The Thunderstone

The heaviest stone moved by man, starting out at 2000 tonnes and was carved down to 1500 while being moved. Now down to 1250 tonnes as it serves as the pedestal for the statue of Peter The great called the Bronze Horseman.
Pulled from marshy ground in 1768 by Russian workers under the command of a Greek Lieutenant -Colonel in the Russian army moved the stone 150 meters a day.
It took nearly nine months to move the massive stone the 6 km. to the Gulf of Finland.

To this day it remains the largest stone moved by man, with the 6 km it was moved, done completely with man power. No machinery or animal labour was used to move the stone.

reply to post by RuneSpider


Very cool but do you have any links to information on this besides the picture?

I like reading about ancient civilization and the stones they used to build monuments and statues. I'd be interested in reading more on this.

S+F for you

I think this might shut up the wackos who think the ancients used vibrations to move stuff like this
Slavery was in fashion back then ..... BIG TIME ... so it seems more likely ... they just pulled em

reply to post by mblahnikluver

Wiki's where I grabbed the picture from.

Travel link

Not a lot of good online resources I can dig up.

I'm glad this was brought up. People often don't realize that just because there isn't a written record of something, it doesnt mean it didn't happen. There are written records of the egyptians moving their stones from the quarry, too. But alas, most people ignore the evidence because they want history to be exciting in their own opinion. To me th truth is exciting. People did move stones, aliens didnt. Thank you for this picture and article.

Howdy Rune spider

The illustration shows them using two windlasses - machines of a source but of course using man power. The Italians used the same type to re-raise the obelisks in Rome and the Roman's used them to move them from Egypt - one wonders who first created a windlass?

Yep the old thunderstone is a good example of what man can do when he sets him mind to. Fortunately it is well documented so no one can claim it was aliens....

Here I have a counter argument from a different source.

"That is* impressive. Still you're talking about one stone versus 2.3 million... and not to mention they had to be lifted into place whereas the Thunder Stone was dragged into place. You're also talking about one "unfinished" stone versus stones that were finished and tightly put into place and on top of each other. Unlike the Russians, the Egyptians didn't have Iron to cut the stones but relied on copper which was a soft metal. Finally the Russians had plenty of trees to cut down to roll the stone on whereas the Egyptians lived in a desert and not an abundance of trees to work with. "

So I mean...ya....ramps maybe? still pretty iffy.

Let's see them drag that rock 8000 ft. up the Andes mountains with stone age tools rather than 18th century technology.

Originally posted by GrimReaper86
Here I have a counter argument from a different source.

"That is* impressive. Still you're talking about one stone versus 2.3 million... and not to mention they had to be lifted into place whereas the Thunder Stone was dragged into place. You're also talking about one "unfinished" stone versus stones that were finished and tightly put into place and on top of each other. Unlike the Russians, the Egyptians didn't have Iron to cut the stones but relied on copper which was a soft metal. Finally the Russians had plenty of trees to cut down to roll the stone on whereas the Egyptians lived in a desert and not an abundance of trees to work with. "

So I mean...ya....ramps maybe? still pretty iffy.

There ain't no tree that could serve as a roller for a 2,000 ton stone.

The 2.3 million estimate for the GP dates to the 1800's and doesn't take into account the large vouids and the small hill that have been found inside the pyramid.

Copper has been shown to be completely adequated for carving limestone, not that they needed to do much of this (limestone breaks out of the quarry as rectangular stone, after all.)

More than half of the volume of any pyramid is in the bottom 1/3 of the structure.

Lastly, the core of the pyramid is made up of stones of wide variety in size that were just mortared in place. That is, it's not as if every stone in the GP is a perfectly shaped rectangular prism.

Because of the situation in the pyramid core, it's more than silly to try to estimate the number of stones in the GP. Some stones in the core are no larger than a football, some are quite large. The entire argument about how many "stones per minute" had to be laid is, therefore, vapid and empty.

Harte

reply to post by Harte


Ah Harte you beat me to it. Yep all of that

One question for an earlier responder, where is this 8,000 foot mountain? If you are referring to Machu Picchu the quarry wasn't at sea level but on the mountain itself.

The best estimate for the number of stones in the Khufu Pyramid is 900,000 but even then we don't know how many or how much sand and other filler was used, if not mud brick, in the interior