Hi guys, today I’m going to take you to a mountainous region in southern China, which
has many mysterious man-made cave dwellings.
These caves were excavated on the cliffs into the bedrock.
Even though there are no historical records on the caves’ origin, the local chronicle
states that people built and utilized enforced strongholds or villages in mountains as retreats
and defense systems in the 1200’s.
So were these caves excavated 800 years ago or do they have a longer and more intriguing
history?
The distinct markings inside these caves curiously resemble the tool marks we see at many ancient
megalithic sites around the world, such as in Longyou caves in China, the Bazda Caves
in Turkey and Gebel el-Silsila Quarry in Egypt.
Some say that these markings came from hand tools like chisels or pickaxes, explaining
why we see similar markings showing up at different ancient megalithic sites.
Is that so?
In this video, I will compare the markings inside the ancient caves with the ones from
chisels, jackhammers and hard rock excavating machinery.
Let’s see which markings are the closest in resembling the ancient ones.
First, let’s look at these cliff side stone caves located in Neijiang, the central region
of the Sichuan Basin, southwest China.
Round, purple sandstone hills make up 90% of the city's territory.
One of the counties in Neijiang, Weiyuan used to be called the Iron Mountain in ancient
times.
Records as early as 200 BC reveal prominent iron smelting and producing work in this area.
Besides iron, this location is known for its rock salt production in Chinese dynastic times.
The abundant mineral resources and convenient river transportation routes made this region
a battleground among political powers.
For thousands of years, local people sought refuge by building villages on the high mountains
and cliffs to avoid war and protect their families.
Local county chronicle says that before 300 AD, during the Three Kingdoms period, the
legendary Chinese military strategist Zhuge Liang once smelted iron here to manufacture
weaponry.
He also sent troops to stronghold villages to fight the locals, the so-called barbarians.
So it’s possible these ancient caves can be traced back to over 1700 years ago.
A thousand years after, around 1270, Sichuan basin suffered from the Mongolian occupation.
It’s documented that people began to utilize and build more reinforced villages in mountains
to defend against the Mongols.
Multiple fort-like villages were established on hilltops with gates and houses.
Most Chinese suspect that the secret cave dwellings were excavated during this period
as well.
It’s hard to tell the age of these stone caves; though judging by the writings and
calligraphies left inside the caves, we can be sure that the caves existed long before
our modern time.
These caves are all excavated on the cliff sides, in mid-hill, about 100-200 m above
ground.
They are well camouflaged amongst countless hills in this region.
From afar, it’s very difficult to find out the cave locations which make them exceptionally
effective hiding spots.
To get to a cave, one needs to first climb up the right hill and then find a single narrow
path, which leads to the bottom of the cave.
These caves often have several stories with living quarters on higher floors.
The interior of such caves can be quite spacious with multiple rooms, grand halls, corridors,
stairs and storage areas.
These caves usually have one or more water cisterns outside and appear to be designed
for human habitation.
One of the biggest caves, Zhaiziyan, has over 10 chambers spanning three stories.
The bottom level is about 3m/ 10’ tall and 200 square meters, which is about 2200 square
feet.
Parts of the cave facade are covered with stone blocks.
Maybe the blocks didn’t belong to the initial design but were constructed later after the
original cave walls collapsed.
Many chambers have small niches that line up looking like beam holes.
The main floor is the 3rd floor, which is over 800 square meters or 8600 square feet.
There are many interesting features such as the large sunken areas, a big tub looking
thing, and higher up, complex window sills.
One room has curved ceilings.
This floor is 21 meters/ 69’ long and 6 meters/ 20’ deep with high ceilings of 5-7
meters which is 15-23’.
That’s a sizable cave and the excavation work wouldn’t be easy.
Well defined marks can be seen everywhere inside these cave dwellings, even on the way
climbing up to the caves and at the bottom of the cliff.
Again these marks remind me of the ones on other ancient sites in Asia, Middle East,
Europe and Africa.
These markings are large in size and pretty uniformed.
In most areas these distinct markings show striations that are almost perfectly parallel.
I know you might be thinking that these caves are in an iron rich region, so people can
easily use iron to make chisels and hammers to excavate these caves, right?
Well, can such hand tools make the same markings?
Let’s see how chisels work and what kind of marks they create.
Here is a video filmed in the Sichuan basin where the cave dwellings are located.
It shows an experienced stone mason working with a chisel and hammer.
We can see that even for a seasoned mason it is very difficult to create markings or
striations on stone that are parallel to each other within close proximity.
Plus, certain areas of the caves show big horizontal markings even though it’s not
natural for humans to use chisels to carve long horizontal marks or to swing pickaxes
horizontally to excavate stone.
Here are some more videos of stone masons working with chisels.
I want to remind you that the Weiyuan mountain range is mostly purple sandstone.
Sandstone is considered a relatively hard stone with a hardness rating between 6 and
7 on the Mohs scale, almost the same hardness of granite and steel.
This means even with steel hammers and chisels, it would still be very difficult and arduous
to carve sandstone by hand, not to mention creating these rather uniformed striations.
Also, the harder the stone is, the more difficult it would be to make long, smooth, uniformed
and parallel markings like the ones we see inside the cave dwellings.
On another note, if these stone caves were indeed excavated by hand tools over 800 years
ago as a hideout or retreat, I don’t see the necessity to dress the caves with nice
uniformed markings, do you?
Why spend all this time, energy and labor to do so?
There is no reason for masons to exert themselves to create these finely aligned almost delicate
striations which cover the entire cave interiors from floors to ceilings.
The stone mason footages I showed you exhibit the difficulty of working stone with hand
tools, especially to excavate long, smooth and parallel lines.
It makes no sense to cover the whole cave with neatly done marks for decorative purposes.
Therefore I think these markings are excavation marks.
This means the cave creators had much better tools thus excavating such markings was not
as strenuous as we think.
Some might have seen videos of Mr. Tiger creating a stone cave house with jackhammers and diamond
core drills.
Let’s see what kind of markings these modern tools make.
Mr. Tiger is in the construction business and he decided to make a stone cave behind
his family house, at the bottom of a hill.
He filmed his working process and posted videos online.
He gained over a million subscribers.
Here is a fun fact: Mr. Tiger and his cave house are from the same city Neijiang, where
the ancient cave dwellings are located.
I wonder whether he was inspired with the stone cave idea from these nearby ancient
sites with their excavation markings.
Mr. Tiger spent about 2 years, not full time, to create a small stone cave dwelling.
It is very impressive work since he did so it single-handedly.
The first floor is about 2.3 m or 7.5’ tall and covers an area a little over 10 square
meters or 120 sqft.
The second floor, which is still under construction, is around 4.5 square meters, less than 50
sqft.
Now diamond core drills and jackhammers are significantly more powerful than chisels and
hammers.
For example, a regular jackhammer generates 1,100 to 1,800 blows per minute.
If a chisel and hammer using mason can make a blow every second constantly, that’s only
3-5% of the impacts of a jackhammer.
On top of that, jackhammers can offer much greater and consistent impact forces with
each blow.
This being said, the power tools that Mr. Tiger used have given him a revolutionary
advantage over the hand tools.
Nevertheless, it took Mr. Tiger two years to create a sandstone cave that is 15 square
meters or 170 sqft, with the help of modern power tools.
In comparison, the big ancient cave in Weiyuan is 67 times bigger.
If this big cave was excavated by hand tools as a hiding place in ancient time, then how
many laborers and how much time would it take to accomplish that feat?
Would it still serve the purpose as a secret hideout if the construction took an extended
period of time and required a big crew of people to work on site?
We can see that with a jackhammer, Mr. Tiger is able to cut through stone fairly easily
and make long continuous and smooth striations.
It almost looks like that he was painting the striations.
In some areas, these jackhammer marks resemble the markings inside the ancient caves.
However, when we compare the final product of his modern stone cave with the ancient
ones, the ancient dwellings are not only much bigger and taller; more sophisticated, but
also located on much higher altitudes in mid-hill; which means the workers would need to climb
up to the work sites with their tools – all of which makes it more difficult.
Besides, we can see even though Mr. Tiger did a great job trying to make markings more
evenly spaced, his markings are not nearly as tidy, uniformed or consistent as the ones
at the Weiyuan caves.
Even with power tools, Mr. Tiger couldn’t dress his cave with tool marks with the same
precision level.
Then how did these cliff side ancient caves get excavated the 1st place?
Today, when we start a construction project, we always want to use the most efficient and
productive method.
Judging by the well excavated caves in the Weiyuan mountain range, it’s sensible to
assume that these cave creators were highly intelligent and might have utilized sophisticated
tools.
If chisels and hand held jackhammers are not fit to create these cave markings, then what
kind of tools were used to excavate these mysterious caves?
Now I’m going to show you the tool marks made by modern hard rock excavators.
These strong machines have high cutting power to crush stone.
Rock cutting excavators and attachments come in a large range of selections adaptable for
different job sites and ground conditions, such as trenching, tunneling, quarrying/ excavating,
demolition, foundation drilling and more.
There are various sizes of rotary drum cutters, which can be mounted on diverse machines;
for example, some can be attached to a large machine for excavating work, some can be mounted
on a small demolition robot.
These machine arms can go up and down and sideways.
They can also produce markings that change directions, similar to what we see at the
Weiyuan caves.
Look at the marks they leave on the rocks: they are consistent, uniformed and usually
in layers.
These types of layered parallel marks produced from modern machines share similar traits
with other ancient sites around the world, in both uniformity and scale of construction.
We see them at the Weiyuan caves, at Bazda Caves in Turkey, at the Gebel el-Silsila Quarry
in Egypt and many more locations.
The tool marks found in these ancient sites are astonishing in their resemblance to the
marks created by modern machines.
Ok, I think I have presented sufficient evidence showing why the precision marks on many ancient
megalithic sites were not created by chisels or pickaxes.
Even hand-held power tools like jackhammers can’t achieve the same level of work quality
and consistency.
Judging by the various markings at Weiyuan caves, it’s possible that some smaller areas
were dressed with tools like jackhammers; but they are not fit or practical to excavate
the big chambers.
Furthermore, a civilization which possesses technology for jackhammers is likely to have
large machinery as well.
Also, there is no viable reason to dress the stone with these clean, neat and uniformed
markings either inside the caves or on the leftover surfaces of ancient stone quarries,
which would just create extra unnecessary work.
So why do we see such distinct markings at these megalithic sites?
I think these markings were not created to be decorative but were the result of the excavation
process.
They probably came from a rock excavation method in a manner similar to today’s modern
machinery.
Considering the tool marks cover small details like window sills and door frames and the
caves are in mid hill, it’s conceivable that compact, flexible and adaptable machinery
was utilized during the excavation.
But modern machines were only developed less than 200 years ago.
How could these ancient sites show machine marks?
Did there exist an unknown highly advanced prehistoric civilization with their own versions
of hard rock machinery?
What do you think?
If you have any insights, please leave me a comment.
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This is Curious Being, I’m Tina.
Thanks for watching and see you next time.