In Asuka Park there is a famous ancient site - the so-called Ishibutai-kofun tomb. Historians consider it to be the burial place of Soga no Umako, a representative of the aristocratic Soga family and a prominent politician of the second half of the 6th - early 7th centuries, who played a significant role in consolidating Buddhism in Japan.
However, among the various achievements of Soga no Umako, sources mention the creation of the tomb of the Soga clan. A natural question arises: why, in this case, Soga-no Umako himself was allegedly buried not in the ancestral tomb he created, but in a separate tomb?
Doubts about the validity of this version are heightened at the sight of the "tomb" itself. Ishibutai-kofun is fundamentally different from all other tombs in Asuka Park in the size of the granite blocks used in the construction of the facility. Some of them weigh more than a hundred tons. So, only two such "monsters" form the roof of the structure.
There are similar "stones" in the masonry walls. For example, the granite block that forms the lower part of the back wall of the "tomb" at first glance appears to be two separate blocks. However, if you look closely, you can see that this is a single block, cracked in half, possibly during its installation in place to the masonry.
Back wall of Ishibutai-kofun
The huge granite blocks are laid, as it may seem, rather casually. In some places, not only cracks are visible, but also literally whole holes, which are somewhere filled with small stones, and somewhere - and remain unfilled, forming a kind of holes for ventilation. However, if you look closely, you will notice that the number of such holes is minimal for laying blocks that have a shape that is far from rectangular.
Promotional video:
In addition, despite the fact that the boulders give the impression of almost untreated granite boulders, the builders managed to ensure that the internal walls of the structure form fairly evenly consistent planes. From the outside, Ishibutai Kofun looks like a simple pile of stones.
The outer corridor, which leads to the entrance to the "tomb", is made in the same way. It is also made up of almost untreated blocks, and the resulting wall planes are kept very even.
If it really was built in the VI-VII centuries AD, then from the point of view of engineering thought and construction solutions, the object should be recognized as one of the most outstanding structures of the Kofun period. But these building decisions and the achieved result make one strongly doubt the validity of the official dates. And above all, because of the size of the boulders used to create the Ishibutai-kofun.
Why was it necessary to drag, lift and set in the masonry such hulks? Other, real tombs clearly demonstrate to everyone that this was not necessary. The builders of the Kofun period did well with smaller blocks, which are still in abundance around the Isibutai "tomb" and do not require any super-efforts to move and use them in masonry. After all, the transition from stones weighing several tons to weights of hundreds of tons requires not just an arithmetic increase in "pulling force", but is associated with the solution of a number of additional very difficult rigging and transport problems.
According to historians, the builders solved all these problems with the allegedly primitive push-and-pull method. And for tourists near Isibutai-kofun there is a poster on which this method is presented with simple illustrations.
The construction of the Ishibutai-kofun as seen by historians
Of course, much more people are needed to move hundred-ton blocks than the 5-6 people shown in the figure. And in principle, during the Kofun period, Japan was already densely populated enough to find many more workers. Just rolling stones weighing hundreds of tons requires more than just pulling power and logs, because no wood can withstand such loads.
For example, during the transportation of the famous Thunder-stone installed under the monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg, which the supporters of the "push-pull" method love to cite, not logs were used at all, but specially made balls of durable bronze, which in addition rolled not on the ground, but along gutters specially made of the same material. And it was a unique operation performed for only one unit.
Transporting the Thunder Stone
More than one stone was used here. In addition, moving the blocks for the Ishibutai-kofun was required not on a flat plane, but on the very hilly terrain of Asuka Park, which greatly complicated the task.
Moreover, these stones were required not only to be lowered into the pit, as shown in the illustration for tourists, but to be placed on top of each other so as to obtain the minimum number of cracks and gaps between the blocks, and even to provide a single plane of the inner walls. To do this, a hundred-ton whopper should not just slide smoothly into the hole prepared for it, but be held in weight for the time that builders and stonecutters need to ensure such a result. And here associations arise not at all with logs, levers and ropes, but with powerful cranes.
In a number of ancient legends and traditions, there is a statement that in time immemorial such stone hulks were supposedly moved "with the help of sound", for which the priests performed special mantras or used special "musical instruments". As a result of the impact of such a sound, the stones lost their weight and even "flew through the air."
In our time, this statement does not seem to be an absolutely impossible invention. The terms “magnetic levitation”, “ultrasonic levitation” and “acoustic levitation” are already widely known. Thus, magnetic levitation is used in magnetic levitation trains, and acoustic levitation is used in the development of some unique drugs.
Levitating liquid drops
Of course, there is a huge gap between the acoustic levitation of small liquid droplets and the movement of large stone blocks through the air using sound. Any technology must go through a lot of intermediate stages of development before it can be used to achieve any significant results. So it is with acoustic levitation, which also has to go a long way to become an everyday technology, possibly in the movement of objects with a large mass.
If in the past, indeed, someone could move boulders through the air with the help of sound, then this someone should have been a representative of a very highly developed civilization with the appropriate advanced technologies, and not at all a hunter-gatherer or even a farmer. After all, just like that, such technologies with a wooden hoe or with bows and arrows cannot be obtained.
Isibutai-kofun has a subtle, but very important detail - right in the middle along the entire corridor there is a chute made of small stones. This chute is clearly not some kind of notion of modern restorers, but represents the implementation of some plan of the ancient builders. The chute is also present in all archaeological drawings of Isibutai-kofun, but neither archaeologists themselves nor historians attach any importance to it.
There are three points associated with this gutter. First, the floor of the corridor has a clear slope from the walls to the gutter. Secondly, the gutter itself also has a clearly visible slope from the "tomb" to the exit from the corridor to the outside. And thirdly, in the "tomb" itself, this chute runs along the perimeter close to the walls, leaving in the center a kind of raised platform. If we take into account these three points, then the conclusion literally suggests itself that the gutter served as a drain or drainage channel, which collected the water flowing down the walls of the Isibutai-kofun and took it outside the structure.
Gutter in the center of the corridor
If we assume that Isibutai-kofun was really a tomb and the ancient Japanese placed a sarcophagus with someone's body in this tomb, then, according to the logic of burial mounds, they would have covered this tomb with earth from above. And whether there will be water or not - the descendants should not have bothered. This is exactly what is observed in other structures that were erected during the Kofun period and were actually used as tombs. There are no such gutters there.
However, in this case, the gutter was nevertheless made and clearly purposefully. And this automatically forces us to conclude that the gutter had to fulfill its function, that is, to drain water from Isibutai-kofun, providing a dry regime in this structure. But then it is not a tomb at all.
However, as a tomb it could have been used later, when the initial purpose had already been forgotten. This is quite common almost all over the world, when more ancient structures were used for burial. But what, then, is the original purpose of the Ishibutai Kofun? Perhaps it was a storage facility, warehouse, or hangar for a small UFO.
In general, Ishibutai-kofun is much more suitable for the role of a stationary shelter for a certain vehicle, which had to be kept dry, rather than a simple grave.
Based on the article by A. Yu. Sklyarov