfinished stone's weight have reached an incredible 2000 tons. Three other smaller stones under the grand terrace of the temple itself are also estimated to weigh from between 750 and 1000 tons each and there are several other colossal stones to be seen around the great temple of the sun at Balvik in Lebanon. There is even a rumor that an even bigger piece of stone weighing closer to 3000 tons has been discovered, but we were unable to confirm this. The stones were cut from red granite with the largest stone of the south still attached to the bedrock. All the large stones used for the temple of the sun at Balvik were quarried from the same location and taken over half a mile uphill to build the great temple. Crazy right? Dragging stones weighing up to 2000 tons each uphill? Is that even possible? And number 1 on our list the unfinished obelisk. This gigantic obelisk would have stood an incredible 42 meters high and weighed over 2700 tons when complete. This incredible stone is more than twice the size of any known obelisk ever raised and quarrymen apparently abandoned the obelisk when natural fractures appeared in its side. However, the stone still attached to bedrock gives important clues to how the ancients quarried granite. Much of the red granite used for ancient temples and Colossae came from quarries in the Oswan area 500 miles south of Cairo. The unfinished obelisk still lies where a crack was discovered as it was hewn from the rock. This is disputably the largest stone ever quarried and certainly on par with the unfinished stone at Balvik, Lebanon. This obelisk would have been taller than anything ever raised. The discovery of this obelisk and several others in their unfinished states allows us to see how they were made but not what tools were used which remains a complete mystery. Does it not just completely boggle your mind that we struggle to move a rock with modern technology a fraction the size of the six we have mentioned here? We think the ancient world was not as primitive as we're being led to believe. We may not have the answers but at least we have the questions. Oh, by the way, we have one more selection for you guys on our list. You could call this the bonus selection for all of our subscribers who take the time to watch our videos right through. Ok, so we have already had number one but we thought this video would not be complete without a notable surprise. So the real heaviest monolith of the ancient world is in fact almost 17 tons and is near 10 times as heavy as any other monolith from the ancient world. Wait till you hear this. This is the true largest monolith in the world, Yangshan Stele base. Stele base is an unfinished construction from the Ming Empire located near Nanjing, China. Its estimated weight is approximately 16,800 tons. Yes, you heard that correctly, 16,800 tons. That means the stele base is heavier than all of our previous selections combined and then some. The gigantic unfinished stele base that was abandoned in an ancient Chinese quarry could provide the answer to the question of how other monolithic stone blocks were made and other parts of the world. In scope and ambition, the stele project stands alone as the greatest undertaking humankind has ever attempted. The size and weight is almost unimaginable. It is heavier than eight statues of liberty combined and the purpose for which this stone was being quarried for is an absolute mystery. This stone is not as old as the other selections, but further investigation by experts is required. This is one of those sites that is not popularized yet guys. So remember the name Yangshan Stele base and remember where you heard about it first. It is one of these sites on earth that if properly investigated and understood then it could change our understanding of how these megastones were carved and moved. So there you have it, the heavier stones on the planet that we know of as carved by humans. We may not understand completely how ancient people achieved this, but no one can deny the existence of these colossal undertakings. We hope you have enjoyed our selection here guys, thanks for watching and remember the ways by which we arrive at knowledge are hardly less wonderful than the discoveries of these things themselves. We are at the granite quarry that has won in Egypt. Most of the granite used by the ancient Egyptians is from this site and you just saw a demonstration of how conventional archeology believes that the stone was shaped with that dolerite or diorite pounders. You can see my effort was futile. This is the ancient way that we know that the dynastic Egyptians extracted stone by putting wedges into these grooves after they cut them out. Probably wooden wedges, they were bathed in water so the wood would expand and then you would break off an uneven surface. However the unfinished obelisk which would have weighed 1200 tons had it been completed doesn't have a lot of those marks on it. Instead it has what one would call scoop marks and that obviously is a different form of technology that was used. We are again at the Aswan quarry where we have the famous unfinished obelisk and that is different stories about the cracks that we see on the surface. There was supposedly an attempt during dynastic times to cut this but I think these marks here are modern cuts. But for sure that there were modern earthquakes that did this, this is not the reason they stopped this. The crack as you know because you went in there last year is on the underside. So they are undercutting this with every intention of raising it and they find there is a natural crack on the underside so they know it will not go to resonance so they left it. And as our Egyptologist and tour guide Mohammed Ibrahim has said it appears that this could have been pre-cataclysmic. That they were doing this work and the cataclysmic could have stopped the work. And we will have definite proof of that when we go to the other obelisk in the back that it was not cracked. There was no reason for them to leave it there. They should have finished it and it just stops immediately. We believe that was the cataclysm that stopped the work here. So it's not only a question of trying to use stone balls to release this 1200 ton obelisk from its mother stone but the other question is how would you move it? Exactly. It's even major. You would have to lift it out and take it down. So here's your sense of scale. This is our Kenneth school group and this is the obelisk. And now I get the great opportunity of going down into the pit itself and that's where you'll see the evidence of the scooping device or whatever that did this work. Okay, here we go. Here's the mega obelisk and here is the entrance into it. So these obelisks were most likely resonance devices, energetic devices, which each one was a specific size because it was tuned to a specific frequency. But the reason why this obelisk was abandoned before it was finished is because once they had dug down to this point they found this massive crack in it and therefore it wasn't going to be of the proportions that they wanted so they basically gave up on it. We wouldn't go to resonance, that's the key, we would not go to resonance if it's a crack in it. Right. And here we have feeble attempts of later people trying to recycle the stone that gave up after about two inches. I actually think this is a modern cut, as Obama said in modern times they've been trying to cut this in half and they gave up at this point. Yeah. So again, sense of scale. This is only about a quarter of the size of the unfinished obelisk.