Hi guys. Today I want to talk about the largest monolith on the planet, Yangshan Monument,
and why I disagree with historians that it was quarried in the early 15th Century. What
is a monolith? It’s a man-made large stone. I believe the Yangshan Monument was created
by a pre-history culture with sophisticated tools long lost to time. This monolith might
be a proof that our planet once had technology tens of thousands of years ago that in many
ways rivals if not surpasses modern day engineering.
The largest monolith on the planet is located in China, it weighs over 16,000 tons, which
is equivalent to a hundred eighty blue whales or 27-hudred 00 African elephants.
Chinese historians and Wikipedia state that workers from 1405 Ming Dynasty quarried this
monument because an emperor wanted to honor his father. Early 15th century is before the
Renaissance and considered the late middle ages, when people used hand tools for mining
and quarrying.
First, let’s take a look at the site located in Nanjing, southern China. There are actually
3 man-made monoliths here with the smallest one weighing more than 6000 tons. I will use
the same names Wikipedia uses to identify them.
1. The biggest of the 3 is called the base. It is 30m long, 13m wide and 16m thick. Imagine
a stone block bigger than a NBA court. How do we know it was man-made? Look at the sharp
edges and the gap between the quarried block and the bedrock. the quarried block is much
smoother. Also there are three precisely cut rectangular openings, each is about a person’s
height. 2. The 2nd stone is called the body. It is
almost 50 m or 162’ long. Standing up, it will be as tall as a 16 floor building, taller
than the Statue of Liberty or the Colosseum at Rome. This one weighs about 8800 tons.
Look at the massive scale of the opening and the precision of the stonework. It is mind-boggling.
Who ever did the quarrying, basically took off most of the bottom part. We see an adult
can stand straight in the opening. Why did they carve out these stool-looking blocks?
Why would the imperial architect agree to do such a thing if it was not beneficial to
the end-product? How did ancient workers know that the stone would hold up and not collapse?
These questions remain unanswered. 3. The 3rd one is the head. It is peculiar
with interesting knobs, a round shaped with rectangular holes that go through. It has
curved cuts at one end. We have seen similar knobs in Peru and Egypt. What are they for
and are they in fact connected? No one knows for sure.
Many people are familiar with the stone of the pregnant woman in Baalbeck Lebanon, which
is the 5th largest monolith in the world. Just look as how many people can fit on that
stone. Here is a graph comparing the Baalbeck stone standing side by side with the three
Yangshan blocks. We can see the Yangshan blocks are much bigger.
The official explanation is that the Yangshan blocks were supposed to be assembled together
as one monument, which would be a 240’ giant, taller than Notre –Dame in Paris, almost
half the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza. And weigh an incredible 31,000 tons! That
is 150 times heavier than the Statue of Liberty, 91 times heavier than the big rock “levitated
Mass” in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. That rock took 11 days, $10m, used a
custom-built 196-wheeled transporter for the 100-mile route, from the quarry to the museum.
Wikipedia states “after most of the stone-cutting work had been done, the architects realized
that moving stones that huge from Yangshan to the final location, then installing them
in a proper way, would not be physically possible. “
So are some scholars stating the imperial architects were incompetent? They could not
properly assess the project before they started all this quarrying work? I don't think so.
Even with today’s most advanced technology, we cannot finish the project. The most powerful
gantry crane, which is mounted to the ground, can lift 20,000 tons. The biggest mobile crane
can lift and transfer 1,200 tons. So if we managed to mount the gantry crane on the mountain,
we might be able lift the blocks but we couldn’t transport any of them.
Can we duplicate these blocks with current machinery? The largest stone block cutter
with diamond blade, can cut through stone as thick as 3.5 m or 11’. The thinnest Yangshan
block is over 4 meters. If you want to do a clean cut opening like the ones we saw at
Yangshan, what tool would you use? Water-jet cutter? Diamond drilling? Look at the tool
marks here. Don’t they look like machine marks?
If we would have so much trouble to make these blocks today, how did workers in the 1400
with hand tools such as chisels and pickaxes manage to do so? The obvious answer is they
couldn’t.
Let’s take a look at the final monument to the emperor, This represents the real sophistication
of stone masonry during that time period. It stands less than 9 m tall, shorter than
29’. It remains the largest in the Nanjing area and weighs about 20 tons.
Here I want to briefly talk about the technological ability of stone masonry in ancient China.
It is well known that ancient Chinese mainly used wood for building structures; a good
example is the Forbidden City in Beijing. Why didn’t the Chinese consider stone or
bricks at this time? There are different reasons, such as wood
is more accessible and easier to work with. But the most important reason is probably
this: ancient Chinese workers lacked understanding of stone mechanics –they never gained sufficient
techniques or knowledge to work with stone, they used stone the same way they used wood,
which didn’t work well for freestanding structures.
I am not making an assumption here; I am merely repeating statements from the best known Chinese
architect Liang Sicheng, who is also a prestigious architectural historian in the early 20th
century. He and his wife did extensive surveys on ancient Chinese structures. He came to
this conclusion, which is indicated in his book The History of Chinese Architecture.
I am showing you some imperial stone work in later Ming dynasty. I am not saying they
are not impressive but we can see the scale of the work is nothing remotely close to the
Yangshan blocks.
If we compare the final monument and the Yangshan blocks, again using the Baalbeck stone as
a reference: 31,000 ton Yangshan monument vs. a 20 ton final product. One is humongous
and the other is a miniature when side by side. There is absolutely no comparison.
Another note, in 15th century China, monuments were made of two stone blocks: the head and
the body are one piece of stone and the base is a separate one. So the three-block-monument
theory is not correct.
Then why did Chinese historians come to this unbelievable conclusion?
Wikipedia states: according to a legend --- and let me just stop here and give you a fact:
This project was not mentioned even once in the "chronicles of Ming Dynasty," which is
written by the imperial scholars with great detail. If the emperor directly ordered this
project, there is no way it was not documented.
The only reference on Wikipedia is a poem written in the 18th century. That is 300 years
after. How could that be a reliable source? Modern day historians searched all over and
found only one source relating Yangshan to this emperor, it is from a scholar’s diary.
Here is a portion of the diary at current day Yangshan. The 1405 diary stated a great
stone block was “found” at Yangshan quarry. Two things to be emphasized here: first, he
was talking about one single block, not three; second, the stone was “found” instead
of “quarried”. He also described different stones at Yangshan as natural formation, not
man-made.
Here is an aerial view of today’s Yangshan Park. We clearly see the quarry is adjacent
to one of the Yangshang blocks, the base. But the long body and the knobbed head are
not in that area and there are no signs of quarrying near them.
I think I have presented enough evidence to argue that the ancient Chinese did not have
the ability to quarry the Yangshan blocks.
The question then becomes – who and what did?
Remember the curious knobs? We find similar ones in Peru, Egypt and other megalithic sites.
What is the connection here? Could they have been built by a prehistory global civilization?
Ancient Greek scholar Plato stated in Timaeus that there were many deluges that happened
on Planet Earth while we only remembered one. In recent years, new evidence emerged that
points to Atlantis being a real civilization that existed before the last flood, which
might have happened 12,000 years ago. Maybe these giant stone blocks were actually done
by the Atlanteans? And is there a possibility that more prehistory
civilizations existed? Indeed they might have left us these megalithic sites all around
the world as proof of their existence. Human history still remains a big mystery and we
shouldn’t be so convinced to think we have all the answers already.
In my next video, I will talk about my findings on the tool marks at Yangshan and how they
are similar to other ancient sites at Ballbeck, Petra and India, and how they all match modern
machine marks. This is my first YouTube video. Thank you for spending time with me. I also
have a few other ones I am currently working on, such as Longyou Cave, which has different
but equally intriguing tool marks which I found at other sites as well.
If you have any insights, please leave a comment. I would love to hear from you.
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watching and see you next time!