Place: Baalbek, The Beka’a Valley, Lebanon, 50 miles northeast of Beirut

Time: 5,000-10,000 years ago

At a time when the world was emerging from a prolonged ice age and paleolithic hunter/gatherers with wooden, bone and stone tools roamed the earth, the foundation stones for the temple complex of Baalbek were being quarried, hewn to precise dimensions and hauled up impossible terrain to be unerringly placed high on a stone wall.

We all know about ancient stonework and the marvels that were created throughout history, because some of them still exist.  Almost every other form of ancient construction has eroded away.  We marvel at the pyramids and the 2.5-3 ton stones used to build the largest of them, but few stones of ancient Egypt compare to what is found at Baalbek.

Much of the credit for the stonework is given to the Romans who built the temple complex called Heliopolis on the ancient site.  But, the foundation stones upon which their temples are built were there perhaps thousands of years before.  The weathering on the massive limestone foundation blocks (note the guy sitting there for scale) indicates a much older origin than the columns and carvings of the Romans.

Imagine a fully loaded C-130 cargo plane weighing in at approximately 150+ tons.  How could primitive people possibly transport, uphill, something that massive?  Now imagine that the load is approximately 6-7 times that much, say 1000 tons.  Not only was the load quarried and smoothed to precision, but it was then somehow transported up a 3800 foot hill with no evidence that ramps or steps ever existed.  Eventually  3 stones in particular, called the trilithon, were raised 30 feet up the wall to fit with other stones.  This is exactly what happened at Baalbek.

What history have we lost from our ancient past?  Has high culture and technology existed on earth for much longer than we have imagined?  Will we ever know how seemingly impossible feats were accomplished that cannot be replicated even now with our most advanced technology?

And, by the way, there is an even larger stone of about 1200 tons (2,400,000 pounds) quarried but not moved.  It is claimed that this is the largest building stone ever quarried.  There is also local native history that calls the platform on which all else is built, “The Landing Place.’  What landed there and when?  The enigma deepens.

http://sacredsites.com/middle_east/lebanon/baalbek.html

See: Ancient Aliens, The History Channel, Season 3, Aliens and Sacred Places