If the Egyptians, and others could build with multi-ton blocks, why did the practice die out? Sure it was probably convenient to use smaller blocks for most everyday purposes. But fortification walls that might face battering rams and siege engines would be much stronger if built megalithicly. Was the art of moving and placing huge blocks lost at some point in history? Or did some change in the way things were done make them no longer practical?
The Egyptians had the use of a practically unlimited pool of slave labor with which to haul the stones. I suppose that the practice could be resumed with modern power equipment but I wonder about the cost effectiveness vs. modern building techniques.
I’m not sure of the validity of the assumption that huge blocks would necessarily make the strongest defences. Would it really offer any protection that a large mound of earth does not?
Let me tell ya, hammering something that I was holding between my legs and missing really hurt my huge stones.
One obvious change is the invention of concrete - invented by the Romans. Concrete makes many small rocks behave like one big one, but greatly simplifies construction. From then on, the standard way to make a thick wall was to build two parallel thin walls and fill the space between them with rubble and cement.
That was my first thought; that the invention of mortar meant that you could glue smaller rocks together, even ones that weren’t squared. But those rubble walls quickly turned back into rubble when smashed with a large ram, whereas a wall built of ten-ton sandstone blocks would laugh at anything pre-gunpowder. So even if large blocks were a pain in the butt to work with, wouldn’t it still have been worth it for castles and other fortifications?
Invention of something called, you may have heard of it, concrete.
Link.
There are also buildings like Philadelphia’s City Hall.
I stand corrected. Thanks. Apparently, the “slaves” thing is a fairly popular misconception.
In reality there are any number of problems with the idea of building with large stones.
The first problem is the assumption that a wall of large sones would be stronger than one made of bricks. I can’t see any basis at all for that assumtpion. It may be true with modern engineering capability but the engineering capabilities of ‘the ancients’ was impressive but very limited. Pyramids were pyramids for a very good reason. These people didn’t build large stone towers because they couldn’t, they lacked the engineering ability to do so. Pyramids were used because pyramids are basically just a tidy heap anyway and can’t readily fall over.
And therein lies the problem. Any wall that the ancients attempted to construct from large stones wouldn’t have been particularly stable (read strong). Stonehenge might look impressive but it fell down all by itself even without a battering ram hitting it. With a concerted effort applied against them ancient stone structures that weren’t pyramids simply weren’t very stable and hence useless as defences. And a wall made in a pyramid shape isn’t a wall at all, it’s simply a mound that an enemy force has to run up to attack you. If you want to construct a defensive mound it’s far easier to do that using dirt, and that is exactly what the ancients did use.
That’s the biggest problem. I can’t see any basis at all for an assumption that walls of large stones were stronger. In reality I suspect the opposite was true.
The next problem is one of supply and utility. Stone isn’t readily available in most locales and masons weren’t all that common in the ancient world. To build a megalithic stone wall was major undertaking that was simply beyond the ability of most cities to finance.
Furthermore in the truly ancient world battering rams weren’t really effective even against mud walls. The siege of Megiddo for example lasted for about a year because the walls couldn’t be breached. By the time rams, catapaults etc became effective enough to break a brick wall by the late Greek/early Roman period the art of sapping was also effective. And if sappers can undermine a brick wall they will have little trouble with a megalithic wall with considerably more weight.
I really don’t see that the expense of a megalithic stone wall would have ever justified its construction