Megalithic Constructions: Jerry-Built Disasters?

Back to Baalbek

Located on the northern Beqaa-Plain between the mountain ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon at 3,840 ft above seal level, Baalbek is famous for its magnificent temple ruins, the grandest and amongst the best preserved in the modern world. Re-named Heliopolis, (from the Greek 'Helios' = sun and 'Polis' = city), by Alexander the Great who swept through the Near East following his siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre in 332 BC. 

Immediately visible for some distance on the approach to Baalbek are the six gigantic Corinthian columns of the Jupiter Temple, the largest in the ancient world. The temple complex at Baalbek is of Roman date with construction commencing in the final quarter of the 1st Century BC, nearing completion in the final years of Nero's reign, 37-68 AD. The Byzantine Emperor Constantine shut down the pagan temples at Baalbek following the declaration of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 313 AD.  

The Roman temple complex stands on the foundations laid by some unknown civilisation. The podium of the Jupiter temple, known as the Grand Terrace, was constructed with the most gigantic stones ever crafted by man. The largest stones at Baalbek are some 20 times greater in weight than the largest stones used at Stonehenge. Incorporated into the west wall of the Grand Terrace and mounted on a course of blocks each weighing around 350 - 400 tons, are three enormous stones weighing an estimated 800 – 1,000 tons each. These three massive stones are known as the 'Trilithon' and the largest megaliths known to have been moved by man found anywhere in the world. 

The Grand Terrace appears to have been constructed in prehistory; no culture claims it, its origins forgotten to the civilised world. Legend records the first temple at Baalbek as the construction of Cain before the Deluge and rebuilt by a race of giants under the command of Nimrod after the flood; the work of the Cyclopes. The origins of this remarkable temple complex are discussed in the Hand of the Cyclopes: The Mystery of the Trilithon 

It has been suggested that the Trilithon structure could be part of a massive defensive wall, or the foundations of a massive platform used by ancient stargazers. Whatever it was, it would appear this colossal structure was not finished by the ancient engineers. The enigma of the ruins of Baalbek is one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world.

Stone of the Pregnant Woman

Another yet even larger stone lies in a limestone quarry about a half a mile or so from the Baalbek temple complex. Claimed to weigh an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 tons, it measures sixty-nine feet by sixteen feet by thirteen feet ten inches, larger than the other stones of the Trilithon, making it the single largest piece of stonework ever crafted in the world. Named the Hajar el Gouble, the Stone of the South, or the Hajar el Hibla, the Stone of the Pregnant Woman from a local legend which claims the stone was named after a pregnant woman who tricked the people of Baalbek into believing that she knew how to move the giant stone if only they would feed her until she gives birth. The stone lies at an angle still attached to the bedrock in the quarry. Presumably this massive worked stone was about to be cut free and transported to join the other stones of the Trilithon. In the mid-1990's a second massive stone was discovered in the same quarry, estimated to weigh 1,242 tons, surpassing the dimensions of the Stone of the Pregnant Woman. 

First thoughts are that the construction project at Baalbek was suddenly abandoned for some reason. It has been suggested that the project was simply abandoned because moving these massive stones was beyond their capability. But they had already used some technique unknown  to modern engineers to quarry and move the stones to construct the similar sized Trilithon. This is the strongest argument against a Roman construction for the temple podium; if the Romans had constructed the Trilithon why did they leave these two stones in the quarry? Simply because the Romans could not, and have never, moved stones this size.

Yet,the question remains; why was it left unfinished?

The Egyptian Connection

Oddly, in the construction of the Roman Jupiter Temple at Baalbek red granite was used for the fifty-four enormous columns and the forecourt porticos. This granite has been sourced as coming from the ancient Egyptian quarry at Aswan, 500 miles south of Cairo. A remarkable, but not impossible, feat for the Roman engineers to have accomplished. However transported the granite from the Aswan quarry to Baalbek they could not have failed to have noticed the massive 1,170 ton obelisk still attached to the bedrock. It would appear the ancient Egyptians intended to lift and transport the obelsik to its intended siting, but discovered a fatal flaw with a crack running though it making movement quite impossible without its destruction. 

The unfinished obelisk at Aswan would have been 137ft high and would have been the largest known ancient obelisk, nearly one third larger than any ancient Egyptian obelisk ever erected. Had the Egyptians simply become simply too ambitious and abandoned the project? Besides the unfinished obelisk, a second unfinished partly worked obelisk base was discovered in 2005 at the quarries of Aswan. The similarity to Baalbek is uncanny but the similarities don't stop there.

About five miles to the north-east of Cairo by the village of Matareieh is a solitary obelisk, all that remains to mark the site of the ancient town of Heliopolis on the east side of the Nile. The sixty-six feet high obelisk is made from Aswan red granite, a companion stood nearby until the 17th century and two other obelisks known as “Cleopatra 's Needles” were originally brought from Heliopolis to Alexandria. Heliopolis was one of the oldest and most famous cities of ancient Egypt, at its peak it had some sixteen obelisks, an oracle of Apollo and the famous Temple of the Sun. During the 20th Dynasty the temple was one of the largest and wealthiest in all Egypt. Writing in the 5th century BC the ancient Greek historian Herodotus tells of its inhabitants as being the wisest and most ingenious of all the Egyptians.

The site has long since been destroyed, its stone used in the building of Cairo suburbs. According to Macrobius, in the Saturnalia, the Heliopolis of Baalbek was founded by a body of priests from Heliopolis in Egypt. Possibly these priests possessed the knowledge of moving stones of such vast size. These priests are probably responsible for transporting the red granite from Aswan to Baalbek which the Romans simply reworked into the 54 columns and forecourt porticos of the Jupiter Temple.

It is only in Egypt we find stones similar in size to the truly colossal Trilithon that have been moved by man. In front of the ruins of the memorial temple of the Pharaoh Ramesses II, known as the Ramesseum, fragments survive of the colossus of Ramesses, some sixty feet in height and estimated to have weighed around 1,000 tons. Similarly, the two giant Colossi of Memnon, have been estimated to weigh as much as 1,000 tons each. These massive statues are made from blocks which were quarried at el-Gabal el Ahmar (near modern-day Cairo) and transported 420 miles over land to Thebes. Moving the unfinished obelisk at Aswan may not have been beyond the ancient Egyptian engineers. Certainly they would not have cut the stone if they did not think they could lift it. 

Was the obelisk abandoned because it cracked – or did it crack at a later date? We will never know but the use of the Aswan quarry to furnish both Heliopolis sites, with the abandoned Stone of the Pregnant Woman complete with partner stone at Baalbek and the abandoned obelsik and partner at Aswan, is striking. Did the priests from Heliopolis in Egypt attempt to construct a mirror site of Baalbek? 

Unfinished Monuments?

All across the world we find evidence that people from ancients times suddenly stopped what they were building, and left their work unfinished. Surely the ancients would not go to all the trouble of obtaining raw materials, transport them to the site, work them and then just discard them? 

Yet this worldwide phenomena is exactly what we find at site after site. Conveniently, for students of the orthodox, the common reason is usually that they ran out of materials or, on a larger scale, some catastrophe occurred. At Easter Island, Rapa Nui, in the Pacific, 300 standing statues, the highest at 65ft tall, were quarried within the crater of the inactive volcano of Rano Raraku and later transported to their final positions guarding the island. Yet, the tallest, known as 'El Gigante', which would have been over seventy feet high and weighing 300 tons, lies unfinished in the quarry with some 400 or so other unfinished statues. Some had just been started, while others were complete and ready for transportation to their platform. Near to the unfinished statues were chisels and axes, indicating that the sculptors had just stopped work and presumably, fully intended to return and finish their works. This sudden and abrupt end to statue production indicates that some devastating event  brought an end to the island's traditional culture. 

However, the enigma of Easter Island is not typical of many unfinished ancient monuments and it is important to differentiate between genuine catastrophic abandonment and deliberately leaving a monument unfinished as what must be considered as a symbolic statement. The mid-Pacific island does seem to have been hit by some sort of tragedy which is quite different from other sites of Neolithic or Early Bronze Age cultures that left monuments purposefully unfinished. 

Star Shafts

The Great Pyramid of Giza is well known for its King's and Queen's chambers. But this pyramid, attributed to Cheops, actually has three large chambers; the lowest of the three is 90 feet below ground level and cut directly into the bedrock upon which the pyramid was built. After the descending passage levels off it leads to the subterranean chamber, which is totally unfinished, rough-cut into the rock like a quarry face, lacking the precision of the so-called King's and Queen's chambers. This chamber is usually dismissed by Egyptologists as being nothing more than a simple change in plans by the pyramid engineers and that it was intended to be the original burial chamber. But considering the extreme precision and planning given to every other phase of the construction of the Great Pyramid it is difficult to agree with this. The unfinished chamber is clearly of some significance.

One of the most mysterious features of the Great Pyramid are the shafts, measuring only about 8in by 8in (20cm x 20cm), running from the two main chambers to the outside of the pyramid. It has been suggested that these shafts were used to ventilate the monument during its construction, yet, no shafts have been discovered in other pyramids. At the top of the shafts small finely finished limestone doors were discovered suggesting that there was more to the shafts than simple ventilation. In the King's Chamber the southern shaft is aligned with Al Nitak, the brightest of the three stars of Orion's belt during the epoch of the pyramid's construction, c.2500 BC. The northern shaft aligned with Thuban, in the constellation of Draco. It has been conjectured that the shafts allowed the King's soul to travel to the "stars that never die", i.e. the circumpolar stars in the northern sky. 

The shafts of the King's Chamber raise enough questions of their own but one of the greatest mysteries of the Great Pyramid is the Queen's Chamber. Significantly it was placed at the centre of the pyramid, yet it was disguised by numerous hidden doorways and stone-slabs and the passage leading to the chamber was concealed by a huge stone block over the floor of the Grand Gallery. Even more enigmatic is the shafts of the Queen's Chamber. Unlike the King's Chamber where they are perfectly visible in the Queen's Chamber the shafts are 'hidden' and remained sealed over, and lead only to the 50th course, the base level of the King's chamber. The angle of the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber determines it was aligned at the brightest star in the sky, Sirius.

Why were the shafts in the Queen's chamber not completed – was the idea simply abandoned midway through construction? Were the shafts simply an afterthought, or an insignificant architectural change?

Although of relatively small dimension (8in x 8in), the construction of these stellar aligned shafts must have been an extremely complicated process with diagonal structures crossing vast horizontal courses. Both northern shafts had to be diverted several times at different angles to get around the vast obstruction of the Great Gallery. The construction of these shafts would have required masses of additional work, time and energy and must have presented an enormous challenge. Yet, as they stand they are a masterpiece of engineering and it is inconceivable that the shafts of the Queen's Chamber were simply abandoned.

As we have seen above, in the King's Chamber the southern shaft is aligned with Al Nitak, the brightest of the three stars of Orion's belt, the stellar representation of Osiris, the great Egyptian god of the afterlife. The southern shaft of the Queen's chamber was aligned on Sirius, the representation of Isis, the sister and great love of Osiris in Egyptian mythology; the King and Queen re-united in the afterlife. Support for this concept is provided by the fact that the Northern shaft of the Queen's chamber is aimed at Kocab, a star associated by the ancients with the immortality of the soul. 

Monuments by Continuity

The site at Baalbek in Lebannon was left unfinished and mirrored in Egypt. Significant features of the Great Pyramid were left incomplete after considerable effort to construct them and as much effort to then conceal them again.
What where these ancient engineers up to?

Associations to the past, and particularly the ancestors, appears to be significant in monuments constructed during the Neolithic period and a phase of construction may have been left unfinished to draw attention to a certain time, event or family group. It is feasible that these monuments were deliberately left unfinished for successive later generations to add a phase of construction so that a monument would possess the history of a family group. The latest wisdom is that Silbury, near Avebury, was built over a hundred year period by successive generations. We find a similar concept in long barrows that were added to by successive generations of a community, or even people from afar, who would visit the monument and add a layer of construction, perhaps another chamber. 

We see evidence of this continual rebuilding at Stonehenge which was dismantled, rebuilt and added to several times, incredibly, over a period in excess of a thousand years. Of course some people argue that this, the greatest Neolithic monument of them all, was never finished; a “jerry-built disaster,” planned but not completed because they ran out of material or the culture was not capable of achieving its aspirations. Mindsets like these betray a total ignorance of megalithic engineering and a prejudice against Neolithic capability.

However, there is a good argument that Stonehenge was purposefully left incomplete as we see it, and it was never intended as a closed circle. We look at this in more detail in the next part.

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Big Cats in the Cotswolds

The very first blog on the Ancient Art of Enchanting the Landscape back in September 2008 was Big Cats Sightings in Staffordshire following a spate of reported sightings featured in the local newspaper the Stafford Post. The big cat sightings started in the summer of 2008 and suddenly stopped at the end of the year. There were no reports of the mysterious beast being captured or a body found, it was assumed the predator had moved on. In July 2010 a huge black cat was reported in Burntwood, near Cannock. Was this the so called 'Chase Panther' said to haunt this area with sightings still being reported in spring 2011?

Big cat sightings in the Staffordshire Moorlands have persisted since 2006, including a report from Rudyard Lake, near Leek in 2008. The Roaches, in the Staffordshire Moorlands, has been host to sightings of foreign animals in recent years after escaping from the private zoo of Courtney Brocklehurst. Sightings of wallabies at the Roaches have been reported as recently as August 2011, providing evidence that foreign creatures can survive in the remote areas of Britain. [1]

There have been thousands of reported sightings of big cats across the moors and woodlands of the UK since 2000. The animals, usually described as black or dark brown, have been seen in almost every county in Britain, from Cornwall to the tip of Scotland. Sightings of big cats in the UK countryside are usually blamed on the Dangerous and Wild Animals Act 1976 which prohibited the keeping of wild animals as pets. Rather than obtain a licence or turn their pets over to zoos or wildlife parks it is thought many private owners released their animals into the wild. In what can only be described as a well thought out masterpiece of British legislation releasing dangerous animals into the wild wasn't actually made illegal until the 1981 Countryside Act. It is thought that a big cat like a puma could survive in the British countryside for up to 10-12 years. As they are usually isolated occurrences it is considered unlikely they would breed and survive in family groups beyond that.

Yet, despite many claimed sightings of the big cats in Staffordshire, no-one has ever caught one of the beasts, or taken totally definitive photographic evidence - most film footage is usually very blurred. There are no reports of ‘lost’ big cats from collections, or having had one escape. Evidence in most cases is based on eye-witness accounts, but, like many UFO sightings, it is claimed that nearly 90% of big cat sightings can usually be explained satisfactorily. Alarmingly, 10% can be considered genuine sightings!

Staffordshire's Cannock Chase is home to sightings of many strange creatures; as recently as January 2010 an enormous  'wolf-like' animal was seen to stand and stare at a local woman out walking her dog before it turned and disappeared in to the woods. In a survey of the supernatural, of 21 werewolf sightings reported over the last thirty years, all but one have been on Cannock Chase. Staffordshire certainly seems popular with big cats and paranormal creatures. However, big cats in the wild should not be dismissed as a paranormal apparition like phantom Black Dogs for example. The evidence indicates these big cats are physical creatures. And it is not just Staffordshire that attracts big cat sightings.

Big Cat kill in the Cotswolds

Evidence of a big cat kill has recently been reported in Gloucestershire. [2]  A local walker sent photographs of a roe deer carcass found near the village of Dursley to experts last week after noticing particular features on the deer suggesed it could have been a big cat kill, bearing the classic hallmark injuries to the neck, the plucking of fur and the removal of internal organs. 

Then a second roe deer carcass was found less than two miles from the first in the National Trust’s historic Woodchester Country Park, near Stroud. [3] The Trust are taking the kills seriously and have called in experts from the University of Warwick to take DNA samples from the two carcasses. 

David Armstrong, the National Trust's head ranger for the Gloucestershire countryside, said the deer carcass was found near an area of beech woodland sloping down to pastures. Mr  Armstrong said, "there are some very occasional sightings of big cats in the Cotswolds but they have wide territories, so are rarely present in one particular spot for long," He added, "we'd be interested to hear of any more sightings at Woodchester."

Locals have reported big cat sightings and suspicious kills in the area for 25 years but they seem to have been disregarded as no more than rumours. Frank Tunbridge, who has been tracking big cats in the Cotswolds for decades, said he received a call from a woman who recently saw a black panther-like creature near the Ram Inn, South Woodchester. Mr Tunbridge said she believed it could have been a black cat, and it was about the size of an Alsatian dog.

Of the recent deer kills Mr Tunbridge said, "the deer bore many of the hallmarks of a big cat attack – its nose was bitten off, neck punctured, and its intestines were not touched. Cats take organs like the heart, kidneys and liver because they can't digest what's in the stomach and intestines".

The episode is reminiscent of the kill at  Norton Bridge, near Eccleshall, in August 2008, during the Staffordshire flap of big cat sightings. Norton Bridge resident Katie Hill found the remains of one of her pet sheep decapitated and half eaten. Whatever was responsible for the attack had scaled a 6 foot fence before pouncing on the fully grown animal. Local wildlife rescuer Alf Hardy confirmed that the kill was that of a big cat. Neil Arnold of Kent Big Cat Research verified the kill as that of a big cat.

In January 2009 Forestry workers conducting deer surveys in the nearby Forest of Dean captured big cats on night vision gear, claiming they got within 50 yards of the creatures as the first was seen crossing a road near Lydney and the second lurking among trees at Staple Edge.

Samples from the recent Gloucestershire deer kills have been taken by Dr Robin Allaby, associate professor of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, who said he was “prepared to believe” that the creature that killed the deer was a big cat. The results are due by the end of the month.


See also: 20 sheep found mutilated near Devil's Bridge, Wales, leads to calls that The Beast is Back

Notes:

1. The Roaches website 

2. Will DNA solve Gloucestershire big cat Mystery - The Independent, 12 Jan 2012.

3. Second dead deer found - The Guardian, 16 Jan 2012

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Welcome to 2012

2012, the year of the London Olympics, Euro Nations football in Poland ….....and the doomsday phenomenon of major galactic alignment, the opening of Stargates, and a world ending catastrophe. 

An apocalyptic view of 2012, the Armageddon year with predictions of the end of the world and human civilisation, is held by many Western cultures, a belief bordering on paranoia amongst some religious sects. It is an obsession that kicked off in the 1960s with authors of the new age of 'alternative history' such as Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, Robert Charroux and Erich von Daniken writing of lost episodes of mankind's past, claiming a suppressed 'real' history of the human race. The notion of previous civilisations ending abruptly due to some catastrophic event continues to grow with there now being more than 200 books currently listed on Amazon dealing with doomsday 2012, the year of the end of the Maya 'Long Count'.

Did the Ancient Maya Predict the End of the World in 2012? 

Chichén Itzá Maya observatory
(Wikimedia Commons)

The Maya kept time on a scale few other cultures have considered, although the 'Long Count' was most likely invented by the first major civilization in Mexico, the Olmec (fl. c.1500 BC to c.400 BC). During their heyday the Maya adopted the Long Count, an already ancient lengthy circular calendar that commenced way back with the creation.

The Maya were obsessed with time, indeed, there are so many Calendar dates and time-intervals in their inscriptions, that some scholars believed that the ancient Maya worshipped Time itself.

According to archaeologists the Maya calendar does not signify the end of the world in 2012, as some have said, but 21 December 2012 was nonetheless momentous to the Maya. 2012 is the year when the largest grand cycle in the Maya calendar (872,000 days or 5,125.37 years), comes to an end  and a new cycle begins.

The current era of the Long Count calendar began at what the Maya saw as the dawn of the last creation period, August 11, 3114 BC. The Maya called that date, which preceded their civilization by thousands of years, as Day Zero, or 13.0.0.0.0. This era ends on 21 December 2012 and a new one begins; the cycle goes on.

This brings to a close the 13th b'ak'tun, an almost 400-year period in the Maya Long Count calendar, and rather than moving to the next b'ak'tun, the calendar will reset to Day Zero again at the end of the 13th cycle and the cyclical calendar will roll over, beginning another enormous era.

World Ages
There is a strong tradition of "world ages" in literature of the Maya, but the record has been much distorted by popular writers of pseudo-science leaving several possibilities open to interpretation. According to the mytho-historical sacred book 'Popol Vuh' the gods first created three failed worlds followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. We are currently living in the fourth world. The Long Count's "zero date" was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and the beginning of the current fourth world, i.e. its 13th b'ak'tun was on 11 August 3114 BC. The fourth world will have reached the end of its 13th b'ak'tun, or Maya date 13.0.0.0.0, on 21 December 2012.

The Maya did not predict the end of the world in 2012. It is simply the end of an era of the Long Count representing the end of the old cycle and the beginning of the new one. Scholars have widely dismissed the notion that when the Long Count "ends" it will result in cataclysmic events occurring in 2012. Professional Mayanist scholars state that predictions of impending doom are not found in any of the extant classic Mayan accounts and misrepresents their history and culture. On such scholar Mark Van Stone says the notion of a "Great Cycle" coming to an  cataclysmic ending is completely a modern invention. There is no significant astronomical event tied to the Long Count's start date. It is Western cultures that are obsessed with a doomsday event in 2012, not the Maya.

Ancient Prophecy
In all there are about fifteen stone inscriptions in ancient Mayan referring to the “Creation” date 13.0.0.0.0 in 3114 BC. One book, the 12th century Dresden Codex, famous for its Lunar and Venus tables of outstanding accuracy, actually refers to this date more times than all of the stone inscriptions combined but fails to record an event of any note on that date. In other words, it is just a date.

There are few written accounts of the end of b'ak'tun 13 and just one stone tablet on Monument 6 at Tortuguero in southern Mexico's Tabasco state refers to that date. However, the glyphs on the tablet are partially damaged making the precise meaning of the tablet a mystery. Nevertheless, scholars have made several interpretations of a translation.

Tortuguero Monument 6, closing passage. The last 6 glyphs on this long text are the only surviving ancient Maya mention of the date December 21, 2012. ( From the cover of Mark Van Stone's book, "2012: Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya". Photos by Elisabeth Wagner and Donald Hales, photo collage by Paul Johnson. http://markvanstone.com/glyphs-evidence-for-2012-apocalypse/ )

One such interpretation made in 1996 by Stephen Houston  from Brown University and David Stuart  of the University of Texas suggests that the glyphs indicate that a god will descend at the end of b'ak'tun 13. What precisely happens next is uncertain, although the scholars suggest this might have been a prophecy of some sort. The 'prophecy' analysis was quickly seized upon by many 'alternative history' websites, 'New Age' discussion forums and 'pseudo-science' books as evidence that the Maya calendar had predicted the end of the world. It hadn't. 
But it didn't stop books like Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, which basically recycled the Charroux and von Daniken concept of a lost civilisation ending in some catastrophic event, becoming a best seller in the same year.

Houston and Stuart revisited the glyphs recently and concluded that the inscription may actually contain no prophetic statements at all about 2012, with the mention of the end of  b'ak'tun 13 as more likely to be a forward-looking statement that refers back to the main subject of the inscription; the dedication of Monument 6. They insist that even if the inscription is a prophecy of a god coming down at the end of b'ak'tun 13 and starting of a new cycle it isn't a statement about the end of the world.

Should we have much faith in the so-called Maya 2012 prophecy of popular culture? 

The ancient Maya once occupied a vast geographic area in Central America, their empire peaked between 250AD and 900AD in what is now Mexico and Central America. Maya civilization produced awe-inspiring temples and pyramids, highly accurate calendars, mathematics and hieroglyphic writing with a complex social and political order.

In the ninth century AD temple building suddenly stopped and became swallowed up by the jungle; Maya wisdom and knowledge was lost to mankind for centuries. The Collapse of the Classic Maya culture is one of the biggest mysteries in history. And yet they failed to predict it themselves.

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