Monolithic Madness - The Enigmatic Kailasa Temple in India

Basalt is a volcanic rock; it is likely they built and carved a wooden form and then packed sand around itas the wooden form burned? and the sand taken away the mold was left.

The same as the lost wax process in metal casting.

So a week? Plausible

a reply to: jeep3r

Really interesting post and thanks for putting such hard work into it, specially with your 3D representation there.

Everytime I see such a construction as this, I always find it hard to believe that it was due to many men digging it from sheer rock. Not that huamsn are not capable of such achievements but for its time and place, it does not add up. Spcially when the design is so precise, centered and somwhat perfectly cut. It all pushes towards some odd questions that arrise. I do think our history has been wiped, there is too many breaks in it and too many seemingly made up stories of what happened. Our history seems rather more grand then we are told or there was some intervention.

Star + Flag

a reply to: jeep3r
Cool stuff, and great animation man! Yeah first thing that came to mind was Lallibella, exact same style of "substractive" as you said. Actually seems a really sensible way of manufacturing, rather than stacking rocks, keeping the inherent structural strength!

Honestly I think they would have been more impressed by one of our apartment buildings than we are by this, lol

a reply to: jeep3r

Just a thought... you know how in Leavenworth Prison they spend all their time making big rocks into little ones. Guess what prisoners did back then?

Too much time on our hands

Thanks OP for a great post, animation and links. I heard about this before on a TV show but never took time to research it more.

a reply to: jeep3r

like the Ajanta caves & Ethiopia's rock churches

If you look at the designs of Victorian buildings, from just a sheet of paper and a pencil, they were able to draw some incredibly detailed drawings. It would only take one architect to design the top down view. Then the rock diggers carve out the basic blocks, followed by the artists doing the details. Given the horizontal symmetry, perhaps they had a team of artists who just worked from one end to the other, signing off each segment as they went along?

I wonder if the rock excavation or carving was some kind of meditation? Monks could get free food and housing in exchange for doing some rock digging?

Or maybe they use acids/alkaline solutions made from fruits or plant saps to dissolve the basalt?

originally posted by: BlackProject
a reply to: jeep3r

Really interesting post and thanks for putting such hard work into it, specially with your 3D representation there.

I'm glad you like it and I'd also like to thank you and everyone else on here for the positive reception regarding this thread! Today, I came across this clip showing a sculptor at work carving the statue of a falcon:
Of course this is in no way a comparison to the achievement of the Ellora builders, especially considering that power tools were applied in this example and that the stone is different (sandstone).

But it's still interesting to see how the details are carved using drawings and templates on the rock and thereby achieving a pretty good copy of the original.

Yet, it's mindboggling when thinking about how the hundreds and thousands of intricate ornamental features were cut into the rock surface by the original builders "without" power tools (and without accidentally removing too much material from this incredible one-piece structure).

Very cool OP - S&F.

And nice animation.

Seems pretty easy though - start with a mountain and just carve away anything that doesn't look like a temple

originally posted by: BigBrotherDarkness
Basalt is a volcanic rock; it is likely they built and carved a wooden form and then packed sand around itas the wooden form burned? and the sand taken away the mold was left.

The same as the lost wax process in metal casting.

So a week? Plausible

You don't make basalt like that. That would be the recipe for glass.

a reply to: stormcell

Or maybe they use acids/alkaline solutions made from fruits or plant saps to dissolve the basalt?

I thought about those hexagonal patterns formed in basalts and wonders if they found a way to reproduce the process and use it to cut the rock. These guys found a way to get the same hexagonal formations with starch Mystery Of Hexagonal Column Formations Such As Giant's Causeway Solved With Kitchen Materials

Obviously they would have had to been around as this rock was forming to manipulate it like that, or like you suggested used something like acid to initiate the process, but who knows. Craziness

a reply to: jeep3r

This is incredible, what a great post! The City pic totally blew me away.

If this is dated more than 6000 years ago then it was at a time in which mortals around the world understood the method of mass telekinisis and mass telepathy..a time in which mortals could not talk or write.

a reply to: jeep3r

The most enigmatic issue about building such structures is how were the architects able to work, and think as if they were one person?

a reply to: Byrd

Pretty much all mountains are a dormant volcano having slid across in a subduction zone... in those times it is quite possible that the mountain was active. Meaning they could have made a form and then let the lava flow around it then carry the sand off after the form burned away leaving the temple made entirely out of a lava flow.

originally posted by: BigBrotherDarkness
a reply to: Byrd

Pretty much all mountains are a dormant volcano having slid across in a subduction zone... in those times it is quite possible that the mountain was active. Meaning they could have made a form and then let the lava flow around it then carry the sand off after the form burned away leaving the temple made entirely out of a lava flow.

The vast, VAST majority of mountains on Earth are not, and never have been, volcanoes.

Harte

Interesting.

originally posted by: ImmortalLegend527
If this is dated more than 6000 years ago then it was at a time in which mortals around the world understood the method of mass telekinisis and mass telepathy..a time in which mortals could not talk or write.

It's dated to 700 AD. About 1300 years ago.

originally posted by: BigBrotherDarkness
a reply to: Byrd

Pretty much all mountains are a dormant volcano having slid across in a subduction zone... in those times it is quite possible that the mountain was active. Meaning they could have made a form and then let the lava flow around it then carry the sand off after the form burned away leaving the temple made entirely out of a lava flow.

Sorry, as Harte said, most mountains aren't volcanic.

And lava is hot enough to turn sand into glass. Furthermore, it is viscous and isn't very good for casting.

And finally, there are layers in the rock...which wouldn't show if it was a cast material (the layers wouldn't match those outside the "casting.")

a reply to: jeep3r

If that is interesting to you, you will also find the nearby Ajanta cave complex

interesting.

They had been overgrown with vegetation when in 1819 a British soldier called

John smith whilst out on a tiger shoot saw it through his binoculars something

behind the vegetation and went on to explore there were 20 plus caves carved

out of the rock (his name is scratched into the rock of one of the caves.) Unlike

Ellora some of these caves have paintings in them.


I am lucky to have visited both Ellora and Ajanta and appreciate the beauty and

wonder of them ... even without the technical knowledge of yourself.