Researchers make 25 ton "boulders" they can move by hand

[thewayne]

It's not really fair to call them boulders, they're custom statues with rounded bottoms that are carefully balanced, but they can be moved. The purpose of the project is to show that it's possible to build monolithic stones like those on Easter Island and at Stonehenge and move them by hand.

The embedded videos are quite amazing!

https://gizmodo.com/researchers-made-25-ton-boulders-they-can-move-by-hand-1834106230

Comments

Pretty neat.

[silveradept]

Although it seems like it's "cheating" to have different-density concrete, but maybe such techniques were known to the people who created the big wonders and that's what they used?

Re: Pretty neat.

[thewayne]

It definitely is - they have 3-D modeling programs, they have materials science knowledge far in advance of what was available then.  Still, it's pretty amazing what they did.  And it may provide hints as to how things were done.  They know log 'rollers' were used to move Stonehenge monoliths, I'm not sure they've established how the Easter Island statues were moved.

Re: Pretty neat.

[silveradept]

Yeah. So much lost knowledge in the world makes it hard to know if we'll ever be able to recreate everything.