Puma Punku (3/3) – Heavy movers
Like most of ancient megalithic structures, the main question pending at Puma Punku is how the builders managed to move those huge stones. The biggest stones found on site are weighing from 50 to 135 tons with the heaviest reaching an astonishing 440 tons! This is 600 cars! How did they move them?
The agreed academic theory is that the builders carried and rolled stones on wooden logs. This theory makes no sense. Trees would either get crushed under the weight, or simply remain immobile, not to mention that 3500m above sea level no trees can grow naturally at such altitude. And even they did, how did they simply lifted those hundreds of tons to place them of the “rolling logs”?
If we want to better understand how much of a massive effort moving those blocks is (wait a few weeks before you read our articles on Ollantaytambo ☺ ) we need to put things in perspective. Today’s construction workers moving 30 ton objects use a crane. Moving 60-70 ton objects requires 2 cranes at the same time. Anything exceeding a 100 tons demands specific logistics, enhanced moving devices and consequent supervising labour force.
So basically in 2015 we are having a hard time finding ways to move a 100 ton object, but we should all agree that thousands of years ago, people rolled 50, 135, 440 tons stones on wooden logs from miles away? Why don’t we stop insulting our own intelligence and admit that even if we don’t know who, when and how, those builders must have had advanced machines? At the end of the day, which sounds less logical: machines or wooden logs?
Don’t forget to check out the first 2 parts of our Puma Punku series