Baalbek is widely regarded as a complex built by the Romans. It is home to the largest temple of Jupiter ever built by the Romans, one of the wonders of the ancient world.
In this remote location in the Bekaa Valley in present-day Lebanon, Roman emperors traveled 2,000 km to sacrifice their gods and receive oracular guidance on the fate of their empire.
Much has changed in two thousand years. The magnificent temple lies in ruins, as if abandoned by its gods, and is full of forgotten secrets.
Even the ruins are neglected, tourism is deteriorating there, because the monuments are in a politically unstable area.
Some archaeologists may also wish that Baalbek was buried forever. Because it is there that the world's largest processed stone block, the famous Stone of the South, is located in a quarry located just ten minutes walk from the Acropolis Temple. This huge stone weighs about 1,000 tons, which is as heavy as three Boeing 747s.
What's most interesting about Baalbek is the foundations on which the Romans were built. The aforementioned Temple of Jupiter was erected in the place where the foundation is on earth, built of blocks similar to the stone of the South.
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This stone platform, 7.3 meters high, consists of 3 processed cubes, each weighing about 700 tons. They were also carved in a nearby quarry.
The mystery remains in how they were transported and so precisely picked up that from some distance even the place where they meet is invisible.
It is believed that this platform may be several centuries older than the Temple of Jupiter.
Meanwhile, even in our time, using all our knowledge and technology, creating such a thing will take a lot of effort and can be difficult to accomplish.
The problem is especially maneuvering with giant blocks.
It is widely believed that the blocks were transported due to the strength of human muscles and wooden platforms with ropes.
Taking into account the coefficient of friction of 0.2 and the fact that one hundred ropes will be attached to each platform, each platform will have a pulling force corresponding to 7650 kg.
If each of the slaves pulled 20 kg, then 382 were pulled for one rope, and 38,200 for 100 ropes.
This does not sound realistic, because it is difficult to imagine an army of almost 40 thousand slaves pulling one stone for a distance of 1.5 km. But if it could not have been done the way archaeologists believe, how was it done?