The Astonishing Megalithic Quarry Of Baalbek In Lebanon: 1600 Ton Stone Revealed!

Hi this is Brian Forster and this is the quarry at Baalbek in Lebanon. The most famous feature of this quarry is the Stone of the Pregnant Woman and we were visiting here in April of 2019 and found out that now the Stone of the Pregnant Woman has been completely excavated. Whereas before, about three years ago when we went, it was still partially buried. And now amazingly enough there's another stone next to it which is even larger. The Stone of the Pregnant Woman weighs approximately 1,200 tons and the one that we're walking on now is estimated at 1,600 tons. So when we were visiting about three years ago only the upper surface was visible. Now you can see the entire Stone of the Pregnant Woman has been excavated and by local archaeologists in Lebanon. Now you can also see that there's a horizontal crack that goes all the way from one end to the other and the stone is still attached to the bedrock. And here is the larger one once again weighing in at 1,600 tons. And these are other evidences of quarrying at the Baalbek quarry site. So again 1,600 tons and most academics believe that this work was done by the Romans but that is highly unlikely. This is one of the largest stones ever shaped on planet Earth. And what we're going to be doing is after we visit the quarry we're going to go to an actual Roman quarry and you'll see the difference in terms of the sense of scale. So many of us believe that this part of the Baalbek quarry is much, much older than the Romans and could quite possibly be antediluvian or 12,000 plus years old. Also right next to the Stone of the Pregnant Woman see burial chambers here. These are relatively crudely done and the limestone material is not very hard so this could be from the Roman time period. And here what you're seeing is the darkish area on top is the original surface. The lighter color below is where the dirt was when we visited about three years ago. And this is a two-part video. This of course is part one. There you can see that that crack is on both sides and for some reason work at the Baalbek quarry seems to have suddenly stopped. So this is part one of the video. Part two is going to be exploring the Baalbek site proper where we have the Trilithon which is a series of 3,000 ton blocks. And there you can see the tool marks very similar to what we see at the Giza Plateau in Egypt. And once again see the lighter color that's only been uncovered approximately a year ago. And once again just to show you the sense of scale. And finally we're going to be looking again at the crack that goes all the way from one end to the other on both sides. So it appears that the Stone of the Pregnant Woman was interrupted in terms of the work being done on it. So the Stone of the Pregnant Woman is quite famous but there's another one that's in the quarry on the other side that's rarely visited. And this one is estimated at being approximately 1,000 tons and was cut from the bedrock. And we see some sections have been taken out. Those were probably attempts by the Romans at quarrying the stone. But again this one is contemporary most likely with the Stone of the Pregnant Woman and we believe that it's far far older than the Roman time period of approximately 2,000 years ago. So I'm walking on top of it once again just to give you a sense of the incredible scale. And this is where you see the attempts likely by the Romans at quarrying. And this was filmed in April of 2019 right after our annual tour of Egypt. So once again absolutely huge. 1,000 tons. And here you get a side view as I walk down the length of this massive stone. There's Patricia Oian our tour coordinator and there's Robert and also in the picture was Susan Moore who is our geologist whom we take on all of our major tours. So finally just a sense of the sheer size of this second massive megalithic block the Baalbek quarry. Now as I was saying in contrast we're going to be visiting what archaeologists definitely believe is a Roman time period quarry. And you can see the quality of the stone is actually quite poor and the sense of scale is a lot smaller than at the main Baalbek site. This quarry I think is about two miles from the Baalbek quarry that we were looking at. And so once again this is a comparison of size. The main Baalbek quarry versus this known Roman quarry. You can see smallish blocks were taken out possibly some larger ones but it's nothing compared to the quarry where the pregnant woman is located. And actually the term the pregnant woman stone is a mistranslation because pregnant woman stone doesn't really mean anything. The proper translation is simply foundation stone. And here in the main part of this Roman quarry a rather large cave but we're going to see evidence of relatively small stones being removed from here. Nothing in the order of hundreds let alone a thousand twelve hundred or sixteen hundred tons. There you can see some of the quarry marks. Kind of looks almost like a random pattern. And the only thing quite curious about this which you'll see in a moment is the fact that the ceiling is very high up and you see lots and lots of tool marks on the ceiling surfaces. So this could simply indicate that the stone was being quarried here over quite a long period of time. It started relatively high up and then gradually just began to cut the bedrock farther and farther down as they removed the blocks from here producing quite a large and interesting cave. So this part here is a bit of a teaser for you. This is us visiting the outside of Baalbek right after our visit to the quarries. The next day we actually went inside and we had full access to all of Baalbek for the first time I think ever. And here you see Roman period construction and above it actually later I believe medieval or Islamic time frame construction. And now what you're seeing in front of you is the trilithon. Three stones weighing 1,000 tons apiece on top of I believe two rather massive blocks weighing the equivalent and interestingly smaller stones below. You would think that the largest stones would be in the actual foundation but it is possible that smaller stones were used below as earthquake proofing so that if there was an earthquake and there have been earthquakes in this area that these smaller stones below which are still quite massive would be able to move slightly back and forth to stabilize the larger stones above. But once again you have the Roman and later work above and then the massive trilithon stones below. The sense of scale is completely different and so obviously the Romans built upon the megalithic foundation. The same thing that we see in places like Egypt and also in Peru. In Egypt where the pharaohs built on top or around megalithic structures and in Peru where the Inca built on top and around much older megalithic works. So as I said the second part of this video will be inside the fence and we'll get a complete clear view of all of the megalithic features of Baalbek in Lebanon. And here are some upcoming events. We're exploring megalithic aspects of India in January of 2020. Then our annual trip to Egypt in March of 2020. Right after that we're going to explore megalithic aspects of Israel. Then in June of 2020 I'll be at Contact in the Desert at Indian Wells, California. Also in June we have our annual Iti Raimi Inca Celebration of the Sun tour in Peru including Machu Picchu. And November of 2020 our annual or one of our three annual major tours of Peru and Bolivia. And if you want to learn more about Baalbek this book of mine is available at Amazon.com. Thank you for watching.