"Secrets Of Lost Empire - 1x01" "It's one of the most mysterious places in the world." "A strange set of stones, arranged like no other, stands silently above the plains of southern England." "Stonehenge." "For centuries, no one knew who built it." "According to medieval legend, it was the work of Merlin, the wizard of King Arthur's court." "Later, credit for the construction went to the Romans," "And then to an ancient pagan cult, the Druids." "Only in recent years have archaeologists finally begun to discover who really built Stonehenge - and when." "Scientists now believe that these stones were erected almost 4,500 years ago - long before King Arthur or the Romans at the end of the Stone Age." "It was an amazing achievement." "Each of the colossal uprights weighs between 50,000 and 80,000 pounds." "The stones are harder than granite." "But most were carefully shaped and joined together - as if they were made of wood." "And although the monument stands on sloping ground, a line of the horizontal stones - called lintels - runs almost perfectly level." "All this was done in an age without machinery, without writing, and without any metal tools." "Even after 15 years of studying the area around Stonehenge, archeologist Julian Richards is still impressed by this ancient wonder." "This is the biggest stone at Stonehenge." "It's absolutely enormous." "It towers over 20 feet above me, and there's eight feet of it buried in the ground." "I get really fed up when people come to Stonehenge and say it's smaller than they expected." "I mean this is a massive stone." "It used to have a pair standing there as well." "That one, unfortunately only buried four feet in the ground, fell over a couple of centuries ago." "And these two stones, these two massive uprights with a great lintel on top, form a trilithon, one of the most... the biggest and most impressive elements of Stonehenge." "The use of massive blocks, weighing up to 40 tons, is all the more remarkable, because there is no natural source for large stones anywhere near Stonehenge." "In the Middle Ages, the mystery inspired reports that the rocks were brought from Africa by an army of giants." "Today, archaeologists have come up with a less romantic, but still impressive, explanation." "20 miles north of Stonehenge stands another stone circle, not as elaborate, but much larger." "It's nearly a mile in circumference and now encloses part of a town." "(Richards:) This is Avebury, incredibly huge stone circle, built before Stonehenge, but what it's got in common with Stonehenge, is some of the rocks that it was made of – sarsens, an incredibly hard sandstone, cemented together with silica," "one of the hardest rocks that we know of in this part of England." "Around Avebury, the valleys are littered with sarsen boulders." "A few on the scale of Stonehenge still lie half buried in the ground." "Obviously, this is where they came to get the stones for Stonehenge." "The only place around here where there's a supply of stones of the right sort of size." "Well, this is just the random..." "Roger Hopkins is a stonemason from Massachusetts who specializes in moving and shaping granite." "For years, he's been amazed by the Stonehenge builders' mastery of hard stone." "You know, looking at this site, with all these stones in the way, it must have been a real chore to get these on a sled and get 'em out of these fields." "I mean, they weren't using it as..." "I mean, it wasn't quarried." "You didn't have to dig into solid rock to get this out, it would have just lain around all over the place." "(Hopkins) What's the contour, the terrain like between here and there?" "It varies quite a lot." "There's a fairly flat river valley, and then a very steep hill to get you up onto Salisbury Plain, from whereon it just undulates gently until you get all the way to Stonehenge." "If Avebury was the source for the massive sarsens, how did the ancient builders transport them across 20 miles of rolling hills and erect them in the shape of Stonehenge?" "After centuries of mystery and debate," "Julian and Roger are determined to find out." "Their plan is to reconstruct the Great Trilithon of Stonehenge." "But to pull it off, they'll need a little help." "This small army of volunteers will provide the labor in an historic attempt to move and raise blocks exactly like those in Stonehenge, using Stone Age technology." "(Whitby) We'll have to ..." "We'll have to lift the end when we're going to do it" "Yeah, yeah." "Along with Julian and Roger, the team will be led by engineer Mark Whitby." "The reality of taking two 40-ton stones and turn them on their ends without using any machine power whatsoever, it's quite a..." "quite a daunting task." "I don't think people have really stopped to think about the problem at Stonehenge in a realistic way." "All the theories are put together by people who haven't actually been faced with the practical task of doing it." "Here, Swap that..." "One of the old theories is that the stones were moved on top of large rollers made of tree trunks." "One, two, three!" "(all grunt)" "One, two, three!" "It's going!" "Keep going!" "And tests performed with concrete blocks - like this one weighing nine tons - have shown that rollers can work." "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, stop!" "But the biggest stones at Stonehenge were more than four times as heavy." "This is a concrete replica of the largest stone at the ancient site." "It's almost 30 feet long and weighs over 40 tons." "So what are you going to do?" "Try and lift it?" "You're just gonna try and lift the front?" "One at the front..." "Mark is convinced that such a huge weight would crush and flatten even the hardest wooden rollers." "(Whitby) I watched people drag a boat up a beach, and they had rollers there, but the rollers didn't rotate." "They actually had grooves in them where the keel of the boat went over the top of them." "And, lo and behold, they were putting grease on that groove to, uh... to make it slide." "And it's quite obvious things would rather slide, and if you get it greased, it's easier to make it slide than it is to make it roll." "So instead of rollers" "Mark has constructed a simple track made of two parallel lines of timbers set into the ground." "The 40-ton megalith sits on a wooden sled." "The bottom of the sled is equipped with a keel which keeps it centered on the track and prevents it from going off course." "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "To make it easier for the stone to slide" "Mark has the rails of the track slathered with grease." "In ancient times, the workers could have used animal fat" "Known as tallow." "The team will attempt to pull the stone up a slight incline, typical of the terrain surrounding Stonehenge." "It's going to be very hard work getting up the slope." "We've got everybody lined up here to pull and it's going to be... you know, very interesting to see whether they can do it." "It's not going to be easy." "In true engineering fashion," "Mark has done some elaborate calculations." "He's determined that it will take a minimum of 220 people to pull the weight uphill." "Unfortunately, only 130 volunteers showed up." "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "Despite their efforts, the stone hasn't moved an inch." "It's actually almost touching the edge..." "The liberal application of grease appears to have backfired and the 40-ton stone is glued to the track." "Take the strain of the rope!" "(Whitby) We've got a real, sort of, static friction as they'd call it, it's stuck down with all the grease underneath it." "And you've got to break that first for it to move." "Once you've broken that, We'll be off..." "Hopefully." "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three..." "Mark will try just about anything to get the stone unstuck." "That's all, baby, ok..." "No, but it's gonna be  with that pulling when they're pulling..." "How many people have we got hanging around the back here?" "Why don't we all just get on the ropes up there?" "Roger Hopkins is on hand to provide practical advice." "He's the only one on the team with any firsthand experience moving large stones." "He recommends breaking the suction by lifting the stone with levers." "That's great, beautiful." "Get the wedges in." "I think this'll work." "I think this'll lift it up." "That'll unstick it and we should be away." "But it's gonna be..." "It's the job of unsticking it which we've got to do now." "We need to get it in further." "Drop it!" "Drop this one here!" "This one here, Drop It!" "(Whitby)Get them to pass the rope over..." "Get them to move more in a straight line." "Yeah." "In order to get things moving, project manager Mike O'Rorke has to get the pullers and the levers to work together." "Pull!" "(banging, counting and yelling)" "Suddenly, the levers do the trick." "Pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "It's going." "(workers cheering)" "Perfect, absolutely brilliant." "I mean, if anything, quite fast." "I mean, you think how far that would go in a day on that basis." "In the end, Mark's system worked better than even he expected." "But is there any evidence that the Stonehenge builders used a wooden trackway like this one?" "(Hopkins) The method seems to be workable, but I just wonder, you know, if they would have bothered to build a trackway all the way from... where?" "Marlborough Downs?" "There's... 25 miles." "25 miles?" "Yeah." "Well, I think the effort that you put into doing something like this certainly makes it a lot easier." "I mean, the thing that bothers me is is having demonstrated that this works, you know, and would, would we be able to find any trace of it in the ground?" "I don't think we would." "As a result of weather and soil conditions in this part of England, combined with centuries of farming, very few of the tools and materials used in the construction of Stonehenge have survived." "But we do know that parts of the countryside were once heavily wooded providing plenty of timber for the Stonehenge builders." "Jake Keen has spent years investigating Stone Age tools and technology." "He believes that the ancient builders were extremely resourceful and exploited the forest for much more than timber." "Using only stone and wooden tools" "Jake carefully removes the bark from a common tree of the region - the small leaf lime." "He then submerges the strips in a nearby stream and leaves them there for several weeks." "(Keen) After being in the mud for about six weeks, this is the smelly end product, which, of course, is the inner bark." "And the layers... bast layers have separated off." "Uh..." "The little microorganisms have... nibbled away at the gummy material and, uh, this is broken down into... something like ten or twelve separate ribbon like layers." "Which is what we make the string from, and, uh, if we twist these together, they're very, very strong." "I don't think there's probably any stronger plant fiber native to this island." "Strong rope was essential for moving heavy stones, and with fibers like this, the ancient builders could easily have made rope capable of pulling the giant blocks of Stonehenge." "But why did they bother to drag the stones over 20 miles to this shallow valley?" "No one knows why it was chosen, but there's evidence that this site was considered sacred centuries before Stonehenge was built." "After excavating the area and radiocarbon dating the pieces of bone and charcoal found here, archeologists have retraced a unique sequence of construction." "The first monument was built over 5,000 years ago and contained no stones at all." "It was a simple earthwork enclosure, consisting of a circular ditch, a bank, and 56 wooden posts dug into the ground." "Over the next 400 years, a series of wooden buildings occupied the center of this circle." "Tiny fragments of the foundations remain." "The first stones arrived around 2600 BC, when the buildings were replaced by a double crescent of small pillars, called "bluestones"." "Just 100 years later, the monument took on its final form." "Thirty giant sarsens, each weighing about 25 tons, were neatly arranged in a ring, about 100 feet across." "Along their tops were placed 30 lintels, forming a true circle," "16 feet above the ground." "Within the circle stood the largest stones." "Five massive trilithons formed a horseshoe." "The tallest towered 25 feet above the ground." "The builders had never before attempted to raise stones on such a colossal scale." "How did they manage to do it?" "Archaeologists discovered important clues when they excavated the soil around the largest stone." "They found that it stood in a giant hole, with almost a third of it underground." "One side of the pit was slanted, indicating that the stone had been lowered into the ground at a steep angle." "Remnants of deer antler revealed how the hole was dug out of the hard chalk." "It would certainly have been possible to have dug a hole with an antler pick like this." "It would take, perhaps, two people three days, maybe, to dig a hole of this size." "With the 40-ton stone poised over the pit, can the team replicate the ancient feat of standing it upright?" "Mark Whitby has a plan." "What we've got is one of the 40-ton uprights." "And it's been dragged to a position where it's now ready to be toppled into the hole that we have in the ground." "And the hole is pretty precise because it's exactly the same as the hole that they've got at Stonehenge." "The basic concept is we've put 6 tons now on the back of the stone by dragging it up these ramps." "We've tied it together as a bundle." "We've put it on a little greased chariot here, rather like we had for the big stone." "And that's running on a very simple bearing down here." "It's not nearly as heavy as the big stone, and we've got it tied back with a, with a rope, which is lassoed right around the back here." "And that rope's gonna mean that when it travels a certain distance along this stone, it's gonna stop." "However, before it reaches that point, it will have passed this magic point of the center of gravity." "We'll be inducing the force which will make the whole stone start to turn." "It will happen slowly to begin with, and then it will just go." "Instead of moving the stone, the volunteers will pull a heavy weight that will tip the block." "This is a good example of modern man trying to over-engineer ancient techniques." "This is a bit over elaborate, but it..." "I'm hoping it works." "It would save us a lot of work in the long run." "Alright." "This is what we've been waiting for." "There's one very, very important thing." "When next stone starts to stand, do not rush to the stone." "You must all stay back until the engineers have checked to see if it's safe." "We can crawl all over it once it's safe, but you mustn't, under any circumstances, come forward of where you are now." "The safety of the workers is foremost in everyone's mind, but there are also fears for the stone itself." "Three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two..." "The megalith could tumble out of control, (Pull!" ")" "or even break apart from the force of impact." "Yes!" "I'm excited in one sense and in another sense I wish I was a long way away." "You know... it's... we'll see... you know... something's going to happen." "Mark realizes he's got just one chance to get it right." "It's now or never." "Slow." "Slow!" "Slow!" "Slow, slow, slow!" "(creaking) There we go!" "Slow!" "..." "(cheering)Yeah!" "Ah...!" "Brilliant!" "It's OK!" "One!" "Two!" "Well, let's have a look..." "It literally just dropped just as we planned it to drop." "And the only thing that is slightly different is it's kicked out the back here, but that's, uh, that's just better than we expected." "That means it's more upright and we've got less work to do, you know, tomorrow." "Well, this... this really worked a lot better than we... had hoped for..." "I think better than we both hoped for, right?" "...better than I hoped  and I was hoping the most probably." "I think it was probably one of the most spectacular ways that one can think of getting a stone this size into a stone hole." "Whether that was possibly a way that they did it, we shall honestly never know." "Um..." "I've heard comments that it was... uhm, a perhaps an over-engineered approach." "Um..." "I'm not convinced about that." "I mean, the people who built Stonehenge were very sophisticated, were obviously capable of... thinking out grand schemes like that and carrying them through." "And I don't see why, especially after you'd perhaps had a go with some smaller stones that somebody wouldn't have come up with an idea like this:" ""Let's use the weight of some smaller stones to help us move a bigger one."" "So, I don't find it completely implausible - we shall never know is the answer, of course." "I think we can all go home to a nice rest — yeah!" " and a little relief." "Mark chose this method for tipping the stones because it required the least number of people." "No one really knows how many workers were used in the construction of Stonehenge, because there's so little evidence." "There are no written records from this period." "The houses and farms that once supported the workforce have by now completely vanished." "All that's left for archaeologists to find and study are pieces of pottery, stone tools and bones." "But this meager evidence can give us some idea of what life was like in Stone Age England," "4,500 years ago." "The people were farmers, moving from place to place in search of fertile soil." "They herded sheep and cattle and hunted for wild deer." "Gradually, as farming techniques improved, the population grew, providing the labor force for ambitious construction projects." "Centuries before Stonehenge, communities started coming together to build large tombs." "One of the most impressive is over 340 feet long and has an entrance constructed of massive sarsens." "We've got one of the earliest examples here of the ability to construct with huge stones." "Massive sarsens dragged from he surrounding downs, some placed upright, others, like this one here, placed on top of it as cap stones, almost giving an idea of what Stonehenge was going to be like when it was built with uprights and horizontal lintels." "But here, these massive stones forming, effectively boxes, parts of a chambered tomb." "It's effectively the house of the dead." "Five stone chambers lie on either side of this passage and in these were found the remains of 47 individuals buried over a period of perhaps 25 generations." "What's very interesting is the way that the bodies came into this tomb." "Not all of them as... as completely fleshed bodies, but some of them just as collections of bones with hints that they might been buried elsewhere for a while, they might have been exposed for animals and the elements to remove the flesh from the corpses," "brought in here as a bundle of bones when the tomb was opened up." "And we get hints as well, that there was a rearrangement of the bones — skulls placed in one corner, long bones in another — the other bit and bob tidied off to one side." "And one thing I find fascinating is that there are some bits that aren't all there." "There aren't quite enough heads to go around." "Around the time that Stonehenge was built, burial practices were changing." "Abandoning the large communal tombs, important individuals were buried alone, under circular mounds of earth, called round barrows." "Over three hundred of these tombs still remain within two miles of Stonehenge." "Inside each one is a single body, surrounded by a few prized possessions." "It's obvious society's changing at the time that the Stonehenge that we know today was built." "I mean, there aren't the communal burials with lots of people put into one burial mound." "Instead, every hill top around here is covered with individual burial mounds, round barrows." "And each one of those is the burial place of somebody rich and powerful." "They had to be, to be buried this close to Stonehenge." "And of all these barrows, the most important, the richest person of the lot, appears to be buried in this one." "Excavated about 180 years ago," "I mean, he's still... he's still in there." "The bones were recorded as being of a tall and robust man, but the excavators at that time weren't interested in the bones themselves." "They left the burial where it was." "What they were interested in was the objects and that's what gives us a clue as to just how powerful this person was." "This person was buried with some absolutely incredible gold objects." "A breastplate." "A belt buckle." "Pure gold, finely hammered and etched." "Other graves revealed more treasures:" "gold earrings and buttons, bronze daggers and spears." "4,000 years ago, these objects adorned the richest and most powerful people." "And these ancient lords and ladies chose one location, above all others, as their final resting place:" "the hills surrounding Stonehenge." "In the midst of this enormous cemetery, the circle of stones was like a great cathedral, standing guard over the graves of its wealthiest patrons." "Back at the construction site, the crew is contemplating its next major task." "The enormous concrete block is standing in the hole at a steep angle of 70 degrees." "The team now has to pull it just 20 more degrees to vertical." "But this will turn out to be a much greater challenge than Mark Whitby ever expected." "Well, this would have been a distinct problem — getting these things perfectly vertical." "Well, we've not solved that one, have we?" "No." "I've got to weigh this one." "To maximize the workers' efforts," "Mark has erected two huge timber poles, attached by ropes to the top of the stone." "That's fine, they won't slip down now." "This is the bit we've been waiting for." "Can you all come over here please?" "All volunteers..." "The ninety volunteers will pull on another set of ropes that is tied to the top of the timbers." "With this arrangement," "Mark hopes the poles will act like giant levers, multiplying the force of the pull, and making it much easier to move the stone upright." "One, two, three, pull!" "Pull!" "One, two..." "Mark put a lot of thought into his plan, but apparently not quite enough." "...while these teams keep steady." "There's still..." "That team's got to take up some slack..." "The upright poles are dangerously unstable, and more time and energy is spent struggling to avoid a catastrophic collapse than actually moving the stone." "One, two  three, pull - hold t." "Mike!" "You've got to get your team to the front to slack it off and these teams put it back." "(One, two, three, pull!" ")" "That team's not pulling hard enough ... that team ... right, that team." "Mark is forced to admit that his plan is flawed and agrees to tie the poles into a giant A-frame, a much more stable arrangement." "But I think... get it into a bit of an A-frame and would be and we might be able to make something of it, but it proves there's some value in that." "We should have an A-frame." "Perfect!" "Right!" "Now lash it together." "That is simple like..." "Simple as that." "(men laugh)" "Why have you decided to use an A-frame now?" "Because we should have always had an A-frame, basically." "It's fairly obvious that an A-frame is more stable, and what we've got is a problem of them all falling down sideways, and we're having to use too much energy or effort in terms of these people" "to hold the thing up on the left and the right flanks." "So we could maybe, by making it an A-frame, concentrate our efforts on pulling it forward." "Why didn't you think of that before?" "I probably did, but somehow it got lost in the translation somewhere." "I know we've had all sorts of ideas, and this is one of those ones that we should have stuck with, but we... somehow thought that things might be better than they really would be." "But an entire day has been lost." "Mark and the team will have to wait until tomorrow to see if the A-frame works." "The original builders of Stonehenge experienced their own share of setbacks." "Along with moving and raising the stones, every block had to be carefully shaped." "The horizontal lintels were secured to the supporting stones by unusual mortise-and-tenon joints." "A large projection on top of each upright had to fit precisely into a hole on the underside of the lintel." "With only stone tools, pounding out the holes must have been an excruciatingly slow and tedious job." "I think it's likely that the uprights would have been in place with the tenons worked on the top of them before the fine work took place on the lintel." "That would have involved pounding out these massive mortise holes." "I mean, this would have taken weeks to do, I would imagine." "The biggest of them holds about 18 gallons of water." "But clearly they didn't always get it right because on this side, there is the start of a couple of other mortise holes." "So, clearly, they started here, turned it over and worked them on this side." "And I would have hated to be the person who told the workers that they got it wrong and they've got to turn it over and start all over again." "I don't think he'd have been very popular." "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "Hold it — let's just leave it, leave." "We let it go?" "Yeah." "Let it go." "Seems a shame to let it go now that it's up there." "I know." "I know." "It's all right..." "After yesterday's disappointments," "Mark's own popularity is suffering a bit." "We were close!" "I'd like to try putting stones up, not timbers up." "Yeah." "Stones are a lot easier." "Just..." "Today, he's hoping to redeem himself with a new and improved A-frame." "I reckon that we should really just get another means of getting these poles up, otherwise people get..." "He uses a model to calculate how many people will be needed to finally get the stone vertical." "I've got the stone to 70 degrees as far as I'm concerned is the most difficult bit." "All we've got to do now is just get it through the next 20 degrees to vertical." "And what I'm going to do is gonna use this A-frame." "We've made the A-frame so it's strong in this direction." "It's not going to fall over this way." "But we've made it so it's an A-frame which is a lever, a great big lever and it's pivoting in a point of the ground here — we're pulling with all we've got on the top of the frame here." "Attach the ropes that are pulling from the stone to the A-frame to the point about a quarter of the way up — the height, the over-all height of the lever." "The effect of that is that when the people pull here," "I can multiply the pulling force that they achieve by a factor of four." "Now, let's just look at how many people may be required to do the job." "I've got weights on the end of here." "This is a 50 gram weight — that's approximately equivalent to 50 people pulling." "And now I am going to add another 20 to this team — that's 70." "And then another... five to that — that 75 in total." "And I've got my stone to vertical." "But what if there were no A-frame?" "Okay." "Let's imagine we were to do the brute force approach." "Let's imagine we're to pull this thing to vertical without the A-frame." "I've got 75 on here." "Let's just add a few people to this." "Let's just add two 200 more people to this team —" "I haven't got two hundred people, let's just add them, though, let's imagine we've got them, and see if we can do the job with 275 — no, we can't." "Let's add another 50." "This is 325 people pulling now." "They're still not managing." "Let's add another 10 to that, that's 335 people — and away it goes." "That's the amount we would have needed to pull and we just haven't got them." "The full-size A-frame is up and ready to go." "But as usual, Roger Hopkins isn't satisfied with the construction." "A proper A-frame should be built with a cross member at one third of the way up lashed in securely to keep it from racking." "Uh, I don't think you're out of the woods yet." "And I think the A-frame, you know, probably should be in a lot closer so that we have a little bit more leverage with it." "And then we would just run the rope right over the top and the pull the sucker over." "I think this is a great example of engineering learning some field experience." "Well, I think you're absolutely right." "There's no doubt we did a lot of things wrong yesterday." "We should have planned the A-frame to begin with - it's absolutely absurd that we haven't." "We still haven't — I agree with you — it's not the best A-frame in the world, but we've got something of an A-frame and I believe that's going to work." "Well, I wish you luck." "I just don't think that A-frame's going to hold together the way she's rigged." "Right!" "Let's see if we can shift that stone." "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "Go on!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "It's moving!" "Keep going, keep going, Keep going, come on!" "Come on!" "It's moving!" "Yes!" "One, two, three, pull!" "Try and get it in flush." "One, two, three, pull!" "Stop!" "Go on!" "Keep it up!" "Yeah." "It's all right to say "go on" — they're pulling!" "Though the proper way to have done this right from the beginning was that when we had the motion to just keep on pulling." "Whenever we tipped up large stones, we always try to keep the momentum going because it's a lot of work any other way." "I've got a feeling these neolithical people were probably a lot handier with these tools than we are." "I am sure of that." "Certainly, A-frames." "Yeah. (they laugh)" "Remind me to get you the boy scout manual — you might want to read it." "Despite Roger's concerns, Mark forges ahead with the operation." "And Roger has nothing to do, but retreat to the sidelines." "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "It's going!" "It's going!" "Is that coming up here?" "All right." "That's it." "Slowly." "Brilliant!" "Come on!" "Come on!" "The A-frame - although a bit precarious — makes a difference, and the monolith inches its way to vertical." "Slow and steady." "(Cheering)" "4,000 years ago, the Stonehenge builders had to raise and precisely position 40 of these huge blocks." "The whole monument was symmetrically arranged around a central axis that runs through the entrance and down the middle of a processional avenue." "It points directly to the spot on the horizon where the sun first appears on June 21st, the summer solstice." "Every year on this day, the sun rises above the Heel Stone, a sarsen boulder that stands near the entrance." "Six months later, on December 21st, the shortest day of the year, the sun sets on the opposite side of the circle, between two uprights of the now-fallen central trilithon." "Some people believe that Stonehenge is also aligned with the moon and the stars, and can help predict eclipses, but none of these theories are proven." "It is possible that the circle of stones served as a kind of crude calendar, alerting farmers to important events in the annual growing season." "But most likely, Stonehenge was built as a temple, a special place for the community to gather, to perform sacred rituals, and to honor their gods." "In the 20th century, a modern cult of Druids adopted the temple as their own, and used it as a stage for elaborate solstice ceremonies." "But in the 1970's and 80's, their pagan services were gradually overwhelmed by hippies, drugs, and the international press." "To protect the monument," "British authorities now close Stonehenge on the summer solstice." "Barbed wire and armed guards keep everyone away from the ancient stones, including archaeologists." "It's June 21st, the summer solstice, which should, I suppose, be a beautiful day with the sun rising up over the heel stone, but it's raining." "It's actually quite cold and miserable now." "It's... it's a place that I wanted to be at the midsummer." "Um..." "I feel somebody really ought to be here, but it's not a very spiritual experience." "Um..." "I think it could be and it obviously was to the people who built it." "I mean, forget all the engineering and forget the calculations and the big stones." "I mean... this is the culmination of all that effort." "This is why people dragged those stones those great distances and put them up." "They were building a temple and they were building a temple that is important, but certainly at this time of the year, possibly at another time of the year in the winter." "Clearly, there was a tremendous amount of feeling on most peoples' part..." "The ancient builders needed this motivation when they faced their final challenge:" "raising the nine ton lintel 23 feet to the top of the uprights." "The traditional idea is that the smaller stone was raised slowly with large wooden levers and a timber crib." "Roger is eager to show how well this can work." "Of course we're going to get those out." "Then we can maneuver it around." "Lift, lift, lift, all right." "With each lift, thick pieces of timber are slid underneath the stone." "Comin through." "OK?" "Yeah, that's good." "Ease off." "Yes!" "Little by little, the pile of timber grows, and, according to the theory, will gradually lift the stone to the top of the uprights." "(Hopkins) A little more..." "Good." "Relax, relax, relax." "Whoa!" "Yeah!" "I think it's clear it would be a perfectly feasible way of getting the lintel up which is the nice thing about it." "I mean, when it really — this is the text book way and bigger timbers would be useful, and maybe they wouldn't have been quite so regular in size, which might have been a bit of a problem." "Mark thinks the operation is too slow and, at a height of 20 feet, would become too precarious." "He wanted to raise the lintel up a large ramp made out of earth, but unfortunately," "British safety officers insisted that he use steel scaffolding instead." "Underneath all the scaffolding, stands the 40-ton stone." "The second identical upright has been raised beside it, and together, the two stones will form the base of the trilithon." "Is this..." "Is this how you think that they did it then at the time they built Stonehenge?" "Well, Julian, it's quite simple." "If you look over there, you'll see my big pile of earth — you know, do you see it?" "Chalk everywhere?" "It's a pile of earth." "I've just put some timbers on it and we're walking up the pile of earth, we're dragging the stone up the pile of earth." "So, you know, that's what it is Julian, it's... you know... it's ancient technology — can't you see?" "Well, yeah." "Perhaps it's the scaffolding that confuses me a bit." "Well, you've got to put your blinkers on at this point, Julian. (It's...)" "I must admit, I find this a 20th century engineer's approach to how to get the lintel up." "I mean, personally, I am happier with a timber crib." "It seems less intrusive into... into the monument at the time." "Um..." "And it seems a lot less elaborate than this somehow." "You know, perhaps 4,000 years ago — yes, I'm still..." "I still think a lot of preparation went into things — but there would have been a willingness to accept that, perhaps, that stone would have inched it's way up over a period of a week." "We tried one method, we can see that." "Yep." "Let's try another method and see how it goes. (To see how it works.)" "Ready... rope!" "Since the A-frame worked so well in raising the stone to vertical," "Mark will use it again to drag the lintel up the ramp." "... two, three, pull!" "One, two..." "One, two, three..." "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "One, two, three, pull!" "To allow the volunteers to rest between pulls, the top of the ramp is equipped with a log that's supposed to act as a brake, preventing the lintel from sliding backwards." "No, don't you..." "Look!" "But they can't." "They'll pull the scaffold over." "But after a couple of big pulls, it's clear that the brake is not working." "Okay, hold it!" "Hold it there." "Right!" "We've got to release these back down." "This isn't working, at all." "Yeah." "Look, just let these ropes right off, okay?" "As soon as the volunteers stop pulling, the lintel descends to the bottom of the ramp." "Ready!" "Put up!" "It turns out that the riggers have wound the rope the wrong way around the log." "Thankfully, the problem is easily fixed." "One, two..." "And when the volunteers renew their efforts, the lintel starts to make its way up the ramp." "One, two, three, pull!" "Like the ancient stones, the bottom of the lintel is equipped with two large mortise holes, which must fit exactly over the projections — or tenons — on top of the uprights." "To ensure that the stones are properly aligned, the final phase of the operation must be performed slowly and precisely." "Nice and easy." "Nice and easy." "Hey!" "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "That was quite frightening." "My heart is still pumping!" "The volunteers are thrilled, but Mark is in no mood to celebrate." "It needs about three inches this way..." "As he feared, the mortises and tenons are not lined up." "Whoa!" "Look, look." "Why don't we just walk this in?" "I'm sure we're almost there." "The lintel must somehow be repositioned." "It'S going!" "(Hopkins:) It'S going." "Luckily, Roger brought along his levers." "Keep that up, and we'll, you know, slowly but surely we'll make it." "It's going, it'S going, come on!" "Yes, yes, yes!" "It takes some time, but finally, the lintel slides down into position." "That's it." "Whoa!" "The trilithon is complete." "I think these Stone Age men were pretty ingenious." "We learned an awful lot of respect for them as a result of being handed two 40-ton stones and one 9-ton stone and asked to sort of stand them on their ends and put the nine ton on top." "And I think I probably got nearer to thinking like he might have thought at the time than anybody has for a long time, and that's very nice." "It's a very nice feeling that gives you to... enter into the, sort of, soul of somebody as the result of seeing what they've built." "They were pushing the envelope of their technology." "They were taking things that they had seen work and applying them to a massive job that was advancing their technology and, by doing so, probably advancing their status in their community." "We haven't got the final answer." "You know, we can't say "this is how it was done"." "What we've demonstrated is how it could be done." "And we've tried to be as real to the time that Stonehenge was built as possible." "Archaeology can answer some questions about Stonehenge, when it was built, something about the society that built it." "And this has answered some of the questions about the task — the engineering, how you motivate people, how you organize people, but... there is always going to be a mystique about Stonehenge." "Converted into subtitles by m06166" "Secrets Of Lost Empire - 1x02 3,500 years ago, a glorious era dawned in ancient Egypt called the New Kingdom." "With wealth pouring in from her conquests abroad," "Egypt's builders and craftsmen achieved perfection in stone and gold." "A line of pharaohs with memorable names ruled the land:" "Tutankhamun," "Thutmoses," "Amen-Hotep, and most illustrious of all," "Ramses the Great." "The pharaohs believed themselves to be God-Kings, and their greatest fear was to lose their place in the afterlife." "In the quest for eternal life, the pharaoh had to insure the preservation of both his body and his name." "The fear of being forgotten was so strong, that the pharaohs spent much of their lives creating memorials to themselves in stone." "The most spectacular of these monuments were at Thebes, the heart of the New Kingdom." "A thousand years earlier, the desire for immortality had led to the construction of the pyramids." "But these mountains of stone were vulnerable to grave robbers." "So the pharaohs of the New Kingdom hid their tombs in the isolated Valley of the Kings, below a pyramid-shaped hill." "The passion for building on a gigantic scale was now directed to the creation of magnificent temples." "The pyramid shape was not abandoned, just reduced in size and carved on top of a tall shaft of granite:" "the obelisk." "These spires of stone represented rays of light." "The pharaohs placed pairs of obelisks at the temple gate in praise of the sun god." "Obelisks of a 100 feet were formed from a single piece of granite, one of the hardest stones to work." "The base of the obelisk balances on top of a pedestal stone, supported by nothing more than its own weight." "How the ancient Egyptians created these mighty obelisks weighing 400 tons is a question that has mystified archaeologists for years." "Cecil B. de Mille tackled the problem in his 1959 epic, "The Ten Commandments."" ""Look at that!" "It's got to be, though!"" "Although he puts on an impressive spectacle, it's not clear how his several-hundred-ton obelisk bounces so obediently into position without breaking." "To explore the reality of obelisk raising," "NOVA assembled a team with a variety of talents:" "Egyptologist, Mark Lehner... stonemason, Roger Hopkins... ancient technology buff, Martin Isler... and Aly el Gasab," "Egypt's foremost specialist in the moving of heavy statues." "Their plan is to test out theories of how ancient obelisks were made by raising one themselves." "There was a cut-away there, and there was no sand where it should..." "There was no box." "It couldn't contain any sand." "That obelisk went back and forth —" "The team has come to Aswan, the granite capital of Egypt." "Like the obelisk builders of old," "Roger and Mark's first task is to find a decent piece of granite — one without cracks or fissures." "It looks like we finally found a good solid piece here, Mark." "Well, it looks like a nice piece." "Look at this down here, Mark." "We've got... a natural fissure." "On this end we've got it free and the top looks fairly flat, and we've got a good, square, perpendicular, solid face of stone here." "I didn't really bother... putting it on when we started, it's on that point there, and then... yep..." "The next step is to sketch in an outline of the obelisk, and then separate it from the living rock." "At a nearby quarry, the ancient stone cutters have left impressive evidence of how this was done." "The Unfinished Obelisk is a great block of granite still lying on its bed in the quarry slanted from top to bottom and the entire obelisk had been defined by a ... by a trench that ran around its perimeter." "Granite is an extremely hard rock." "The copper and bronze tools used by the ancient Egyptians were too soft to carve it, and iron tools were not yet available." "So how did the ancient quarrymen work the granite?" "This is the basic tool they used to separate the obelisks." "It's made out of a stone called dolerite that's harder and denser even than granite." "These were found all over the obelisk site when it was first excavated, and even today there are hundreds of them in the quarries of granite at Aswan." "They simply took this in two hands and pounded the stone away," "hour after hour, day after day." "(Mark Lehner) We work to our right." "We pound, we pound, we work the granite down." "Lift!" "And we turn around;" "one foot in either depression and we work to our right... (Chanting): hela houpa, hela houpa..." "With temperatures in excess of 120 degrees, it must have been a hellish experience." "Ancient records tell us that up to 10 per cent of the quarry workers died." "After years of soul destroying work, this obelisk had to be abandoned, when cracks appeared in the giant shaft, making it impossible to separate in one piece." "Because it was a failure, the pharaoh who commissioned this obelisk remains a total mystery." "But whatever pharaoh it was, he was attempting to make a quantum leap in obelisks." "This Unfinished Obelisk would've weighed something around 1160 tons." "The next largest one that we know is only 440 tons." "But this pharaoh was clearly asking more of nature than nature could deliver." "Not far from the Unfinished Obelisk, some local stonemasons try out the ancient pounders on the new obelisk that Roger is carving." "Hey, Roger, how's it going?" "Well, welcome to the really unfinished obelisk." "We're just starting here." "Work on the trench that will define the obelisk began four hours ago, and they have hardly made a dent." "...and see how much it really helps out." "Why don't you jump up here and take a look at it." "Roger has built a small fire to see if he can speed up the process." "Man, it's hot when you get close to it." "I've been sitting right next to this thing." "So this really, uh, does this really accelerate the work all that much?" "...ah, Sa'id These are pieces that you've just popped off." "Yes." "Wow, that's a ..." "Remember how long it took to just pound a little square?" "Yeah, that's 2 mm, that's like 2-3 hours work." "Absolutely." "We're in some pretty hard granite, because we've already gone over this once before." "(Well...) ...we're just knocking the really loose stuff off." "But Mark has another idea." "He has noticed that the surface of the Unfinished Obelisk has rows of indentations on it." "They have given him a clue as to how the massive task of pounding was made more manageable." "You know, one thought I had is when everybody's pounding like this, and it's so ill-defined, it looks hopeless, it looks infinite." "At the Unfinished Obelisk you saw all those working patches, and they must have defined them very carefully so that each guy knew exactly what he had to do, I mean, wouldn't it be better if you drew a line here like this," "and if that's all they had to worry about." "And, if one guy sitting here had to worry about that much." "That was his patch right there." "Don't you think they would get at it?" "Nahh, I think..." "You know, they know where they're going." "The work goes on with precious little to show." "(So, Roger,) how's it going?" "Well, slowly, very slowly." "I can see your trench." "I see you have these nice little working patches." "So how many days is this, Roger?" "Seven days of pounding here." "Where are you gonna go from here now?" "You gonna pound... are you gonna be here for a couple years, uh, putting this trench down, or are you gonna speed it up a little bit?" "I hope to speed it up using more modern techniques." "It's clear that using ancient techniques, it will take Roger months to carve even a small, nine foot obelisk." "A short cut is needed, and the owner of an Aswan granite quarry comes to the rescue." "Mr. Hamada Rashwan generously offers to supply Roger with a 40 foot long obelisk, weighing 40 tons." "Just half as tall as a full-size obelisk, raising it will still be a formidable task." "Even with modern equipment, it's been tricky to move the obelisk out of the quarry without breaking." "33 centuries earlier, the young Ramses the Great was also supervising the production of granite monuments." "He ordered numerous obelisks and statues, including this thousand-ton likeness of himself, now toppled by an earthquake." "Ramses was the New Kingdom's greatest builder." "And nowhere is his larger-than-life style better exhibited than at Abu Simbel, where he transformed two sandstone cliffs into temples fronted by gigantic images of himself." "Here he shows himself four times as seated statues on a colossal scale, merging with the gods." "The whole temple facade seems to be saying to all who come from the south that as you enter the Nile corridor from this point on you're entering Egypt as a temple, indeed, you're entering, Ramses is saying, my household," "which I rule as a God." "Only one of Ramses' obelisks is still standing in Egypt, at the Temple of Luxor." "The pharaoh ordered his obelisks covered in deeply inscribed hieroglyphs praising him as, "a ruler great in wrath, so every land trembles before him."" "One of the great mysteries is how the ancient Egyptians carved these symbols without hard metal tools." "First they would have to polish and smooth the granite." "You know, I think they probably could've used different stones." "You could've started off with the diorite and the real coarse sand, and then gone to a sandstone, which is finer, and ended up with a limestone." "Let's wash it off and see how it looks." "Okey." "Stop." "That's getting pretty smooth, Roger." "It looks good, Roger." "By God." "One of the real vexing questions, Roger, is after you've polished it down, how do you inscribe these hieroglyphs with such nice detail?" "These are inscribed rather deeply — about almost an inch or so." "That's a good question." "The detail on these is so fine and so crisp, even after such a long period of time." "Well, you've worked granite for many years" "Yeah." "I've never..." "...and you've used steel tools..." "Even with modern tools and, you know, diamond wheels and all that, we would have, you know, we would have a tough time getting it to this kind of perfection." "My idea is, you can begin to rough out big hieroglyphs like this with pounders." "What you see here, I've done in only one hour." "I've roughed out the hieroglyph using a larger dolerite pounder stone, and then I've come in with smaller fragments of dolerite to tap, to begin to tap out the nice edges and the finer detail." "One tantalizing bit of evidence - this is the way the ancient Egyptians did it - is a rare scene in an Egyptian tomb where craftsmen are putting the final touches on a granite statue." "They seem to be sanding in the fine detail like the eyebrows and the eyelids with pieces of quartzite and sandstone such as we know that they had." "They also seem to be tapping out smaller detail with hammerstones even using stones almost like a chisel with another stone as a kind of tapper to tap in the very finest elements in this hard granite statue." "I'm convinced that with their skill and their rapport with the stone and a great deal of time and patience, that this is the way they carved the fine details like the hieroglyphs on the obelisk." "Although Ramses the Great would have regarded the 40-ton NOVA obelisk as relatively small, it's nevertheless beginning to get Roger and company rattled." "So, while Mr. Hamada struggles to load it on the sled," "Martin Isler decides to get in some much needed practice with a much smaller, two-ton model." "Listen, don't do that." "It's gonna tip the sled up if you do that." "Today is the first time Martin and Aly el Gasab are on the job together, and things are a little tense." "Put something underneath it, and then lay it down!" "Tell him to put something." "... you're gonna tip the sled right up and bust the end." "Aly's first job is to teach the men how to pull the obelisk over land." "Yeah, he's going to tie it on." "I don't know exactly how he's going to do it." "He's got it in his mind." "I think we're in agreement, here." "Aly's not very happy with his greenhorn crew." "I have never seen the like of this!" "Martin, you look flabbergasted!" "I have never seen the like of this, and I'm really quite upset because these guys are either going to bust the obelisk or they're going to get hurt." "(Chanting in Arabic)" "I don't think they've ever done this before in their lives." "Well, let's see how they do in a couple more "Hela houps"." "In ancient times, the obelisk builders had a short haul over land and then a much longer voyage to the great temple complexes down river." "It was the Nile that made Egyptian civilization possible, as an artery that linked the entire length of the country." "And it was the Nile that made it possible for the ancient Egyptians to quarry colossal statues and giant obelisks." "It would have been much more difficult if they had had to transport this by land." "But here at Aswan, the quarries are all located within close proximity to the Nile, so that they could be slipped down to the river, loaded on a barge and transported for the difficult journey to Luxor," "where the giant temples to Amun Ra are located, or even further, all the way to Tanis, as far as 700 miles to the North." "But first, you had to solve the very tricky problem of loading the boat." "Okay, so let's imagine that this is a 100 foot obelisk, weighing 440 tons and this is our barge." "How do we load it up, Cheryl?" "Cheryl Haldane, a nautical archaeologist, has a theory how heavy obelisks were loaded onto ancient Egyptian boats." "(If we) bring the boat in, and pretty much packing it in place with earth." "If you're down on river level here, you've got the water coming in underneath it." "It's going to be squishier than hell." "You know, we're talking about 400 tons in a boat that's virtually laying in mud." "But your boat is a massive construction in its own right " "The freight barge that was built to carry the obelisks would've carried a modern 747 loaded with forty elephants." "What I'm curious is when you have..." "I don't know how many guys, 100 guys, pulling on this 440 ton obelisk bringing it down to the barge, so they walk onto the barge, some of them, to pull it up there..." "Where do they do from there?" "Well, I think that we can imagine them going out into the river, some of them." "Man, I used to surf a lot and it's hard enough walking in to shore, but pulling a line out there, forget it." "What about this mushiness?" "Is that really a problem?" "Well, the reality in ancient Egypt, every time it flooded it inundated the Nile banks with silt." "There would've been a lot muddier river bed back then than there is now." "But not after the dry season, not at the end of the dry season." "Well, what happens anyway then?" "You take away the... uh... you take away the coffer dam or the packing in front." "Yeah, when the obelisk is secured down, then the earth around it can be removed." "And... it would be removed... perhaps, in this way from the back towards the front." "So that when the water comes in, the boat can begin to float." "And it would've taken a lot of people, and they would've been working very hard, but... (Lehner:) Well, moving earth like that." "... moving the earth was one of the ..." "That's no problem for them." "(Haldane:) Yes." "Here comes the water." "And now you're stuck on the sand." "Now I'm stuck on the sand, because I haven't finished excavating!" "You know, you're missing a great aspect of hydraulics and navi... you know, in navigation by... uh, landlocking your boat and all that." "There's no mechanical advantage." "I think when you remove the dam, if the boat had been a little lower..." "No, Cheryl, you would've seen ... in modern times do they ever load a boat in drydock?" "Never." "I rest my case." "Well, Roger, we'll have to see what your method does." "Probably what they did - they built two stone piers." "One here, one here." "And they had a nice channel that came in between them." "These were permanent structures." "They had a nice flat — now this is — try to imagine this as a nice, flat, even surface on which to pull the sled down." "They would've gotten it down to here probably on rollers." "Now, I'm just gonna use two beams but they probably could've used several." "They could've slid right over... into the middle." "Next, your boat comes in, and, of course, see, it's not low enough." "All you do is you add a little ballast to it, nice and evenly." "Now that Roger has to go public with his theory, problems with the model barge begin to handicap his demonstration." "(Once we start) to take ballast off — boy, this thing is leaking like a son of a gun." "Well, this is exactly the kind of problem you would have with an ancient Egyptian boat because they weren't built to have loads down in the hull." "Freight boats were built to carry their weights on the deck." "The ballast would come out, and then it would float this, they would — of course, they would position it and then it would float out, without the aid of all this water." "And once you got out there, it would probably sink, like that." "Understanding how the ancient Egyptians transported their huge obelisks is difficult." "Their technique for building boats was unique and is now a long-forgotten art." "No remains of an obelisk barge have been found." "The only evidence we have was left by the pharaoh, Queen Hatshepsut." "On her magnificent mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri, there is a picture of a boat carrying a pair of obelisks on deck... perhaps to the great temple at Karnak." "Hatshepsut's reign was a period of great architectural and artistic flowering." "Only the third woman to rule as queen, she also ruled as king, often appearing in portraits with a pharaonic beard." "She co-ruled with her stepson, Thutmosis the Third," "but after she died, he systematically hacked out all references to her, even hiding her obelisk behind a sandstone wall that just left the gold-plated tip exposed." "On the base of her obelisk, an inscription proudly states that it was built in the remarkably short time of seven months." "Back at the quarry, the work is not up to Queen Hatshepsut's standards." "Shaping the 40-foot obelisk is taking much longer than anticipated, even with modern tools." "This means that Roger will only have a few days to raise the obelisk." "And as yet, there is no consensus among the experts about how to do it." "On the opposite bank of the Nile," "Martin Isler is about to test out his method on the little nine foot model." "You have to do it exactly like Martin says." "Although he has no formal training in archaeology," "Martin has developed a passion for ancient technology." "Martin and Aly have bonded nicely." "In preparation for raising the obelisk," "Martin has carved a groove on the top of the base stone." "He's convinced that this notch is an essential component of obelisk engineering." "But does every ancient pedestal stone have a groove?" "To find out, Mark and Roger travel to Tanis, a major city during the final years of the ancient Egyptian civilization." "Filled with monuments recycled from earlier dynasties," "Tanis is an obelisk graveyard." "There are 23 broken obelisks at this site." "This is another one of these Ramses obelisks, toppled over." "This looks like a pretty good example of a turning groove to me." "It's, uh, about a foot wide, which is 30 cm and... but a little more than half again as deep." "Well, I don't see, I can't see how this is just a symbolic feature." "I mean, this has gotta be integral to raising an obelisk." "Somehow this was necessary to have this groove in here." "Everywhere they look, there are turning grooves." "It seems that Martin is on to something." "(Aly's men:) Hey la hoop!" "Hey la hoop!" "As Aly's men lever up the obelisk, the bottom edge remains engaged in the notch." "Without the turning groove to pivot on, the butt of the obelisk would slide off the pedestal stone." "Martin believes that levering was the principle technique used by the ancient Egyptians." "To support the rising obelisk, stone and earth are packed beneath it." "I mean as you lever the obelisk up, you only get just a little, an inch or so." "You could lever anything up." "If the lever is long enough." "But what if it was a 400 ton obelisk?" "Or a 300 ton obelisk?" "(Isler:) Then you'd be much more careful." "But you're getting your lever underneath and you're getting about what?" "A couple inches of lift with each "Haya Hopa"" "gives you a few inches of lift..." "Whatever, but each little few inches of lift adds up." "When the obelisk reaches a 45 degree angle," "Aly calls a halt to the levering." "The rest of the work will be done by the pulling team." "The two-ton needle rises with remarkable ease, but will it be so simple with Roger's 40-ton obelisk?" "Thank yo uvery much." "Thank yo uvery much." "Well, it was a very small piece of stone." "I've put stuff up that size by myself." "So, I did too!" "I know!" "But you know, what I... you know the reservation I have, when you're dealing with a 300 or a 400 ton..." "How are you gonna space out your levers?" "How many levers are you going to use?" "What size levers?" "I mean, are you gonna be able to..." "How many men can you get in a crowded area like that?" "But this is something you learn by experience, don't you?" "I mean, you'll start perhaps with a two tonner, as we did here." "Graduate to a ten tonner, learn from that." "Go to a twenty tonner..." "Despite Martin's success," "Roger doesn't want to use levers to raise his obelisk." "Back at the quarry, he has only four days to get the obelisk up." "A lot of dirt is being moved around." "But no one seems to know exactly what Roger has in mind." "To clear the air," "Roger has been forced to build a model to demonstrate his method to quarry owner, Mr. Hamada." "...a lot of weight to pull." "We have our... our ramp coming up... onto a more level area." "And as the sled comes along..." "The pedestal lies at the bottom of a large pit which will be filled with sand." "The obelisk is then dragged over the pit." "...till it reaches on this, along this ridge here, a pivot point with the center of gravity and it'll come down slowly..." "As the sand is removed, the butt of the obelisk should slowly descent to the pedestal stone." "At least that's the theory." "When do you start lowering the sand?" "When do you start letting the sand out?" "Once we get this in place." "I've calculated the center of gravity is approximately here on the obelisk." "Alright, now let it come out... fairly slowly, fairly slowly." "Now, we're gonna see that thing tipping?" "I think it is better to go more fast." "Do you think it's better to go fast?" "Yes, yes." "Because to not give a chance... for the sudden force to make the obelisk go right or left." "So, a regular, very steady motion." "Yes, yes." "Alright, so we're kind of ..." "The people, the people in this case stay in here and they push from this side." "Look, look, look..." "Right." "So you have men in there pushing..." "No, on this side..." "Mr. Hamada is worried that the men removing sand from the bottom of the pit may be injured by the descending obelisk." "Cause Roger has one aim:" "to fix his obelisk with a good position, with a good job." "Yes, Roger can be very single-minded." "I understand, Hamada." "I have experience with this man." "I know what you mean." "Yeah, yeah..." "I have no value of human life." "But I ... for me, I hope to fix the obelisk with a good position." "But number... this is number two." "Number one for me:" "the safety of our people." "And I think the ancient Egyptians worked by the same method, working by the same method," "Don't you worry, Hamada." "(Hamada:) because they keep their people..." "I'm gonna be down in that pit." "I'm gonna be down in that pit, so it'll be safe." "Ready for it?" "To put Mr. Hamada's fears to rest," "Roger has to prepare another demonstration of his method, this time with the two-ton obelisk." "You're gonna fill this box up with clean sand?" "Yeah, I gotta do a little housekeeping here." "You're gonna put the obelisk up here and tip it over onto the sand, and then scoop the sand out these tunnels." "Right." "We're taking the sand out from behind it, so it has to fall back." "And actually, the sand that's piled up here is going to... act as somewhat of a weight, keeping it in place." "But then, it's gonna reach a point where we have to get in and control its movement, either forward or backward or off to the side." "And as you take the sand out, the obelisk is going to flow down and fit right down into that turning groove." "Exactly." "(Chanting in Arabic)" "I think it's ridiculous." "It's... it's... just crazy to be ... thinking of putting this monster into a pit blindly, and then expecting to find a a groove, magically somehow, by pushing sand away from one side to the other." "I..." "I... can't conceive of it happening, and if it does... and of it... it's still crazy!" "I..." "It's impossible to me." "At the luck." "(Men:) in Arabic" "Quais!" "Alright!" "Very good." "Very good." "Come on." "You got that obelisk where you want it, Roger?" "Yeah!" "I mean, we're within... an inch or two of dead on." "You've cocked your gun." "Right." "You're ready to shoot?" "Don't get in my line of sight." "I'll try to stay out of it." "Okay!" "Open!" "With the mudbricks removed from the doors at the bottom of the sandpit, there's no turning back." "They're all out." "They're all out?" "Shwaya, shwaya." "Here comes the sand." "It can afford to come forward some." "We got about twenty centimeters for it to come forward." "Oh, good." "They're moving." "I think, don't you need more out of this side?" "So it goes down and bends back this way." "I'm trying to get it to slide over this way." "After the promising start, the sand, filled with rocks and debris, flows unevenly." "The descending obelisk is no longer on course to hit the turning groove." "We've got a problem with this channel not clearing itself." "Now, Roger, if this were a big one, maybe a bad time to ask, but... (R. Hopkins: don't ask) you'd have room for men in there, right?" "Huh?" "If it were the full size, you'd have men inside there." "Yeah." "And they'd be volunteers, right, Roger?" "Ha, ha, ha, ha." "I'm glad we're doing it." "I'd like to lay this to rest once and for all and be done with the sand method." "Yeah, but do you think just one experiment is gonna be enough?" "No, it's not enough." "But the whole concept is ridiculous." "I'm sorry, Roger... (Lehner:" "Ridiculous?" "!" ") ... nothing personal." "As time slips away," "Roger is just about ready to give up on the sandpit method." "A final attempt to remove sand from below the obelisk suddenly pays off." "When the dust settles, there's a pleasant surprise for Roger." "I hate to tell you this, Mark, but we're right over the turning groove." "You're right over the turning groove?" "Right." "Roger hasn't scored a bullseye." "The obelisk is a bit off center, but he hopes it can be lined up with the turning groove when Aly and his men pull it upright." "Although Roger finally gets the obelisk up, he hasn't won over any of his critics." "There's no way that they went down to that turning groove blind." "The turning groove tells the story that the obelisk was carefully parked there, before it was set up." "And they wouldn't have just gone down to it blind by pouring sand out of a tunnel." "I though it was a fairly messy, complicated operation." "I don't think that's how they erected the giant obelisks." "The next morning sees a flurry of activity at Mr. Hamada's quarry." "Unfortunately, none of it is helping Roger get the forty ton obelisk up." "Apparently, Mr. Hamada is expecting a visit from the Governor, at which he plans to unveil his method for raising the obelisk." "The sand that is shut in undoes this rope ..." "The Hamada method uses a massive block of stone as a counterweight." "..ancient Egyptian of course not use swap ..." "When sand is released from below the block, it descends, pulling the obelisk up." "We design this method, and they come with other method, but I think this way is better." "I hope to success tomorrow..." "Although Mr. Hamada's no-hands, self-raising model appears to impress the Governor, no one else believes that starting all over and constructing a massive counterweight is a practical way to use the remaining two days." "Aly came to the project without any pet theories." "But he has now come up with a solution that he believes could raise the obelisk with just a few modifications to Roger's half-constructed sandpit." "It involves building a ramp down to the pedestal stone — then gently lowering the obelisk on a sled restrained by three ropes." "Ensuring that the butt of the obelisk finds the turning groove is crucial." "Once the obelisk is in the groove, it will be raised and stabilized by six teams of men on ropes attached to the top of the shaft." "You're seeking the groove in the most..." "I..." "I... it's crazy!" "Why can't it go down the guide walls?" "If we put in Roger's guide walls..." "(Isler:) Guide walls or not guide walls, it doesn't matter if you could walk it over to the groove and place it there." "There's all sorts of things that can be done." "Well, unfortunately, Martin, given our change in plan here, given this dramatic change in plan, and the tension of only two days left, we have to deal with this big compartment that we've created," "which we were going to use for the sandbox, but now we have a thirty degree ramp." "I wish you luck." "Do you think we're in for a hard time?" "I think so." "Yes." "The obelisk hasn't been moved since it was positioned on the sled a couple of days ago." "The dead weight has begun to crush the rollers, and it refuses to budge." "We're trying to make the stone move, the obstinate, dumb stone hasn't budged an inch." "It's moving!" "It's moving." "Aly has two hundred men on the ropes." "At forty tons, this obelisk weighs less than a tenth of the biggest obelisks of ancient times." "They would require two thousand pullers or more." "In their enthusiasm to bring it to the top of the chute, the pullers almost derail the obelisk." "Aly is not pleased." "But a quick nudge with a lever gets the obelisk back on track." "Finally, after seven hours of pulling, the obelisk is poised at the top of the chute." "Tomorrow, it's do or die." "The next morning, the last of the project, there is an air of great anticipation among the pullers." "Will they be the first people in 3,000 years to raise an obelisk using the tools of their ancient ancestors?" "Well, we're right here at the pivot point, and there's a good possibility that the obelisk could get out of control, crash down the slipway and break into pieces." "That wouldn't be a total tragedy for us, but can you imagine if it was Hatshepsut's obelisk." "She had spent seven months quarrying it." "Consider all the elbow grease, blood, sweat and tears that had been spent adorning it with hieroglyphs, polishing it so that it reflected the sun." "If that finished obelisk, weighing 330 tons, was now at this pivot point and crashed down and broke into pieces, it would be a tragedy indeed." "With the turning groove in his sights at the bottom of the chute," "Aly is ready to launch the obelisk." "The obelisk is teetering dangerously at its center of gravity." "Aly now has to get the attention of the brakemen who will control its descent." "Communication is proving difficult, as Hasham, the man he has put in charge, is quite deaf, and so is unaware of the urgency of the moment." "Aly, inta mabsut?" "Humdelallah." "He's very, very happy, but he's worried now, because the obelisk is sliding as we speak." "You hear noises." "There it goes." "And he wants to tend to his, to his job." "Oh, there it goes!" "Now everything's in the hands of the brakemen." "Their job is to control the three ropes that keep the obelisk from smashing into the pedestal stone." "Granite is brittle and will break if not seated gently." "Can the brakemen control the obelisk, or will gravity have its way?" "Well, obviously it was a great relief, great celebration, but maybe celebrating a little too soon, because the butt end missed the turning groove, and now we have the tremendous task of raising it up from this angle of recline." "No, we didn't miss the turning groove." "They haven't released it off the sled yet." "Once it's released off the sled, very easily it will come right into the turning groove." "So, you think it will slide right in there?" "Yeah." "(Lehner:) When they cut the side off?" "Yeah." "Despite the celebration, the job ahead is enormous:" "To raise the obelisk from the 32 degree angle from which it now rests, in the few hours remaining." "Like Martin Isler," "Aly is going to use large levers as the primary method." "Things get off to a good start." "The two levers quickly raise the obelisk from an angle of 32 degrees to close to 40 degrees." "But as the obelisk rises, it becomes difficult to get leverage." "With time running out," "Aly orders two hundred pullers to try and speed the process." "But it doesn't seem to help." "Well, the problem Aly is having now is he's not getting any lift out of his pull." "All the men pulling on the long ropes are simply pulling the butt end of the obelisk down into the turning groove." "You can almost feel it grinding down in there." "The only thing that's giving Aly any lift whatsoever are the men on the levers." "But as you can see, the levers now, in order to get advantage, are really high." "The men can hardly reach them." "They're throwing ropes up around the end to get some kind of pull." "In the next six hours, they only manage to raise the obelisk a couple of inches." "But Aly's not ready to throw in the towel yet." "Everyone decides it's worth giving it just one more day." "The final morning finds Aly wracking his brains at the stuck obelisk." "Roger got up early too." "He's already been busy." "This is an A-frame." "It works as a lever." "You run your ropes, your pulling ropes over the top if it, and it helps redirect the force, so that you're pulling up, rather than pulling down." "Your ropes are going from the obelisk up over the A-frame and down to increase the pull and gain some mechanical advantage." "Right." "Well, I can see your point, but you know Aly doesn't think this is going to work at all." "Well, you know, at some point... you gotta take over." "In theory, the A-frame seems to be the way to go." "But the obelisk still refuses to budge." "The men on the A-frame ropes can not pull efficiently, because the ropes are too high." "So, in order to use the A-frame as Roger suggests, we would have to both raise and lengthen our ramp, so that the men had a platform to stand on and still reach the ropes, in a long train of pullers as we have now." "Modifications will take time, and time is a commodity that has run out." "Like any construction project, this one has a deadline." "(Speaks in Arabic)" "The men are working well." "The real problem is that we don't have time." "How many days and nights have I thought how to raise the obelisk more quickly?" "My God, my brains are splitting!" "But a heavy object like this takes time." "You can't rush an obelisk." "I think this is what the ancient technology comes down to:" "men like Aly with their skill and the enthusiasm of their men is probably the most important secret ingredient in all ancient technology." "But, even with all their enthusiasm and skill, our modern team cannot overcome the limitation of time." "The ancient Egyptians faced no such constraints, as they raised obelisks for pharaohs whose concept of time was totally different from ours." "After all, what's the rush when you're building for eternity?" "Converted into subtitles by m06166" "Secrets Of Lost Empire - 1x03" "Nearly 2,000 years ago the Emperor of Rome presented his subjects with a new gift." "It was a monument of unprecedented scale." "A marvel of architecture and engineering achievement." "A testament to the power and glory of Rome." "The Colosseum." "Today, it's one of the most famous buildings in the world." "Thousands of tourists flock to this site each day." "But few understand the true nature of this ancient wonder." "Because the Colosseum was not a sports stadium." "This was a theater of death." "In 1961, Dino de Laurentis presented his vision of the Roman arena in the film epic "Barabbas."" "Elaborate sets, complete with artificial hills and lakes, and exotic animals from the far reaches of the empire were all part of the ancient spectacle." "But in the early 1960's," "Hollywood could not show the one thing that the ancient audience came to see:" "Blood." "The blood of unarmed prisoners torn apart by wild lions." "The blood of exotic beasts slaughtered for pleasure." "And the blood of gladiators trained to fight to the death." "For over 400 years, the Colosseum set the stage for mass murder." "One typical day in the amphitheater could feature the executions of thousands of men and animals." "The Colosseum was carefully designed to host these spectacular bloodbaths." "Stretching over 600 feet end to end, and covering six acres in downtown Rome, the Colosseum could seat over 45,000 spectators." "The huge crowds were systematically herded to and from their assigned seats through 80 numbered entrances and stairways." "Inside, the gruesome show was performed on a giant wooden stage, covered with fine sand to absorb the ever-flowing blood." "The floor timbers have now rotted away, exposing a labyrinth of underground tunnels, cages, and cells for the doomed prisoners." "As the show went on overhead, armies of stagehands negotiated the narrow hallways with fantastic props, machinery, and weapons." "There were elevators and trap doors, so that beasts and gladiators could make dramatic entrances up onto the arena stage." "But the most amazing construction at the Colosseum had nothing to do with the show." "It was designed purely for the benefit of the audience, to keep them calm and content as the violent spectacle unfolded below." "It was a roof." "Even in the sweltering summer months, spectators at the Colosseum could remain cool and comfortable, thanks to an enormous roof that extended over the seats and protected them from the scorching Mediterranean sun." "But not a shred of the original roof has survived." "And the Colosseum's most spectacular feature is now its biggest mystery." "What kind of roof could have covered such a huge building?" "Even today's engineers usually don't attempt to cover the entire stadium, but leave the playing field and some of the seats open to the sky." "The few large arenas that are completely enclosed, like the Houston Astrodome, are spanned only with the help of steel supports and lightweight plastic fibers." "But without modern materials, how did the Roman builders complete their awesome task?" "The largest surviving ancient roof covers the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods." "Here, the Romans produced an engineering masterpiece:" "a magnificent dome that soars a 150 feet above the floor." "Although it looks lighter than air, the concrete dome exerts 5,000 tons of pressure onto massive walls —" "20 feet thick." "The roof of the Pantheon was an amazing achievement, but could the Romans have used the same technique to cover the Colosseum — a building that's four times as big?" "We asked structural engineer Chris Wise." "If I was an engineer 2,000 years ago," "I think I'd be in trouble at this moment, because... if the emperor asked me to put a roof across here," "I'd be trying to be making a sort of technological jump from anything that we know the Romans ever did." "And I could start with a flat roof, very simple, doesn't span very far, and it would need in a building like this a forest of columns which would just get completely in the way of the spectators." "They wouldn't be able to see anything." "Another solution would be to just try and increase the span a bit, by using their new material, concrete, and to make a longer beam." "And that's possible, but again, it would still need a forest of columns, a bit further apart, and eventually it would get to the point where the concrete, which is very brittle, would just break." "And it would just snap." "So, what it needs is a technological jump." "And the Romans had that." "They knew about arches, they knew about domes." "And the nice thing about an arch is that you use the material for what it really is best at, and that's just pushing one stone, or one piece of concrete against the next piece." "And you can make an arch that might span about 45 meters, which is about how far they managed at the Pantheon." "And in an arch, each of those stones is pushing against the next one, and just taking the load, very slowly and carefully from stone to stone down to the ground." "I think it would be crazy to do a solution like that at the Colosseum." "Although you could imagine it, it would end up looking like this." "A concrete dome over the Colosseum would require supporting walls" "25 meters or 80 feet thick." "And the whole roof would be high enough to enclose St. Paul's Cathedral, or a modern skyscraper 30 stories tall." "I think they had no option." "They had to go for a very light roof over the amphitheaters, because any permanent roof would have been crazy." "There is evidence to support Chris's idea that the Colosseum had a lightweight roof." "This is an ancient painting from the lost city of Pompeii." "At the very top of the picture, suspended above the city's arena, is what appears to be a large, billowing cloth canopy." "Was this the roof that covered the Colosseum?" "A few ancient Roman coins bear the image of the great amphitheater." "None of them show the roof, but they do reveal a series of lines protruding from the top of the monument." "Historians believe that these represent large, wooden masts, which clung to the amphitheater's walls and supported a giant canopy, or awning, over the spectators." "Architectural historian Rainer Graefe has been obsessed with the mysterious roof since he first heard of it 25 years ago." "I got involved in the Roman tent roofs at the University in Stuttgart, and I got so enthusiastic that I forgot another doctor thesis I just had begun and worked at two years or more even, and began this research." "To solve the mystery," "Rainer examined amphitheaters throughout the Roman empire, including this well-preserved stadium in Nimes, in southern France." "Joining Rainer is Chris Wise." "A leading expert on modern lightweight roofs," "Chris is intrigued by the possibility of an ancient Roman version." "... the thing that I find is that it's so difficult when you..." "when you see an amphitheater, you just think that that's the finished thing, but..." "I mean really, really um..." "Yeah." "an amphitheater without... without an awning is like a man without any hair." "Yeah." "Very nice." "Really." "70 feet above the pavement," "Rainer leads Chris along the narrow, upper rim of the stadium to an important clue." "So, what have you got here, Rainer?" "We spoke already about the masts holding the tent roof, and you can see very clearly the whole technique to hold the masts." "They put in, in the top of the masts, corbels, the heavy stones, sticking out." "Right." "And they pierced it." "They made a hole in it, and down in the cornice, you see a second hole for the foot of the mast. (Chris:) Right." "About two meters down." "Two meters down." "Three meters down?" "Two meters exactly." "Right." "It would have been very beautiful when they... had all the masts up." "Yeah." "It's fantastic." "(Rainer:) You must imagine." "How many masts for the whole ...?" "A hundred twenty masts around." "The mast holes at Nimes helped Rainer explain similar evidence found at the Colosseum itself." "Here, a 150 feet above the ground, ornamental stones jut out from the stadium wall." "Rainer is convinced that these were the brackets that supported the giant masts seen on the ancient coins." "Up until now, historians theorized that the masts supported a giant spiderweb of ropes, which in turn held a cloth covering over most of the Colosseum." "But Rainer has come up with an entirely new theory." "But we do not know... how long they were." "He believes that instead of ropes, the masts held horizontal wooden beams that projected over the seats and supported the broad sheets of the canopy." "And I'm sure..." "Rainer has had some trouble selling his theory to other experts, including Chris." "...if you like the strength of the top of the ... um..." "Colosseum, for example, to see whether or not it could take the forces that this system would put onto it." "Do you mean..." "To see who is right," "NOVA challenged Rainer and Chris to put their ideas to the test and reconstruct the lost roof of the Colosseum." "Since the ancient stadium is off-limits for new construction," "Chris and Rainer travel to the town of Barcarrota, in an area of southern Spain controlled by the Romans 2,000 years ago." "They set up shop in a 15th century bullring." "Here, a team of experts will try to solve the mystery by building two different versions of the ancient canopy." "We've got one or two things planned for this old building:" "it's a 15th century castle in Spain." "What we're planning to do is to put down on the sides a couple of rows of corbels." "These are a modern version of the old mast holders?" "It is modern, yes." "In steel." "Why did you change this detail?" "Well, because in the ... in the original Roman amphitheaters, obviously they would have put the stone corbels in as they were building the walls up, and we couldn't do that here without making an enormous hole into the wall." "And so in the end, what we've done is make a ... a modern equivalent which has the same load-carrying capacity, but made out of steel." "OK!" "Lift it up!" "Up, up!" "The scale of this project is about half the size of the Colosseum." "But it's still gonna be ... a fairly tricky job, because the big poles that we're moving around weigh about half a ton each." "Yeah." "Drop your end." "Down, down." "The team's first job is to build a makeshift crane that can lift the large masts to the top of the bullring wall." "Joining the construction crew is Brian Austen." "Once a high-wire walker," "Brian is the largest supplier of circus bigtops in Europe." "His expertise in rigging poles, ropes, and cloth has made him a millionaire." "Do you use these in the circus, Brian?" "We use the sheer legs just to erect our main masts, which are anything up to 80 feet." "So, twice as long as this pole." "Yeah." "Crikey." "Arriba!" "Down?" "OK." "Right." "Once the crane is in place, the team will attempt to lift the first mast" "35 feet from the ground below." "Pretty good." "This big pole is going to cantilever over the end of the ... the wall there, hang down a rope, and we're going to pick up the first mast and lift it from the bottom up into position." "And then we're just going to tip it up very, very gently, very easily, absolutely no problem, and lower it into the corbels." "Piece of cake." "We're going to control it from there, eh?" "Maybe it's holding ..." "Brian's work at the circus has taught him the power of the pulley." "And now, put that peg through there." "The ancient Romans also recognized the mechanical advantage provided by this simple device, and they often exploited it in the lifting of heavy weights." "Venga, Despacio, eh?" "Come in, come in." "Come towards the front." "Walk, walk through..." "towards." "Thanks to the pulleys, the first stage of the operation goes smoothly." "But getting the 500-pound mast to the top of the wall is only half the job." "The team now has to rotate the mast into a vertical position and slide it down into the corbel." "Although Brian designed the crane himself, he has a sneaking suspicion that it's not quite tall enough to lift the mast to its proper height." "...what's worrying you because the..." "Because I don't think there's enough height there, to get it high enough." "It doesn't matter." "Oh, it doesn't... if we move that, all we'll do is, is  oh, you think that, that... you think at the moment that that's ... the rope that we tied around the top?" "I don't think we're going to lift it high enough for us to tilt that there to lower that into that corbel." "Well, should we try it and see what happens?" "Yeah, we'll get as much purchase on this end as we can." "Yeah, that's it." "And then, we'll all come over and pull this way." "Yeah." "And we'll stabilize it with this thing." "Brian was right to worry." "As they rotate the mast, it gets stuck at an awkward angle between the top of the crane and the bullring wall." "Yeah, we need to go up, now." "Can you pull, can you raise..." "Yeah, yeah." "can you raise it?" "Stop." "Yup." "Can you raise it now, use the crane to lift it, just a tad." "The team struggles to loosen the mast, but this puts too much pressure on the crane." "Just a tad." "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" "It's breaking!" "It's breaking." "No, no, no." "We've got to go up a tad." "OK." "We only need another foot." "No, keep going, but very, very gently." "Brian, keep out of the way, because ..." "With the crane threatening to collapse," "Chris hopes to reduce the strain by gently easing the whole contraption to one side." "I wouldn't do that!" "OK, this way!" "OK." "But if we want to move it, we have to..." "Just go slowly, go on." "Pull it." "Don't pull it, don't pull it, don't pull it down!" "Don't pull it down." "The plan pays off." "And with one last pull, the mast finally hits its target." "You're there." "Yo, my man!" "Is it in?" "It's in!" "I'm still shaking, actually, because for a moment there, I thought the crane was going to snap and everybody just get... go over the edge with the timber." "But when we freed it all up near the end, it then went in as sweet as a button." "Lift!" "Lift!" "Arriba!" "With the mast in place, the next step is to hang the horizontal beam that will carry the awning out over the seats." "Rainer got the idea for these wooden beams from the ancient painting from Pompeii, where the canopy seems to hang from rigid supports." "The picture was important, but it was hardly a blueprint for a stadium roof." "If long wooden beams were used, how did the Romans suspend them over the heads of the spectators?" "A possible answer came from an accidental discovery just outside the Colosseum." "Historian Norma Goldman." "Now, just below us here on the road, when a utility line, a gas main had to be repaired," "the repairmen dug into a camp that has been identified as the camp for sailors from Missenum." "Now," "Missenum is almost two 200 miles below us down on the Bay of Naples." "What would a camp for sailors be doing here in the middle of downtown Rome, next to the Colosseum?" "Obviously, the sailors were needed to handle the rope and the cloth." "And even more compelling as evidence is the fact that the Latin word for the awning, the sails, is the word "vela,"" "the same word for sails on ships." "This replica of an ancient ship shows the basic design used by the Romans." "The sail hung down from a horizontal boom that was suspended from the top of the mast." "Rainer believes that when it came time for the Romans to build a cloth roof for the Colosseum, they simply multiplied the number of masts and hung the sails between the booms, side to side instead of up and down." "Back at the bullring," "Rainer needs some nautical expertise to rig his canopy." "Owain Roberts is a lifelong sailor, boat-builder, and an expert on ancient ships." "Using the Roman ship as a model," "Owain simply hangs the boom off-center, so that once it's swung into position, it will project further out over the seats." "Chris doesn't believe that the Romans used wooden booms." "And when he's done helping Rainer, he plans to build a model of the roof that does without them." "Oh." "Well, let's turn it around and then fix it." "Yes." "As a modern engineer, he works mostly with synthetic materials, and today, he's uneasy about putting too much pressure on the giant pieces of timber." "We have to be very careful with the mast, though, because we're forcing it in, we're forcing it in at the bottom, and also these top sections, as we're turning it around," "the ropes have got to pivot around there." "So, we have to just be careful." "Yeah, yeah." "Yeah, yeah." "Well, the worst thing that could happen is the mast could... could either... there's a lot of force going down here now, as you can imagine." "The mast could go through the corbel at the bottom." "Or, if it got really... tightened up as we're swinging it around, we may put too much bending in the mast, and it could snap just at the level of the top corbel, just down under here." "The mast is rotating a little." "Unlike Chris," "Owain has decades of experience with wooden masts and booms, and he's confident that the poles will bend, not break." "Yeah, that's good." "OK." "Whoa, whoa, whoa." "Fantastic." "Brilliant." "Yie!" "It works." "Over the next day, four more masts and booms rise above the bullring," "all with the rigging of ancient Roman ships." "The next step is to hang the canopy, and sailor Owain has brought along several hundred square yards of canvas to do the job." "Let's open this up, and see if it more or less fits." "What do you want?" "You can take the end down there." "One corner each?" "Norma Goldman joins the crew as they begin the task of attaching the canvas to the beams." "Let's just see if we can get it up." "Whoa, there we go." "That's it." "Lovely." "The team is building a small-scale version of Rainer's awning that will cover just a segment of the bullring." "Rigging the canvas should be simple." "But they suddenly run into a major snag." "That little hook there, or that loop, has got to go over the end of the beam." "That goes on first, so that's slid along like that." "In the construction rush, someone forgot to attach a crucial rope to the end of the booms before swinging them over the seats." "And without it, they can't rig the canopy." "Yeah." "But how are we going to get out there?" "How would they have done it on a   on a sailing ship?" "On a sailing ship, yes." "They would not sit on it." "It's too dangerous." "They have ropes under it to stand on and can..." "A rope underneath?" "What's this about footropes?" "Footropes weren't invented..." "Footropes." "Footropes." "Yes, these ropes you're talking about here, they weren't invented until about 1600 AD, this is." "This is 1600 years later than this." "So I think you either need to get somebody out on top of this, walking along and then... edging along, which is quite possible ... for somebody..." "They can still hang on with one hand, can't they?" "Yeah, sure!" "They've got that rope there to" "Would you do it yourself?" "If I was about 20 years younger, yes!" "All right, let's try it, then." "Although the Romans would not have made the same mistake as our novice crew, the ancient riggers probably did need to get out to the ends of the booms for repairs." "Construction supervisor Mike O'Rorke offers to play the part of an ancient mariner, as he attempts to deliver two ropes to the end of the pole —" "30 feet above the seats." "I'd like to get them twist at the end." "Mike volunteered with enthusiasm, but as he inches out into midair, he's having second thoughts." "This is not a good idea." "I'm coming back." "I can assure you." "We haven't cracked it then, because ... it was about 30 meters up in the air at the Colosseum." "Yes." "I mean, this is a big enough drop from here." "All right, we've got you." "I think we didn't plan it in the right way,   that's all." "I also think that Mike isn't used to going out on a spar like this, and I think if we'd had a seaman who was used to it, he'd have probably walked most of the way" "and just fitted it over the end." "He might have sat down at the last minute, but he'd have been quite happy on that." "It's pretty scary out there, I tell you." "Yes, indeed." "But you're not used to doing this." "But I think a sailor, as I say, from that period, would ... wander out quite quickly, do it and get back in no time." "But here, unfortunately, we can just... we'll have to use a ladder, won't we?" "They wouldn't have had a 30 meter ladder in   in Rome!" "But in Rome you wouldn't have done it ..." "Just as the crew is ready to give up and use a ladder," "Rainer remembers an important feature about the booms." "But, what is for me new now, the importance of being able to swing the beams out and in. (Chris:) Yeah." "This, I didn't think about before." "But, also lower them." "We know we can also lower them." "Or lower them, yes." "Now, let's just keep it some... keep the load on it..." "Oh, yes." "... keep the load on it." "Got it?" "All right, here we go." "OK." "Because the booms are suspended from ropes, they can be maneuvered backwards, forwards, up or down." "Can we have another man to help... help Rainer?" "Here at the bullring, the quickest solution is to lower the boom." "... down, down... down." "Keep going, keep going." "Whoa." "OK." "That's it." "That's it." "The ends within reach, the real job of rigging the canopy can finally begin." "Rings on the bottom." "Rings on the bottom or the top?" "All right, so take a corner over there, take a corner over here." "That's fine, just more..." "Owain has designed a complicated system of ropes and rings that only a sailor can comprehend." "... start threading these lines through again." "It's not too bad at this stage." "Let me just tie a bowline on that, and then we've got everything pulling against each other, haven't we?" "First, we have to fix this?" "What I did was to shove it through there." "You can see now why the rings are on top, so that the canopy will ... lie evenly and not drag across it." "Despacio, suavemente, sin tirones." "Eso es." "Con cuidado." "Not too much, not too much." "OK, stop." "Parar." "Outside team..." "With the booms loaded with the canopy," "Chris relies on interpreter Ignacio Arteaga to coordinate the final raising of the roof." "Los dos equipos de tres hombres." "Que tiren." "Despacio y suavemente." "And again." "Otra vez." "Once more." "Otra vez, a la vez, bien." "And once more on this side." "Una vez solo en este." "And once more." "Otra." "And now, tie them off." "This is the roof I imagined always to have been over the ..." "Roman buildings." "And you see, some details are a bit rough." "But as a whole, it's a very beautiful roof." "It gives us a good impression of the old construction." "It looks very similar to the roof shown of the famous wall painting of Pompeii." "We have here the beams, and we have the awning hanging ... on the beams, with rings." "It went around, was a circle." "Rainer's reconstruction gives us just a hint of how the magnificent canopy might have looked as it fluttered over the Colosseum." "At the ancient stadium, wind and rain long ago dissolved every trace of wood, rope, and cloth that made up the giant roof." "In fact, much of the building has been destroyed by two millennia of decay and abuse." "Earthquakes toppled half of the stadium's limestone facade." "And scavengers stripped away the marble benches and statues." "The remaining shell of the monument only survives because of a unique and durable building material, developed by Roman engineers:" "Concrete." "Concrete not only made up all the internal passageways and supports for the seats," "but it also formed a massive foundation for the entire structure — 40 feet deep." "What made Roman concrete so special?" "The answer lies 150 miles south of Rome at the foot of the infamous volcano," "Mount Vesuvius." "Here, historian Norma Goldman found the Roman engineers' secret ingredient, on the beach." "The sand produced from the several volcanoes from this section of the Bay of Naples had an amazing quality." "When workmen mixed it with lime, the powder became cement." "And when they mixed cement with gravel or rubble — that's called aggregate —" "and water," "they got concrete." "The Greeks first invented concrete, but their mixture could take years to harden." "The Romans perfected the recipe by adding volcanic sand." "The porous nature of the sand created a concrete that would set in record time." "And Roman concrete had another useful quality." "It sets underwater." "And the longer it sets, the harder it gets." "The Romans used this cheap and durable material everywhere." "From the British Isles to the deserts of the Middle East, concrete fueled an explosion of monumental Roman construction." "Back in sunny Spain," "Rainer's canopy is a big hit with the local construction crew." "But praise for the 20 foot wood-supported awning has not been unanimous." "Yeah, but I mean, you just told me that half the seats, you know, not all the ... all of the day are they all in shadow." "That's right." "So, people might have moved around." "No, it's full." "It's full." "It's a very popular place." "Rainer, Chris, and Owain do agree that the wooden booms that support the canvas could extend to about 100 feet before breaking." "But would this be far enough at the Colosseum?" "Although entrance to the Colosseum was free, the seating was strictly segregated." "The worst seats were under the Portico, where wooden bleachers were set up for the poor — and for women." "In the rest of the stadium, the marble seating was assigned to men, according to wealth and social status." "The lower rows immediately surrounding the arena were reserved for Senators, Knights, and Rome's holiest of women, the Vestal Virgins." "The emperor and his family had the best seats of all, in a private box directly above the stage." "Chris believes that an awning that extended only a 100 feet from the masts would never reach the seats of the wealthiest and most important spectators." "I can't see why a system like this, which only covers half of the seats in the Colosseum, is the method for the Colosseum." "You know, why?" "You must imagine it's 2,000 years ago that they did it." "And when we read that they ... covered ... the auditorium of the Colosseum — we know it's a very huge space — we have the wish ... to cover it totally." "But they couldn't do it." "That's my opinion." "They couldn't do it using this method." "I think that there's another way of doing it, which — using," "I mean, using the same materials, the same rope, the same ... the same timber for the masts, the same canvas." "I ..." "I think that ... um... if we simply put up some masts and slung a ... a rope from side to side, a little bit like a suspension bridge, like a modern suspension bridge, um... we would be able to ... to carry the canvas" "significantly further than we would do ... with this." "Come on!" "Keep going, out of the way." "Unsatisfied with Rainer's beam method," "Chris now wants to build his own version of the ancient roof, relying heavily on a single material:" "Rope." "Before Rainer came up with his wooden boom theory, most historians believed that the ancient canopy was held up by a spiderweb of ropes." "We're just ... starting to lay out the very first segment of the rope system." "Although the theory has been around for a couple of centuries, no one has ever tried to reconstruct a working model of the rope canopy." "And it's now up to Chris to figure out all the practical details." "And this point here, it's going to be ... the top of the mast, the one we put up." "His first discovery?" "If rope were the main support for the roof, the Romans needed a lot of it." "And then, back here, this point, is going to be tied to the end of the pole that we put up this morning." "Even for an arena half the size of the Colosseum," "Chris's design will require a monumental four miles of the stuff." "To support the ropes," "Chris has erected several 40 foot masts, and local riggers are assigned the delicate task of delivering the necessary lines straight to the top." "This is where the canvas goes under here, OK?" "Like that." "Double, double ..." "In theory," "Chris's roof will work like a suspension bridge." "One set of ropes is strung between the tops of the masts surrounding the arena." "Spaced along these upper ropes, a series of vertical "drop" lines runs down and supports a lower set of ropes, that carries the canvas awning." "But achieving the elegant simplicity of his plan may be more difficult than Chris imagines." "We run the ropes loose..." "So bows on..." "Hang on, that ain't going to work." "It just, it ... we've got 10 meters there, so, and we've got eight meters here." "We're already two meters short without tightening it." "Bigtop expert Brian Austen has some doubts about Chris's design." "We would need to have a set of pulleys on the ground here, which you could then pull up..." "To complicate matters, there has been a delay in the delivery of supplies to the bullring." "And there aren't enough pulleys to properly tighten the four miles of rope in the roof." "... bring the load down here, back through there..." "We set a block..." "We haven't got a block and we haven't got the pulleys." "You'll take..." "We've got to do it with the equipment that we've got." "So what we've had to do ... is ... invent a few ... um... ways of getting ropes through things with a minimum amount of friction." "It's much, much, much..." "Chris's determination is typical of his ancient predecessors." "Roman engineers were constantly overcoming major obstacles with their innovative building techniques." "Now, tie, tie." "Give us that rope, and we'll tie it up here." "Their success was instrumental in extending Rome's power across 2 million square miles of territory, and into Spain." "Just a few miles from the bullring lies the ancient city of Merida, once the capital of Rome's western-most province." "Like dozens of other Roman cities," "Merida features a showcase of civil engineering projects, complete with bridges, bathhouses, and extensive public water works." "Although Merida was built on a strategic site on a river, no self-respecting Roman hydraulic engineer would allow people to drink from that polluted river water into which all of the sewers of the city flowed." "Nothing was too difficult for them, though, in finding a source of fresh water." "They came out to higher ground, north of the city, pand built two huge dams." "This one, covered with granite, 45 feet deep." "And from the dammed reservoir, water was then channelled through underground conduits," "12 miles toward the city, following the contours of the land." "And where there were hills, they went through them." "Where there were shallow valleys, they covered them with low aqueducts." "And where there were deep valleys, they covered them with the high, arched aqueducts, so that the water could be brought to the city for bathing, for drinking, for the fountains." "This is one of the few genuine Roman baths still in existence." "I'm in the women's section, but there's an identical section right next door for the men." "And the women came down, not only for bathing" "and for healing, they came down for social reasons, to gossip, to talk about the new blond German wigs that were coming into fashion, to talk about the vulgar play last night in the theater, and perhaps to arrange for the engagement" "of a 12-year-old daughter who was now ready for marriage." "Another very extravagant use of that precious water from the reservoir could have been in this Merida amphitheater." "For it is most unusual in having water-proof cement lining the surfaces of this depressed area." "And what for?" "For water to have flooded the entire area and small craft or miniature boats brought in to reenact mock naval battles, and the condemned criminals or slaves who were put aboard fought to the death." "Back at the bullring," "Chris is plowing ahead with his rope canopy." "For his roof," "Chris is using two and a half times as much canvas as Rainer's design." "At the Colosseum, the same design would require over 200,000 square feet of cloth - enough to cover four football fields." "I just re..." "I just realized we've got to have the top rope above the bottom rope when we tie the canvas on." "Otherwise, we won't be able to lift it through." "So this... if this isn't ... if this isn't above here, we can't lift it up when we finally do the ..." "Chris's enthusiasm for the project is not shared by the other members of the team." "Sorry." "Say sorry... sorry, guys." "Por favor, perdon." "Thanks." "Brian is still troubled by doubts." "... and the masts are only nine and a half." "Plus, the top rope then goes nine and a half meters above them, and there is no mast." "So, we're nine and a half meters ... short on the masts." "OK, for this one " "Can you put that in simple English?" "It isn't going to work." "What isn't going to work?" "We aren't going to get it up." "Why?" "Well, what we need to do at some point is to tighten the lower rope." "Yeah?" "And the ..." "And all the sails are connected around the back —" "Right." "So, they will have to either be untied, or they'll just get torn as we tighten it up." "Chris plans to raise the roof by tightening only the upper ropes." "But Brian fears that if the lower ropes are left slack, the slightest bit of wind might set the roof flapping uncontrollably, and that could destroy the canvas." "Yeah, I mean, it's not going to be perfect." "But it would be perfect if we had the pulleys to adjust everything, but we haven't got them." "Yeah, but if we had the pulleys to adjust the back now, the sails are around the inside of the poles." "So if you tighten the rope backwards, we're going to tear the sails." "I'm not touching the, I mean, we're not touching that." "No, because we're not going to actually do it properly." "We're gonna ..." "We're gonna end up offsetting it." "It will work fine." "It'll work absolutely fine." "It'll look absolutely beautiful, believe me, by tensioning the bottom ... ropes over there." "OK." "Start with, Ignacio, start with this ... first one." "This end." "As the crew scurries to attach the canvas to the ropes," "Rainer retreats to the top of the bell tower overlooking the bullring." "With his bird's eye view," "Rainer can see bad news for Chris on the horizon." "Well," "I would have been fine if we had been doing this three days ago, 'cause it was completely flat calm." "But over there ... is an enormous black cloud which is coming over, with wind, and ... behind me is a big sail, which eventually I hope will be a roof." "And I'm ..." "I think it will be OK." "The most important thing is for this ... is just to explain to the guys so that they will know precisely what they are supposed to be doing and they don't pull out of sequence." "We know that the wind will catch underneath the canvas and lift it right up." "When that happens, just hang on, don't panic." "After two tedious days of looping, threading, and knotting, the four miles of rope and thousands of square feet of canvas are finally in place." "And it's time to put Chris's theory to the test. (Chris:) Owain  can you, can you take up the slack on that one?" "In order to raise the giant canopy safely, four teams of men positioned at strategic points around the bullring must pull their ropes precisely on cue." "Can you go up there, please?" "And then tell them to pull." "Yeah." "And we should lift?" "Right." "Owain, can you pull yours?" "Yeah, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going." "Mike, can you keep going on your side?" "Pull!" "Pull!" "Pull!" "Pull!" "Pull!" "Pull!" "Pull!" "Pull!" "Pull!" "OK, whoa!" "Tie it off." "Aten!" "Atar!" "Chris hopes the approaching wind will actually help lift the roof to its proper height." "Starting from the end one, tighten up the top rope." "But as the first gusts attack the awning," "Brian senses trouble." "Yeah." "You want to be getting it together now, or we're going to lose the lot." "You will do, if you don't..." "you want to get it even now." "No, they can tie it off." "Just as he predicted, the lines holding the canopy are too slack and thrash violently." "He's got no tension on the bottom, and that's ... the opposing side to the lifting." "The canvas can't take the pressure, and starts to rip right off the ropes." "(Looks like it) might self-destruct." "In an attempt to stop the billowing," "Brian does his best to tighten the lower ropes that carry the canopy." "Without any pulleys, it's nearly impossible to get the ropes completely taut." "And Brian's strength and skill are all that's holding the roof together." "Eventually, Brian's last-minute efforts pay off, and he's able to tighten the ropes just enough to stabilize the canopy." "The interesting thing is," "Brian has now stressed up the bottom ropes, and you can see it's started to stabilize." "The rope structure itself is holding together very well." "As the windstorm subsides, the roof finally takes its intended shape." "The system itself is obviously one that does work, but the coordination in the erection kind of went to pieces." "As soon as we got it up, we had no control over it, and as you can see, as I managed to coddle something together just to shorten the bottom, we get the true effect of what we set out to get." "Yeah, I'm pleased." "I mean, we've proved that it can be done." "It's not perfect, but I think within the limitations of the ... the time we put this together in two days, which I think is pretty good." "And the one critical thing is that the masts, which are the fundamental ... um... weakest point in the whole system, are working perfectly fine, even though the roof is three times as big." "So, who's right?" "Rainer or Chris?" "Although both experiments worked, ancient evidence tends to support Rainer's beam method over Chris's rope construction." "The painting from Pompeii looks more like Rainer's roof than Chris's." "And the beam construction has another historical advantage." "According to ancient accounts, the Colosseum roof was retractable." "In case of heavy winds or rain, the sailors who manned the awning would furl in the canvas, protecting it from the elements and lengthening its life-span." "This was easily accomplished with the boom design, but not with the rope roof." "The main argument against Rainer's method is that it could never be large enough to cover the most important spectators at the Colosseum." "But was this really a problem?" "As this computer reconstruction shows, a full-scale version of Rainer's awning would be a remarkably effective sunscreen." "Over the course of a day, the sunniest seats would be on the north side of the stadium." "But spectators seated on the south side, including the emperor, would find themselves in the shade all day long." "It's not so easy." "As a result of the reconstruction," "Rainer is more convinced than ever that the Romans went with the beam method." "You see, it's a convincing construction, I think." "I think it's very near to what Roman spectators saw when they looked in the sky, in their amphitheaters." "It's nice." "I just think it's fantastic to think that the Romans ever built a roof over this building." "Because ... we've tried it with beams, we've tried it with ropes, and we know that it was difficult." "And I think at the end of the day, you've just got to admire ... their achievement because ... if you imagine this building, which at the moment is completely open to the sun, protected with a ... almost like an umbrella over your head," "it would completely change the quality of the space, and it would focus everything on what happens behind me here in the middle of this." "I just think it's an amazing achievement." "The Colosseum was the perfect expression of the brilliance and brutality that was Rome." "And the giant canopy was its crowning glory— floating above the crowds, providing comfort and shade — even as the bloody show went on." "Converted into subtitles by m06166" "Secrets Of Lost Empire - 1x04" "The Peruvian Andes of South America are among the most rugged mountain chains on earth." "Battered by earthquakes, volcanoes and powerful storms, the Andes are a dynamic land of environmental extremes." "Steamy Amazon jungle quickly gives way to jagged 20,000-foot-high peaks." "The spine of the Andes separates arid coastal desert from bleak, high-altitude plateau." "Too dry or too vertical for normal living, this land seems an unlikely place to find a great civilization." "But 500 years ago, an ambitious Andean people called the Inca were building spectacular cities in the clouds." "Their intrepid engineers linked these mountaintop citadels with a phenomenal system of roads." "And gossamer-like suspension bridges made only of grass." "500 years ago, before the Spanish came to the New World, the Inca empire was the greatest in the Americas, stretching almost the entire length of the Andes." "The Incas were certainly the strangest and most bizarre civilization that the earth has ever seen." "They had none of the things that we think of as the prerequisites for a major civilization - no arch, no wheel, no codified mathematics." "They couldn't..." "couldn't write." "They couldn't even scratch down an arithmetic problem." "And yet, they could do this amazing engineering." "The Incas' engineering medium was stone." "In their walls and buildings, they showed a mastery over stone that is unrivaled." "Without mortar, the Incas created walls of interlocking blocks that have successfully withstood earthquakes for centuries." "But their interest in stone went beyond the utilitarian." "The Incas worshipped rocks." "They carved intricate designs on natural outcrops and poured chicha maize beer or sacrificial blood down the channels to honor their mummified ancestors housed in rock-cut chambers below." "Choosing high vantage points at sacred sites, the Incas created mysterious stone columns, dubbed "hitching posts of the sun."" "They worshipped the sun and may have used the shafts for sighting stars." "Blending their stonework into the natural landscape, the Incas carved rocks to mimic the shape of the mountains behind." "But their most impressive and mysterious stonework is found in the walls of their citadels." "Giant blocks, some weighing a hundred tons, sit next to each other so precisely that not even a razor blade can fit between them." "Without iron tools, draft animals or the wheel." "how did the Inca builders move and set such large blocks?" "To answer this question," "Nova invited several experts with widely different backgrounds to come to Peru." "We're pretty good at finding the evidence today, if, and even if..." "Professor of Architecture Jean-Pierre Protzen studies the Incas' use of stone." "He's written a book about Iinca architecture and has some definite ideas about their construction methods." "Y que te gusta mas, las rocas o las papas?" "Igual." "Ed Franquemont is both an anthropologist and a building contractor who lived in a Peruvian village for several years." "His particular interest is how the Inca builders organized their labor force." "Vamos a practicar." "A las tres - uno..." "Philippe Petit is the man who walked a tigh trope between the towers of the World Trade Center." "Esta bien." "Mirame." "No mueves, no respires." "He wants to know how the Inca builders used grass to make the strong ropes that support their high suspension bridges." "And he's come here to help build one." "Y ya esta!" "Vince Lee is an architect and explorer who has traveled extensively in the Andes looking for lost Inca sites." "He has a theory about how the Inca stonemasons made such precise joints with such giant stones." "A good place to start looking for clues is the citadel overlooking the town of Ollantaytambo." "About 500 years ago, a sun temple was under construction inside the fortress." "So with all these blocks of stones here, this is clearly a construction site that was abandoned in progress." "Yeah." "The question is (" "For sure.)" "where did these stones come from and how did they get here?" "Well, they came from the quarries on the other side of the river at the base of this mountain here." "The team decides to follow the route to the quarry taken by the ancient stone haulers." "The hike will take them down a sloping ramp to the valley floor." "... there are many more of this along..." "Along the way, they find massive blocks abandoned by the Inca workers." "(VINCENT LEE:" "Yikes, JP, look at this thing.)" "This is a big rock." "There are more like this, on beyond here?" "The villagers called these rocks" ""piedras cansadas" - weary stones." "One legend tells of stones that grew tired, wept blood and refused to move." "And so is there " "so this is where the quarry is," "The lower quarry at the bottom of this rockfall." "You can see some ramps." "The other quarry is way up there at the foot of the cliff." "Jean-Pierre " ""J.P." to his friends - leads the team along the remains of a roadway" "That leads to the quarry... actually a rockfall created by rocks eroding from the cliffs above." "Here, they find a 70-ton stone that Inca quarry workers had turned into a rectangular block." "J.P. believes that all the boulders were first squared off in the quarry." "But how did the Incas transport these heavy blocks down the mountain and up to the sun temple on the other side of the valley?" "Spanish chronicles tell us that the Incas did not possess the wheel or strong draft animals like oxen." "David Canal, a community leader and Inca descendant, believes they hauled the blocks by hand." "He's organized a team of pullers to transport a one-ton rock along the same route taken by the Incas between the quarry and the citadel." "For most of its length, the ramp has a gentle slope." "But halfway down the mountain, the incline suddenly turns into an almost vertical 800-foot chute to the valley below." "With a block more than ten times the size of this one, it must have been extremely difficult for the ancient stone haulers to negotiate this chute." "Unlike the Inca blocks observed on the transport route, this boulder has not been squared off, and it tumbles out of control." "Probably not the way the Incas wanted to see it happen." "No, absolutely not." "And you know, once it..." "if it turned this way, it was kind of cylindrical." "It was kind of easy for it to get rolling, where a big, square block might not have..." "That's true." "...might not have done that." "Having gotten the boulder down in pieces by a distinctly non-Inca method, everyone hopes to do better with the next challenge:" "getting a block across the Urubamba River." "At this time of year, the water level is at its lowest, and the river looks quite placid." "But after the rainy season, it becomes a torrent impossible to ford." "David believes the Inca hauling teams would have chosen to cross at the shallowest stretch." "But even here, there is a stiff current, and many of his men can't swim." "To appease the spirits of the river," "David has arranged for an offering of cane alcohol." "The wet stones are slippery for the men, but this turns out to be an advantage when it comes time to pull the rock. (We're ready?" ")" "Let's go!" "Let's go." "Vamos!" "Arriba!" "Arriba!" "Arriba!" "It was perfect!" "It was easier than moving it on the ground, went pretty quick." "Just exactly like I thought it would." "The task of getting the rock across the Urubamba turned out to be much easier than everyone had imagined." "But crossing the fields on the valley bottom is much more of a problem, because the stone acts like a plow digging into the soft ground." "There was probably once a road crossing the valley, but it has been destroyed by centuries of farming." "Permission has been obtained to excavate one of the blocks abandoned in Inca times, to see if there is any evidence of a roadbed underneath." "What turned up underneath was a layer of small stones on top of what appears to be a prepared gravel road base." "So the resulting surface that the stone appears to have actually been bearing on is just these... these stones about the size of a softball - not necessarily round, but you know - um... and that's not unlike the surface we find on the ramps today, still." "Now that they have found the kind of road used by the Inca stone haulers, the team wants to see how difficult it would be to drag a much heavier block on a similar surface." "In the plaza below the citadel, they find a genuine 15-ton Inca block, and the sloping cobbled surface is a good approximation of the eight-degree ramp that leads up to the sun temple." "Listos?" "Uno, dos, tres..." "To pull the block," "David has assembled a team of 250 men, women and children from Ollantaytambo and neighboring villages." "There is a festive atmosphere." "Everyone has turned out to see the great block being dragged through town." "Unfortunately, the stone refuses to budge." "But after another offering of cane alcohol, and some levering, the stone finally comes unstuck." "The ease with which the block travels on the cobbled surface proves that it could have been dragged up the slope to the sun temple." "Nos estamos confiando en la gente, ¿no?" "Haciamos que..." "I had no doubt that we could do it." "Our ancestors did it, so I knew we could do it, too." "Human labor can accomplish anything." "The determination displayed by David's people makes the speed and scale of the Incas' empire building achievements much more understandable." "According to legend, around 1450 A.D., a leader called Pachacuti, whose name means "Earth-Shaker", began an aggressive military campaign that transformed the Incas from a small Cuzco valley community into a juggernaut that swallowed up all its Andean neighbors." "In return for the benefits of a stable state, conquered peoples paid tax to their Inca masters in the form of labor." "This huge workforce enabled Pachacuti and his successors to build the infrastructure that could support their rapidly expanding territorial gains." "In the Urubamba valley, wide, rambling sections of the river were placed in canals to create cultivatable land." "Terraces watered by elaborate irrigation schemes climbed the mountainsides, further increasing food production." "On the peaks above the Urubamba River, the Inca lords built a chain of remarkable citadels in the sky." "The most magnificent and mysterious of all:" "Machu Picchu." "It's difficult for us to ... grasp the scale of the Incas' imagination and ambition in producing places like this." "As archaeologists, we like to work with potsherds or tools or walls or buildings - things that are people scale." "But the Inca's vision was much bigger than that." "The real Inca media was the entire, immense Andean landscape around him." "He spent extra time to ... find very special places within the Andean landscape," "spent time studying them to understand their true nature, embellished them with stone, ran sparkling and rushing water through prepared water courses," "and in the end, produced works of singular beauty that represent a harmony with nature that few other civilizations have achieved." "So remote was its location," "Machu Picchu's existence remained a secret from the time of the Incas until the early part of this century." "But 30 miles up river, the town of Ollantaytambo has been lived in continuously since the time of the Inca." "Its buildings are well-preserved." "But the very finest Inca stonework is found in the citadel above the residential quarters." "Replicating joints like this is the challenge J.P. Protzen and Vince Lee have set themselves." "You know, JP, this part of Ollantaytambo has always been one of my favorites." "I mean, this is Inca stonemasonry as good as it gets." "(You're right.)" "Don't you agree?" "You bet." "It's not just the craftsmanship." "It's just the playfulness of the joining - (Yeah." "Right.)" "and the problem that they elected to solve is just so complicated." "(Yes." "Yeah.)" "It's wonderful." "I mean, you really see that here, they perfected their skills. (Yeah.)" "And you know, the other thing it seems to me, that where other cultures used stone as a material for sculptural decor of one kind or another, these guys just use the stone itself." "That's right." "They're just telling you that stone is itself a beautiful material." "You don't have to carve anything into it, really. (No.)" "No." "This is sculpture, too." "Yeah, exactly that. (Yeah." "Yeah.)" "You know, people often say, oh, you can't get a knife blade in the joints of Inca - you can't get anything in this " "Not even a razor blade. (No!" ")" "No, it's an absolute perfect joint." "Yeah." "I mean, the craftsmanship is mind-boggling, especially if you try to do it " "Yeah!" "Yes!" "... if you try to duplicate it yourself!" "JP has duplicated Inca stonework using Inca tools." "In an ancient quarry, he discovered some rounded stones that probably came from the river." "Using these as hammerstones, he found them as effective as the modern steel chisels used by stonemasons today." "To create a bevelled edge," "JP used a smaller hammerstone." "The resulting tool marks are identical to those found on Inca masonry, rough in the center and smooth at the edges." "But how did the Inca masons go about setting the stones?" "A half-finished citadel wall provides an important clue." "To achieve the perfect Inca joint, an imprint is marked on the block below." "The area that will seat the new block is then hammered out." "Repeated fittings fine-tune the joint." "Spots where stone dust is compressed indicate raised areas that need more hammering." "Using ever-smaller hammerstones to avoid damaging the edges," "JP finished the joint within a few hours." "It shows that ... with the... sort of simple tools that I found in this quarry, it is absolutely possible to achieve the kind of perfection of stonework that we observe throughout Cuzco and the Inca empire." "JP's method works well with small stones that can be easily maneuvered." "But as the stones get bigger, handling them becomes increasingly difficult." "Here, at the Inca fortress of Sacsahuaman, the trial and error method of setting giant multi-ton blocks seems a daunting prospect." "But despite their size, the blocks in the retaining wall all have the famous Inca fit, mortarless and snug." "The answer may be a simple builder's tool called a scribe, a tool that may have enabled the Inca masons to make joints without any painstaking trial and error." "Back in Ollantaytambo," "Vince is about to use his scribe as he attempts to make a perfect Inca joint between two stones his masons have worked on for several days." "We're getting the rock into position to scribe this prepared joint into this one that's yet to be prepared." "And so far, everything we've done, anyone fitting these two rocks together would have to do." "You would have to roughcut your rocks and basically decide which rock was going where." "And you would have to get them in position." "Now is the point where the method I'm proposing perhaps differs from... from others, because what I'm saying is that by using this scribe, this end, this blunt end is designed to work against a previously prepared smooth surface." "Now what we have to do is make this edge exactly match it." "And the way we do that is by taking this scribe and running it down this... pre-finished surface, maintaining the string hanging through the center of its hole with this little plumb bob so that we don't accidentally" "mess up our joint by allowing the scribe to move in this... in this plane." "As long as we keep the string in the center of the hole, and as long as... this is rubbing against that pre-finished surface, all we have to do is chop this rock out so that this end of the scribe... exactly fits " "no matter where we put the scribe." "Then, we can achieve the fit we want by moving this rock one more time, simply closing the joint." "End of story." "Time constraints have forced Vince's men to use steel chisels to work the hard andesite rock." "Well, this is it - the moment of truth for Vince's project." "He's been scribing and chomping and chipping and polishing." "And right now, these two stones are supposed to go together like Inca masonry, be right close together." "What do you think?" "Gonna work?" "Gonna happen?" "Ed's absolutely right." "It's time to stop talking and start moving rocks, so, so let's do it." "...just like right there, that looks..." "The joint that we've gotten is certainly not as good as the ones we've seen up in the ruins." "But it isn't bad." "What we did here today is we fitted two large rocks together, moving them together only one time." "That's the essence of my idea," "(Absolutely.) ...basically." "So, we didn't have to try this back and forth  at all." "We fit it once and we got a pretty good joint." "If you could..." "If you sent us down here for three more weeks, we'd do twice as good a job, I believe, because we'd know now, all of the mistakes that we made, and we'd know not to make them next time." "But I think it's not too bad..." "The second stage of Vince's experiment is much more complicated." "He has to create a corner joint that fits perfectly with neighboring stones, both horizontally and vertically." "In order to fit this corner right here of this stone into this seat that Hector is shaping, we have to ... bring this stone around and prop it up, above the seat that it's intended to fill," "and then put poles under it, and you'll see perhaps these ... huaycos, or these notches in the rock, and that's what they're for." "And we'll put poles under the stone." "We'll probably leave some stones at this end, under the very tail end of the rock, and we'll be able to remove all these stones, so that it's hollow underneath the stone." "And that gives us a place ... to use the scribe." "And the scribe in this case is just like the other one, but it will be used in a 45 degree orientation." "It will come down the rising face and across the base." "And you see, in order to get all the way across, we have to move all these stones out of the way, underneath the rock." "And that's undoubtedly the most tricky part of this technique." "I was one of the people who was healthily skeptical of this whole system." "But you know, it looks dangerous." "It looks hard." "And with a bigger stone," "I think it would be more dangerous and more hard, and I still have my doubts." "But there is an outline of a method." "That stone is standing there, actually in the air above the space it's supposed to go in, propped up on those pieces of wood." "Vince believes that notches cut into the giant blocks at Sacsahuaman support his theory." "But if it's a precarious operation, propping up a half-ton rock, what would it be like with a 25-ton boulder?" "Looks very much like ... the surface we already have is very close to what we want." "As we move it up, it comes out to three eighths." "So just off hand, it looks like maybe we have to take a little more material off here." "We're gonna... we're now gonna... drop this stone into its seat and see how well we did." "With Vince rapidly losing his voice, his team is about to start the most hazardous part of the operation - lowering the block into place." "By tipping the stone a little bit at a time, pull out a stick here, a stick there, until the whole thing creeps into place." "This seems to be inherently less stable, and I think with a huge... with a huge stone would be even more unstable." "It is clear that Vince and company need to refine the procedure for getting the block off the stilts and into position, particularly if this method is to work with stones weighing many tons." "This isn't bad." "Well, we've seen that this can be can be done, but the question is, is this how it was done?" "Did the Incas actually use this scribing method to... construct their stone walls, to find their fine joints?" "I don't know." "Do you think so?" "I mean, have we proven it?" "Well, as I said at the outset," "I'm not sure we'll ever know how the Incas did it." "The point of this was to try to find a way that works, and that would work with big stones." "Now, in the case of the little joint we just fit here, we spent 12 days doing the rough work that any technique would involve, and one day doing the scribing." "That tells me that the scribing is an efficient way to make the joint." "Had we moved the rock five times and so forth, we might have spent 12 days doing the rough work and three days doing the..." "making the joint, a less efficient way to do it." "But which way the Incas would have used," "I don't know that we'll ever know." "The annual Ollantaytambo bullfight is in full swing." "And yet another demonstration of how the Incas might have created their amazing stonework is being set up for a rather skeptical audience." "How curved it is affects where its focal length is. (Sure.)" "Yes." "Where..." "Professor Ivan Watkins teaches geoscience at St. Cloud University in Minnesota." "And now," "I need my goggles." "I've looked at it too much." "Ivan and his wife, Berta, are here to test his theory that the Incas used gold parabolic mirrors to concentrate sunlight into a high temperature beam that could melt stone, or as Ivan would say," ""thermally disaggregate" it." "You see that little image of the sun there?" "OK, now, the idea of this whole thing is to have an image of the sun from the big mirror projected across to a plane mirror and then use another parabolic mirror to direct the light to... whatever is going to be... thermally disaggregated." "In this case, what we would thermally disaggregate would be a rock." "OK, now, you can the bright spot that is there." "If Ivan's parabolic mirrors work, they'll concentrate the sun's energy 10,000 times and melt this small piece of rock." "...whether I knock that little piece of rock off of it..." "This is one of the stones..." "Several years ago," "Ivan was touring Inca sites, and this half-finished stone at Machu Picchu attracted his attention." "Certain marks on the rock struck him as a clear indication of the use of parabolic mirrors." "I think this line shows something to do..." "Archaeologist Helaine Silverman is not convinced." "Think that's possible?" "I think it's ridiculous." "There is absolutely no evidence that the Incas were using mirrors, and what's more, it's very clear what the technology of this is." "They, they were..." "they were chipping away at this." "I agree 100 percent with you that this is a classic... a surface that's made by pecking the stone." "It's a ..." "Every one of these rocks has peck marks all over it." "But could stone hammers peck out the inside right angle joints that are so common in Inca walls?" "Ivan was convinced they couldn't." "With no evidence of metal tools," "Ivan reasoned the only alternative was a ray of amplified sunlight." "Unfortunately," "Ivan's prototype mirrors are not truly parabolic and fail to concentrate the sunlight effectively." "I'm not getting the ... temperature high enough there to pop him off." "The crux of Ivan's argument is that solar power concentrated through parabolic mirrors is the only way the Inca stonecutting that we've seen here at Ollantaytambo could have been done." "But how about the stones that we've seen that have ... have clear hammer marks on them?" "I mean, are you saying that those were not... (Well, no, no.)" "I'm not at all sure when you say they have clear hammer marks." "What is the difference between taking ..." "I think I want out of this." "This is big too ridiculous." "This is really ridiculous." "I need some goggles, though, because I just ..." "I just got blasted." "I want to see this guy cut a stone like I can do." "And then I talk." "But otherwise that makes no damn sense." "If you can find a radius of curvature again ..." "I mean, this is ridiculous." "... then it is necessary that indeed, that was not produced by hammering with a stone." "All corners, inside corners in Inca masonry are rounded." "There are no sharp inside corners." "JP appears to be right." "There are no sharp, right-angle joints to be found." "And even the tightest could have been created by polishing with a small hammerstone." "Let's try burning this popsicle stick, and watch my finger." "I've only got ten." "OK!" "I'll try to..." "I'll try to... not dedigitate you." "It doesn't seem to be Ivan's day." "Just singeing a popsicle stick is a problem for his mirrors." "Oh,I can't..." "There we go." "There's flame." "There was some flame." "Yeah." "Down at the arena, things are not going much better for part-time matador Philippe Petit, where even the bulls refuse to get fired up." "At its height, the Incas' rugged domain extended for almost the entire 3,500-mile length of the Andes." "To control their diverse empire from the capital Cuzco, the Incas built a 14,000-mile network of all-weather roads." "The vertigo-inducing terrain forced Inca engineers to build on steep mountainsides, sometimes carving trails right out of the living rock." "Downhill, then uphill." "Well, this is really the nicest part of the trail." "I know." "These steps in the living rock are just fantastic." "Helaine Silverman has joined Ed Franquemont to explore one of the most dramatic sections of the trail." "Not possessing the wheel, the Inca engineers designed the trails for foot traffic and cargo-bearing llamas." "Inca relay runners stationed very few miles carried messages at a speed of 150 miles a day." "This system, the road system was so good that in ten days a message could be transmitted from Quito in Ecuador to Cuzco, the Inca capital." "That's about as fast as modern day postal service can send a letter between these two capital cities today." "A number of great rivers posed the most serious obstacle to the Inca road builders, particularly after the rainy season, when these waterways became raging torrents, impossible to ford on foot or cross by ferry." "The ingenious solution to the problem?" "Suspension bridges that could span up to 150 feet." "One of these bridges crossed the gorge above the Apurimac river near the remote village of Huinchiri." "The people here still build grass suspension bridges as their ancestors did 500 years ago." "It's said these bridges can be built in just three days." "Ed and Helaine want to see how the community organizes itself into such an effective labor force." "But one day before construction is due to start, the only sign of life near the bridge site is the harvesting of grass by Clotilde Vilcas and her family." "It is sobering to realize that these dry-looking stalks will bear the weight of people crossing 60 feet above the Apurimac River." "Clotilde's contribution to the community effort is to twist the grass into 50 yards of two-ply rope and deliver it tomorrow morning." "As the first day of construction begins, the usually barren hills are suddenly crowded as local people start arriving at the bridge site." "Villagers responsible for producing rope deliver their 50-yard quota." "In total, the bridge will require over 7,000 yards of half-inch-thick coya grass rope." "Before construction begins, spiritual matters must be attended to." "Chief bridge builder Victoriano Arisapana is making an offering to Pacha Mama," "Mother Earth, to ensure her blessing on the enterprise." "This ritual requires the consumption of large amounts of alcohol by the village leaders." "These people are every bit a part of the engineering as the bridge folks are - what they're doing is making the bridge strong and safe and last." "And their job is to sit here and ... construct the payments that we make to the earth, and ... make sure that these cables go across and are completely strong." "High wire walker Philippe Petit cannot resist entertaining the crowd." "With his life-long passion for knots, rigging, and cables, he is thrilled to be part of the effort." "Attendance at the bridge site is carefully noted." "By midday, almost 500 people have turned up." "The rope is divided up into sections, each containing 24 strands, 150 feet long." "The ropes are twisted together tightly and evenly." "The flimsy-looking strands that were delivered in the morning are suddenly transformed into something substantial enough to entrust one's life to." "They are stranding the three main ropes into the final rope, into one of the final ropes." "So they have to keep the regularity of the braiding, and they have also to be very careful about the torsion." "Sometimes, they yell "nudo" - the knot, because something is twisted too much so it creates a ... it creates ... you see, when you take a rope like this, and you go like that," "you see it creates knots, you see." "So you have to take it out." "Oh, it's beautiful, because each family did one little piece, each community brought their own rope." "Those ropes which are like your little finger are braided into a bigger one, and then into those big ones, and now three of those big ones." "It's really a communion." "By the end of the first day, these load-carrying cables are delivered to the bridge site." "Each cable weighs about 200 pounds." "It's hard, heavy labor." "But enthusiasm never wanes." "Bridge building is as much a party as it is work, and probably always has been." "The bridge builders are farmers living in homesteads scattered all over the high puna grassland." "They are well adapted to working at altitudes of 14,000 feet and more, having long ago developed large capacity lungs and short, strong legs for climbing steep mountainsides." "Like her ancestors in Inca times," "Clotilde is very self-sufficient." "She makes clothes for the family and barters for the food that she doesn't grow herself." "Today," "Ed has asked her to prepare a special Inca dish:" "guinea-pig." "I think I have problems because we keep them as pets in the United States." "Well, it's not a dog." "I know." "No, and I know the whole history of the guinea pig." "There you go." "I know they're very important ..." "That's right." "domesticated animals." "These are what you've been digging up." "It's succulent." "Uh-huh." "Don't you like the wakatai?" "Potatoes also came from the land of the Incas." "But they have caught on better in the rest of the world than guinea pig." "They eat well, because the hard work on the bridge is about to begin." "Augusto!" "The next morning starts with tossing a rope across the river." "This will be used to pull the main cables over the gorge." "NOVA has asked that the bridge cables be strong enough to carry at least five people and two llamas - the kind of load it might have supported in Inca times." "On either side of the chasm, there are stone abutments that were constructed by the Incas." "They were built into the side of the mountain in order to support the weight of the bridge." "The cables are wound around stone beams anchored into the floor of the abutments, and they will eventually be securely tied off." "But first, the cables must be tightened inch by inch to get rid of any slack." "Pulling the six cables taut takes the rest of day two." "If all goes well, the bridge will be ready to cross in 24 hours." "The morning of the third and final day finds the riggers swinging in the wind," "60 feet above the Apurimac River." "It is not a vision that inspires confidence, but Helaine puts on a brave face." "I feel a lot better about crossing this bridge now than I did before I saw it being built." "And I think that it's structurally sound." "I can even see that, as the people are building the bridge, they're already walking out over it before it's even finished." "Philippe, who has never felt more in his element, has been helping the riggers all morning." "OK, well, this bridge " "I should say this piece of art - is now near completion." "They are tying the footropes together, and they are doing the connection between the handrail and the foot." "And it's done very fast." "Son maestros - artistas!" "A mi me gusta mucho trabajar con las cuerdas." "Si." "With the bridge complete, a roll call is taken to confirm who gets paid." "The Incas were great record keepers, too." "It's been said that if even a pair of sandals were missing from their inventory, they would know." "But how did they handle such information without writing or arithmetic?" "Well, the Incas never had a written system, but it wasn't anywhere near as much of a disadvantage as you might think." "Because they were able to store really abstract and complicated information using textiles as a medium." "Right here, what I'm making is a small Inca textile, a quipu, a series of knots which keeps records on events that happened." "In this case," "I'm talking about how many people it took to build the bridge, how much it cost, the records we might keep." "This is a "read only" document." "After it's all done, what I'm going to be able to do is put on the finished records of what's going on here." "It's not a counting device like an abacus that ... that ... counts as you go." "Here, I've recorded how many people there were from the community of Huinchiri, who showed up to work for those six days." "And here is how much we paid all their workers." "And over here is how much we paid ... the authorities and the bridgemaster who did the bridge for us." "We want to get back records years from now on how this bridge was made, how long it took, how many people it took, and what it cost." "We'll be able to code them and keep them forever in a knotted string like this." "Now, the workers are taking a rest." "And I am alone on that bridge, and I feel like a kid who is being given a ... a giant gift." "And I start enjoying myself as a wire-walker, as I can feel the balance a bit, you see, here." "So ..." "So I don't know if I can even ... walk like this, but ..." "With an Inca bridge, all the load is carried by the four cables which make up the footpath." "The hand ropes are only for balance." "Helaine is warned that leaning on them too heavily could cause the bridge to flip over." "I want to look down, but I'm afraid to look down, so I'm looking at everybody across." "I know I can do this." "I think I'm gonna be sick." "No, I'm not." "The llamas are even more reluctant to cross the bridge than Helaine." "Well, this bridge is certainly tremendous." "It's an amazing example of how the Incas were able to accomplish tremendous amounts of work in a short period of time, billowing all over the Andes." "In terms of labor organization," "I feel as though I've been transported back 500 years to the Inca times." "I can just imagine the native leaders doing the census, saying, "OK, guys, ladies, you make the rope." "Men, you lay out the strands." "We are going to build the bridge." "This is your labor tax."" "The Incas were the largest empire of the pre-Industrial world, and certainly the richest." "They had a control over this land, this wonderful and severe land of the Andes, that nobody could ever imagine." "How they accomplished all of these things - we're just beginning to ask the right questions." "Converted into subtitles by m06166" "Secrets Of Lost Empire - 1x05" "You have come tonight to the most fabulous and celebrated place in the world." "No traveler, emperor, merchant or poet has trodden on these sands and not gasped in awe!" "They're much bigger than I thought they would be!" "It's absolutely breathtaking!" "That it stands for so long." "Yes." "Ever since they were built, 4,500 years ago, on the desert beside present-day Cairo, the pyramids of Giza have stirred the emotions." "And the spectacle continues to amaze the thousands of tourists herded to the site each day." "All the 5,000 years of history ... is here." "It's..." "I don't know, it just creeps over you." "The most impressive pyramid and the largest was built by the pharaoh Khufu in 2600 BC." "Known as the Great Pyramid, it was, until the early part of this century, the world's largest building, covering an area of seven city blocks and weighing 6,500,000 tons." "The construction of Khufu's Pyramid was one of the most extraordinary feats ever of engineering, craftsmanship, and cooperative effort." "In less than 30 years, the workers had to raise over 2 million blocks to a height of 40 stories at the rate of one block every three minutes, an amazing achievement, given that the ancient Egyptians possessed only the simplest technology." "Without modern surveying equipment, pulleys, or even the wheel, how did they lift stone blocks weighing two and a half tons, position them correctly, and control the shape of the rising pyramid?" "Despite a batch of new construction theories, the question of how the ancient Egyptians saw these engineering problems has not been convincingly answered." "So, NOVA asked University of Chicago archaeologist Mark Lehner to come to Egypt and take a fresh look at the evidence." "There's something about the pyramids here at Giza that inspires people to be very passionate about all kinds of different theories about what they hide, how they were built, what they mean." "I have maps showing whole subway systems underneath the Giza plateau, hidden chambers and tunnels, uhm... great charts of circles and intersecting lines showing the mathematical relationships of these pyramids to each other, to the Sphinx," "to the stars, to Bethlehem, to Manhattan." "There are just files and files and files of these ideas." "But the bottom line on all these ideas, including those of Egyptologists, is that they have to stand the test of bedrock reality." "And what better test than to build one's own pyramid?" "To help him do this," "Mark invited Roger Hopkins, a stonemason from Sudbury, Massachusetts." "Aaaaw, God." "Take it easy there, pal." "Whoa!" "The plan is for Roger and Mark to test out some of the more likely construction theories by actually building a small pyramid right here in the shadow of the Great Pyramid." "Aiding Roger are 14 skilled stonemasons from Cairo." "They work for Mr. Ahmed who is in overall charge of the workforce." "As none of the men speak English, and Roger's Arabic is non-existent, everything is a bit of a mystery at first." "To understand how the ancient pyramid builders might have gone about their colossal tasks," "Mr. Ahmed's men will confine themselves to the materials and tools available in ancient times as much as possible." "The ancient builders constructed the pyramids with great care, as they were the sacred tombs of the pharaohs, designed to help ensure their immortality." "To the ancient Egyptians, death was seen as just the beginning of a journey to another life, an afterlife that would last forever if things were properly organized before departure." "First, the corpse had to be preserved by mummification, and then the body had to be protected from the elements and intruders by a burial chamber." "Called mastabas, these tombs surrounding the pyramid were literally houses for the dead." "They contained images of their owners, servants, and everything else needed for the afterlife." "And there are whole subdivisions of them on the Giza plateau." "The Egyptians believed that their kings became gods at death, who could then ensure an afterlife for everybody." "So the pharaohs got the biggest tombs of all, stone mountains built to last an eternity." "One of the most popular ideas about the pyramids, fostered by Hollywood, is that they were built by slaves." "But Egyptologists have found no evidence to support this myth." "Instead, the early pharaohs probably conscripted farm laborers during the annual flood of the Nile, workers who in ancient graffiti proudly described themselves as the "craftsman gang"" "or the "friends of Khufu."" "The very first pyramid was built here at Saqqara, just to the south of Giza, in 2700 BC." "Up till then, mud brick was the principal construction material for tombs and other important buildings." "But in the reign of the Pharaoh Zoser, his chief architect, a visionary called Imhotep, discovered a more versatile building material:" "stone." "Stone gave them the confidence to put one tomb on top of another, creating the first pyramid in the form of a series of giant steps." "So here at Saqqara, you can really see the beginning of this ... period of gigantism in pyramid building." "It begins with the pyramid of Zoser, which is really the world's first skyscraper in stone, and the first pyramid in Egypt." "It's a step pyramid, some think as a kind of symbolic ladder for the king's soul to ascend to heaven." "This started, er, the age, with a short interlude following Zoser, it began ... the period of really colossal, giant pyramids." "The pharaoh Sneferu built the next three giant pyramids." "A century of pyramid building had taught the ancient stonemasons many useful lessons." "So when the pharaoh Khufu presented the builders with the epic task of constructing the great pyramid of Giza, they were ready." "Unfortunately," "Mark and Roger have rather less time to perfect their own building techniques." "So basically, you have three weeks to move 189 stones into a pyramid?" "Right." "Doesn't look like they'll fit all in this small square we're in, but..." "A pyramid of how big?" "How tall is it supposed to be?" "Well, it's a little less than 6 meters high, and probably about 9 meters at the base." "And you think this is do-able in three weeks?" "Cause you're going to do this by ancient Egyptian methods?" "Are you gonna ... be faithful to the way the ancient Egyptians do it, or you're gonna come in here with a ... a backhoe and a loader and a forklift?" "Well, let's put it this way." "I'll be as... probably... as faithful as I can be, (Uh-uhm.)" "given that I only have three weeks here." "This one I barely squared off." "Before moving in the first level of blocks," "Roger and Mark want to double-check that the base of their pyramid is exactly square." "I think maybe ... we're gonna have to check to see if this ... this is running square to our north line." "If this line is off, then all our measurements are going to be off." "A universal characteristic of ancient Egyptian pyramids was the precision with which the base was laid out and the four sides were oriented to face true north, south, east and west." "The sun or the stars were used to establish the north-south line." "The next step was to lay out a square with precise right angles." "The Egyptians could have done this in different ways." "One method is to intersect two arcs." "A line connecting the points of intersection will be at the right angle to the original line." "Or, they could have used a triangle with sides of three, four, and five units, which always produces a right angle." "Either way, the builders would have a virtually perfect square for the base of the pyramid." "We're moving our first stone ... into the pyramid." "This is ... er... going into the inner works of the support of our pyramid." "It's what we call a core block." "It's not finely dressed." "It's very rough." "We'll do that after it's in place." "Although the men were able to roll the blocks end over end, it was a slow and laborious process." "There's evidence that wooden rollers were used by the ancient Egyptians, so Roger tries some out on a nearby concrete driveway." "This is a piece of cake, Mark." "We could do it with about..." "This is ten men?" "Yeah." "Ten men, easy." "We're actually going up an incline right now that ... wouldn't be unlike coming out of the quarry." "Rollers work well, but only on a smooth, hard surface." "So, they're of no use on Roger's sandy site." "At neighboring pyramid complexes, the remains of clay roadbeds have been found into which the ancient Egyptians imbedded wood, like railway ties." "Perhaps a sled loaded with one of Roger's 2-ton blocks will slide over this surface." "Mark thinks it might." "We're gonna try to ... within all the confusion, wet the ties and make it slippery, and see if it goes on the ties without a layer of slick clay." "If the just the ties, the wooden ties themselves - sleepers." "If the sleepers will carry the sled." "Nobody thinks it'll work." "They think we're crazy." "They're irritated, massively irritated at even making the attempt." "They think we're wasting our time." "Roger doesn't." "Ha-ha-ha!" "Hey, it works!" "Hey!" "The only drawback I see is that we're getting into a situation where..." "We want to do it all this way." "Yeah!" "Get rid of the machines, Roger!" "(Yeah, you do.)" "You do, pal, but I don't." "We've got too much of a deadline here to ... to do it all that way." "We're going to do plenty of it that way, when we get up in the upper levels." "Well, I think it's good just to see that it works, because this is another case where hands-on, trial archaeology ..." "I think really proves some points." "Because even the men, even the experienced masons here, were saying vehemently that this isn't gonna work, and they were almost angry and irritated about it." "And lo and behold, it got off the rollers." "Yeah, but we're still not up on a ramp." "It was a bar of soap!" "Yeah, we're not on ..." "Although the sledding experiment is a success," "Roger is opposed to building a network of clay roads, because it would delay work on the pyramid itself." "Roger has also decided not to lay down a hard foundation underneath the pyramid." "Instead, he'll build directly on the desert floor, a decision he'll come to regret." "Protected by the surrounding desert, the Egyptian nation grew up along the fertile Nile valley." "Together, the Nile and the pyramids played a central role in creating this unique civilization that was to last 3,000 years." "The Nile was extremely important for pyramid building, because it was the main artery by which all non-local materials were transported to the pyramid site." "The granite, for example." "70-ton... 50 to 70-ton blocks of granite came from as far away as Aswan," "500 miles to the south." "This could only have been brought by boat." "The fine limestone for the outer casing was brought from the quarries at Tura, which is directly across the river, and this, again, could only have been brought by boat." "So, the water of the Nile was the principal means of transport for moving these materials to the pyramid site for building." "Today, Roger invites Mark and his friend Nick Fairplay, a stonecarver from England, to go with him to the Tura limestone formation where the blocks for his pyramid are quarried." "But this is pretty much the traditional way, the way they've been doing it, probably, for the last, what?" "Four or five thousand years?" "This is about as deep as you can go, one man, from picking away at the surface in that narrow." "It's just wide enough for them to get their leg down in there, and they really can't go much deeper than that." "If they were going to get a bigger block, they'd have to widen the channel here." "So the way they separate the block is by channelling these deep channels on three sides." "But then, how do they pull it up?" "And then they're ... they're splitting it on two sides with wedges." "So, they just stick wedges underneath and, like, pry it up?" "Yeah." "They cut holes, basically, and then put the wedges in and hammer them in." "And then that produces a horizontal crack that separates it from the bed underneath. (Yeah." "Right.)" "In ancient times, this fine limestone was used only for the outer blocks of the pyramid." "Back on the Giza side of the Nile," "Mark takes Nick Fairplay to the place where he believes the bulk of the pyramid stone was quarried." "Early archaeologists didn't recognize this area as a quarry because the ancient workers had filled it with building debris." "When later investigators cleaned it out, they concentrated on the tombs of the pharaoh's high officials which honeycomb the rockface." "So until recently, archaeologists didn't fully appreciate this quarry's role in the building of the Great Pyramid." "In this ... this they are just extracting a block, or they're just defining the block, (Yeah.)" "and that represents about a standard pyramid-sized block." "You know, it's amazing that with evidence like this, people have still wondered if the stone wasn't brought from somewhere else, like across the river." "And it's clear to me, it's clear as a bell, that almost, you know, the bulk of the pyramid was quarried right here on the plateau and simply transported up the plateau for piling it up in the form of the pyramids." "Mark's survey of the Giza plateau has produced the first accurate computer reconstructions of how the pyramids appeared 4,500 years ago." "The Giza complex consisted of the pyramids of the pharaohs Khufu, his son Khafre, and grandson Menkaure." "Each pyramid has a long covered causeway running down to the Nile, with a temple at either end." "But there were also satellite pyramids for the pharaohs' queens, and hundreds of smaller tombs for the overseers and officials." "The Khafre pyramid shows all the standard elements of a pyramid complex." "Sitting right at the base of the pyramid itself is the mortuary temple, where the daily rituals took place." "From its entrance, a causeway, once with walls and a roof, runs a quarter of a mile down the plateau, to end at the Valley Temple." "The unique thing that Khafre added was the Great Sphinx, carved right out of the natural rock, with the body of a lion and the head of a pharaoh." "The face is probably that of Khafre himself, making the Sphinx a kind of guardian for the whole pyramid plateau." "Five days into his 21-day building schedule," "Roger is only now moving in the first of the angled blocks that will form the sloping outer surface of the pyramid." "This is our most important stone of the whole project." "This is our first cornerstone and it's our casing stone, so it's the ... linchpin of the whole pyramid." "When chiseled to the required slope, the casing blocks will give Roger's pyramid a smooth appearance." "But on the ancient pyramids, most of the casing has long since been looted, exposing the rough blocks underneath." "Up here at the top of the Khafre pyramid, some of the original limestone casing, the smooth outer shell of the pyramid, yet remains." "Looking out across it, you just ... you get a sense of how sensational the pyramids must have been when they were brand new, encased with this polished white stone." "Now, the casing has this brown patina, and it's been slightly roughed by the ages." "But when it was new, it was as white as newly-fallen snow, and the effect must have been truly blinding." "Because the casing stones need to be placed very precisely," "Roger wants to lower these blocks into position with his front-end loader, but Mark is insisting on ancient methods." "As the cornerstone is dragged in, it dislodges the baseline string." "I didn't want to set it this way, remember that." "You know, it was much easier just to come in and set it down where it's supposed to be." "I've got to reestablish that line all the way from my north-south line again in order to find this line." "Right now, we don't know where the corner is." "It could be anywhere in this whole ..." "No, that's right." "... whole area, right around in here, because this thing is bent all..." "OK, next!" "Up on the plateau, the ancient pyramid builders didn't have this problem." "They engraved permanent reference lines in the stone foundation." "That's good!" "And working on a hard surface also enabled the giant blocks to be positioned with amazing precision." "Roger, how much do you estimate this casing block to be, on the Khufu pyramid?" "It looks to me like about 15 to 17 tons." "He says it's more than 17 tons, but I want to know how they got this joint between two 15-ton stones so ... how they did it so well." "I can't even put ..." "I can't put my ... the blade of my Swiss Army knife..." "And this is often said it would be hard to get a razor blade in that seam." "As Roger tries to emulate the ancients' precise joints, he is once again stymied by the soft surface on which he is building." "What's that Mark?" "Is that as good as you're going to get it?" "Well, that's ... pretty close." "They're doing this by jamming stones in under this side." "The problem we've got here, Mark, is that we're not doing our ... bottom casement stones on..." "You're not on a stone surface." "We're not on stone surface." "So they're jamming these ..." "So they're jamming these pieces in." "Right." "So, we can't really get a very tight joint like what they did up on the ... the big pyramids." "You know, with a little practice, we could get those fine joints, too." "But, you've got it now as fine as you're going to get it." "You're not going to get..." "Well, you know." "I mean... we've got other fish to fry here." "Come on." "That's it." "Towards me." "When Khufu's Pyramid was at this early stage in construction, work had already begun on the passageway leading to his tomb deep in the bedrock below." "We are right underneath the very center of the pyramid, about ... about a 100 feet under the original surface of the plateau, with the whole pyramid rising above us." "We've come down here by a narrow passage about three feet in height." "It descends for more than 345 feet, until we get down into what's called the Subterranean Chamber." "Well, the Subterranean Chamber here, underneath the pyramid, gives us one of the clearest looks of how they proceeded carving out these chambers." "Just like in their gallery, cliffside quarries, they proceeded in great channels like this." "Not that great." "About the size for one man to sit." "And it seems from the stone that was left, which presents us, in effect, with a frozen moment in the construction/quarrying process, it seems that individual men were allotted ... cubes of stone which they had to work away," "probably with a pick much like this, although of copper." "And we can see very clearly how they were ... picking away the stone in these channels." "In fact, some of the very chips of the last workmen to work in this little cubicle remain." "And then they would lob off the hump of stone left in the middle of these channels." "This is easy enough for us to imagine now when we see all these traces, but can you imagine what it must have been like when the men were working here?" "There must have been dust and debris everywhere." "It was ..." "It must have been absolutely choking." "And can you imagine what it must have been like for the workman who created this lead channel, a kind of shelf, to widen the room?" "He must have had to work ... practically, if not on all fours, then on his belly, swinging the pick away ahead of him to move the work farther into the solid rock." "And again, the chips of these workmen yet remain as they did when somebody came, probably on orders for the king, and told them," ""Put down your tools." "We have a different plan." "We want to make a chamber higher in the pyramid."" "So after months of exhausting labor, the Subterranean Tomb was abandoned, for reasons we may never understand." "Then, the pharaoh Khufu ordered the construction of a second chamber, but ultimately, chose yet another burial chamber high in the pyramid." "As Roger's pyramid begins to grow, he faces one of the most fundamental problems of pyramid engineering:" "How to lift the blocks." "The traditional and widely-accepted method has been a straight-on ramp made of mud brick that grew with the rising pyramid." "But pulling blocks up a ramp this steep would be virtually impossible." "If the ramp had a more gradual slope, a gradient of one in ten, for example, it would be over a mile long, run past the quarry, and would be a bigger construction project than the pyramid itself." "Well, some pyramid theorists say that there were no ramps whatsoever, that all the blocks were levered up from the very base of the pyramid all the way to the top, on the steps." "What they're thinking of are very regular steps, like a household stairway." "But when you come up here to the top of the pyramids, it seems inconceivable that these multi-ton blocks could have been levered up on steps, such as they exist." "When we lever this thing up, it's got to clear these things." "Otherwise, you're gonna get hung up here." "Martin Isler is one of the major advocates of levering." "His work as a sculptor, which involved moving large pieces of marble, convinced him that levering is the most efficient method for raising up the heavy blocks." "I love stone!" "All kinds of stone - pyramids, statues, anything." "Anything build of stone, it just... one of my passions." "Also a professional draftsman," "Martin, on paper, makes levering look like a very plausible idea." "But today, for the first time, he is putting his theory to the test." "He has to lever a one-ton block up one step of the pyramid." "No loader!" "There's no loader!" "He says it's too heavy;" "we should bring the loader." "But I told him we had to try it this way." "We have to try." "The little guy will like direct the operation." "Adel is his name." "He's a specialist in the use of the crowbar." "Wonderful." "Adel." "You see, see?" "This is good?" "That was no good." "It has to be flat, OK?" "Like that." "Flat." "Yes?" "No, no." "It..." "If it tumbles over, you're going to get hurt." "No need to get excited." "Am I excited?" "Yeah!" "I don't mean to." "Down!" "Wait." "Not." "Down." "Wait a minute." "No, no." "He's got it." "OK." "Good." "Now you've got the side." "One at the time." "One at the time." "Why do he gets it here because it's a waste of ..." "OK." "Down, down!" "The cribbage is getting a little precarious." "How's it look, Martin?" "It looks all right." "I mean ..." "It's going up." "They all say don't worry." "It's not gonna fall." "Yeah?" "They're not worried." "OK." "They're not worried." "Well, I'm worried." "Well, let's stay worried and cautious and proceed." "Yeah." "OK." "You know, I've been waiting for that block to get up there for the last couple of hours, and I don't think it's gonna be a very practical way of bringing blocks up except in cases where we're ... absolutely walled off and that's the only method we can get them in." "But you could have a piece of wood that is 4 feet long, and you can have a piece of wood that is 3 feet long." "And you can have a source of wood so that you could select wood according to the plan." "So, you have standardized ..." "Well, you could cut ... lengths of?" "..." "... like carpenters do all the time." "They have stacks of wood." "I use this piece, or I use that piece according to my needs." "But this is an awful lot of wood, isn't it?" "It's a tremendous quantity of wood, isn't it?" "But it's all recyclable." "All of it is recyclable." "What kind of wood do you think it was?" "I have no idea." "I have no idea." "What kind of wood do you think it might have been?" "It's a country where wood is very scarce." "I understand, but they also imported wood from Lebanon." "You've heard that." "At great cost." "At great cost." "But the pyramid was an important monument, wasn't it?" "All right." "Is it possible that having done this one trial, we have learned something, and the next trial would be performed even more quickly?" "Is that possible?" "And the third one, even better yet. (That's very ...)" "And the fourth one, and the father ... the son ... the father will teach the son and the son will teach his son, and it gets better as it goes along." "Martin, however they did it," "I'm sure that's true." "Yeah." "They did it!" "Look at the monument!" "Yeah." "However they did it, that's true." "OK." "OK." "Good!" "That's it!" "Down." "After two intense hours, success." "Ahmed's levering team has inched the block to the top of the next step." "All that remains is a tricky maneuver to get the block off the precarious piles of wood." "You see the purpose of the block?" "You see where it landed?" "OK?" "Thank you." "Thank you, guys." "Thank you, all." "Thank you." "Very good!" "Number one!" "With only two weeks before his completion deadline," "Roger is not enthusiastic about using Martin's levering idea for raising any more blocks." "Instead, he's pushing ahead with building a ramp to slide blocks to the second layer of the pyramid." "The ramp is made of locally-available materials." "Tufla, the desert clay, is combined with gypsum, forming an all-purpose mortar that binds everything together." "Once the ramp is filled with stone debris, the roadway on top is formed by embedding timbers in a layer of clay." "Ready?" "Today will be the first time" "Roger has attempted to pull a block up an incline on this surface." "Once we were on the wood, we got that lubricant and the friction, we took right off." "Are you still a lever man?" "When necessary." "Ramps when necessary." "Levers when necessary." "I mean, there's no such thing as one way only." "I think sledding is a lot faster." "Once you've got the rhythm, the teams trained, and the proper roadbed," "I think you can move right along." "On the lower part of the pyramid, which is basically 87% of the volume of the pyramid, why not use le... er... ramps?" "But above that, you can use levers." "Take advantage of anything you can make." "Roger's ramp is similar in construction to one that Mark has noticed leaning against a tomb." "It was probably built about the same time as the great pyramid that stands behind it." "They must have been using it for the construction in some way." "And all these books are written about pyramid building, and they say they made mud brick ramps." "Other people say they didn't use any ramps." "They say there are no ancient ramps." "We're standing on a ramp that's probably from the time of the building of this mastaba, whether they used it for debris or for these stones, and it's about 5,000 years old." "Well, you can see the debris down here where ... it's very similar to the way that we're laying our ... our stone and tufla in." "And this isn't the only ramp that still exists out here at Giza." "I mean, there are others for hauling stones from the quarries up to the cemeteries." "There are construction embankments." "This has got to be how they ... constructed the pyramid ramps." "It has to be this material." "With the ramp appearing to resolve the question of how to raise blocks, the other major challenge facing the ancient builders was controlling the shape of the pyramid." "That's the next problem facing Roger and Mark." "A pyramid is essentially a square ... and a center point." "The trick in constructing ... a pyramid accurately is to raise that center point above the square without developing twist in the four faces." "In order to do this, you essentially have to achieve a series of squares, one above the other, as the pyramid is rising." "Each new square has to be properly lined up with the one below in order to form a true pyramid." "If the squares are not correctly aligned, the resulting pyramid will be less than perfect." "So, to avoid twist in his pyramid," "Roger built a series of squares in the form of steps, called a step pyramid." "In addition to keeping the pyramid square, the inner step pyramid may also help control the slope of the outer face of the pyramid." "What's important was the relationships of parts." "The relationship of parts..." "Mark and Nick Fairplay believe that there is a close relationship between the step pyramid and the outer slope, and they assumed that Roger had built the step pyramid with this in mind." "But on later investigation, it quickly becomes clear that Roger's step pyramid has not been built to Mark's specifications, and so does not have the necessary dimensions to control the slope of the outer pyramid." "91 out here." "91.5." "So, if this is 91.5, this measurement out was fifty something, and that's 50.5 centimeters, what's the relationship of these steps to this slope?" "Other than just keeping it square." "Well, I'm only using it to keep it square." "You're only using the step pyramid to keep it square." "Right." "We're not using the step pyramid to actually control the rise and run of the outer casing slope." "No, no, no." "As did the ancient Egyptians, according to some evidence at Meidum, for example, and in the Queens' Pyramids." "You can't prove that for a fact for one minute," "... pal." "And it's like ..." "It's only on record like three pyramids that they used a 51 degree angle, and the rest of them show a 53 degree angle, which shows you a ... a vertical rise that's a 3-4-5 triangle." "Well, this may be actually a really good point." "You don't think there is any one rule by which they controlled the slope of the outer casing." "You think they might have done it one way for ... one or two or three pyramids, (Right.)" "and another way for a different pyramid?" "I think that's a pretty good statement and a good possibility, because ..." "I don't think there was a manual for pyramid building." "No." "You know, all they had to word with, from generation to generation, are just standard masonry practices which are the same today as they were 6,000 years ago." "And in fact, when you look at the pyramids ..." "The mathematics used by the ancient masons was probably very simple." "Through trial and error, the builders of the Great Pyramid learned that the proportions of 11 and 14 would give them about a 52-degree angle, if these were incorporated into every casing stone before being put in place." "By using these proportions, and by periodically sighting at the corners to check if the slope is true," "Roger expects to end up with a perfectly-shaped pyramid, despite his disagreement with Mark." "So, you're using basically common sense, practical experience, and a hands-on approach." "Right." "(Exactly.) You know, Roger," "I'm just beginning to realize ... maybe we should get off your case a little bit." "Yeah." "Get out of my acre!" "... with all this ... with all this theorizing about the ancient stuff." "It'd be nice to get on with just building this pyramid." "Yeah." "With only a week to finish the project," "Roger has extended the ramp so it wraps around the back of the pyramid." "But now we're going to try to pull a sled, and we're going to try to turn a corner with the sled for the first time." "We're starting out with a fairly small block, pulling it up the incline of the ramp, and around the first corner that the ramp makes around the pyramid." "We might need more men to actually make the pull around the corner." "Well, we'll get them..." "We'll add them on as we need them." "Critics of the ramp method question whether a heavily-laden sled can make a ninety degree turn." "But Roger has a plan." "Are you optimistic we're gonna get in 'round the corner?" "We'll get it around the corner, hell or high water." "Watch out for the rope!" "OK." "Hold it, hold it." "OK." "Now we rearrange the ropes." "Hey la houp!" "Here comes the turn." "Hold it!" "We're all set." "Well, it worked like I figured it would." "I mean ..." "I knew I was going to have a little problem on the corner there, but, you know ... if that had been a five-ton block, we could have done it this same way." "This is twice the grade we had before, easily." "And I like the way you distributed the men going back down the ramp, and the pull as well, so that you're using the ramp in both directions." "Well, there's no place else for them to go." "It was a little bit complicated changing the ropes and so on." "This is the first time we did it." "It's the first time you did it." "Roger only had enough time to build the ramp around three sides of his pyramid, but he was confident that he could have continued wrapping it around to the top." "OK." "Hold it!" "The success with the ramp convinced him that a similar ramp was used by the builders of the great pyramid." "Mark and Roger's project has focused on figuring out how to build the main structure of the pyramid." "But the ancient builders had to deal with engineering problems in the complex inner chambers as well." "Deep in the heart of Khufu's Pyramid is his tomb." "It was supposed to protect the pharaoh's mummified body for an eternity." "But all that now remains is his empty granite sarcophagus." "At first glance, this is a deceptively simple room." "It's a box, lined with granite on the floor and the walls, and rooved with great beams of granite." "But in fact, this is the first time that the ancient Egyptians attempted to span a distance this wide in their stone architecture." "And you can see in the cracks in these great granite beams that weight up to 50 to 70 tons, that they developed problems." "There were too many stresses on the ceiling beams." "And had these broken and fallen down into the chamber, the engineers and stone masons would have been in deep, deep trouble." "In an effort to build a tomb that would last forever, the pharaoh's builders reinforced the defective beams by adding four more granite ceilings, topped off by a pitched roof of limestone to relieve further stress on the chambers below." "In the uppermost chamber, workers' graffiti include the name Khufu, the pharaoh whose mummified body required such elaborate protection." "When the burial rights of the king were finished and the priests had left, the workmen whose job it was to seal off the pyramid, presumably for eternity, first had to slide great granite portcullis slabs like these," "down these notches to seal off the actual entrance into the King's Chamber." "The next line of defense against robbers was to plug the Ascending Passage with a row of granite blocks that were slid in place from the Grand Gallery." "The only problem with this is once the Ascending Passage was plugged tightly, what were the workmen left with as an escape route?" "Right here, at the bottom of the Grand Gallery, there's a crude tunnel forced through the already-laid masonry of the pyramid all the way down to the Descending Passage, from whence they could go back up," "out the original entrance." "Despite the complex anti-theft devices, neither Khufu's Pyramid nor the hundred or so others that were built could resist the tomb robbers." "The mummified pharaohs would not be left in peace." "All the pyramids were broken into, and the bodies violated." "Roger has his own problems." "His assignment was to build just two sides of an 18-foot pyramid in 21 days." "But with only 3 days to go, it looks unlikely that he'll achieve this goal." "Rather than build the ramp any higher," "Roger reluctantly tries to lever the last blocks into place." "The attempt ultimately succeeds, but barely." "OK." "Ay, we've got to get this sucker back up on ..." "I told you to use the little   rollers!" "You know, I've been trying to emphasize that these fulcrums have got to be ... just at the right height, and they've got to be steady and everything else." "Well, this levering operation started out very methodically and worked very well, and you know," "Roger organized it extremely well." "And in spite of that, the closer he gets to the top, the more problems he's having." "Running out of room for levers, running out of room for men to pull on ropes, and ... running out of room for the tall fulcrums that are necessary." "And this bears out what everybody really had imagined, that the closer you get to the apex of the pyramid, the more problems there are in engineering the stones." "By now, everyone was an expert on moving blocks, and there was much debate on the best method for putting the final pyramid stone in place." "Once Ahmed's men got the block in motion, it quickly became clear that there could be no turning back." "Hey!" "How about a little quiet!" "Let's get some rope on that so they can pull it." "Maher's going to get crushed!" "It was kind of terrifying, I've got to admit." "It was ... you know ... if I don't think if we had ... enough able-bodied people there, we probably could have lost it very easily." "But ..." "I think ... that final "hey-la-houp" pulled us through." "I had no doubts that we would get it up there." "I just ... prayed that no one got hurt." "With fewer than 200 blocks, compared to Khufu's more than two million," "Roger's pyramid would have no difficulty sitting on the missing top of the Great Pyramid." "And although the Great Pyramid is 27 times taller, the achievement of Roger and his crew has strengthened Mark's understanding of the ancient techniques that permitted Khufu's builders to raise his great monument in less than 30 years." "But that does not mean that all the mysteries have been solved." "Well, I don't think there are any huge mysteries about the nuts and bolts of how they made a pyramid." "I think more the mystery is the motivation behind the people." "What caused them to do this all of a sudden?" "For the first time in history, they gathered, not hundreds or even thousands, but probably tens of thousands of people in one place at one time to do this project." "What motivated them to do that?" "That's the real mystery." "I've learned a ... a lot of respect for the ancient Egyptians." "(Yeah.)" "I think they were ... they were pioneering in a ... an area which no one else had been in, and I've got to give them a lot of credit for the ... what they've done." "Do you think they could build the real thing in 20 years?" "I think they could have, you know?" "They just ..." "What I've seen here is just absolutely amazing." "I found that my ... masons, my quarry men, and my stone setters were all fairly accomplished, very good craftsmen." "Shouldn't have come as a surprise, they had such a long history of thousands of years doing this." "When I look at the Great Pyramid, the marvel there for me is not ... the stonework as much as the level of organization that these ancient Egyptians had, getting their society to pull together in such a way" "that they not only had blocks of stone, but bread on the table." "Well, the real gigantic pyramids were built within the space of about three, maybe four generations." "This was a unique moment in Egyptian history, and these pharaohs were seizing that moment to create pyramids that would stand forever." "Time-honored monuments." "Wonders of the ancient world." "These giant structures reveal the beliefs, the lifestyle, the spirit of cultures long past." "What they don't reveal is the mystery of how they came to be." "Now, NOVA and a cast of hundreds use brute strength and sheer determination to rediscover the technical know-how of the ancient builders." "You got that obelisk where you want it, Roger?" "Yeah." "An Egyptian obelisk." "England's Stonehenge." "Inca masonry in Peru." "A roof for Rome's Colosseum." "NOVA embarks on a 4-part building spree to unlock the secrets of lost empires." "Next time, on NOVA." "Converted into subtitles by m06166" "Secrets Of Lost Empire - 1x06" "Knights in shining armor charging each other in great pitched battles - that is the popular view of warfare in the Middle Ages." "In reality, most medieval conflicts involved the attacking of castles, and mounted knights were not much use against stone walls." "A siege against a castle could take weeks, even months - the attacking army pitted against a well-defended garrison within." "By the end of the 13th century, the science of defensive architecture had reached a peak." "Stone walls were built thicker and taller than ever before." "And archers could easily pick off advancing attackers." "To further frustrate attempts at breaching the walls, castles were situated on rocky crags, or surrounded by water." "But every advance in castle defense drove attackers to devise better siege weapons." "During the Middle Ages castles kept improving." "They kept improving as weapons of attack got better." "And tactics was this eternal balance between attack and defense." "200 years before cannon appeared in Europe, chroniclers make reference to what appears to be the ultimate 13th century siege weapon " "an ingenious new form of heavy artillery that flung huge stone balls with such destructive power that castle walls were reduced to rubble." "But no ancient weapon of this type has survived." "Were such claims gross exaggerations, or did such a weapon really exist?" "To answer these questions," "NOVA brings together a team of experts in medieval warfare who believe they know the secret." "It's chaos." "It's Wednesday, I think." "I don't have a clue whether or not we'll finish." "Their task - to build siege machines capable of destroying a castle wall at a range of about 200 yards." "I think that the thing'll smash it up nicely, yes." "With just two weeks to meet the challenge, a siege mentality quickly sets in." "No modern builders have ever managed to do this before." "And the whole thing could twist and kick quite alarmingly." "This interplay between defenders and siegers, it's still up in the air." "We could still take it, then again, we could fail." "It's sort of in the lap of the gods." "Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television. helping you choose the right technology product." "This program is funded in part by Northwestern Mutual Life, which has been protecting families and businesses for generations." "Have you heard from the quiet company?" "Northwestern Mutual Life." "Additional funding for this program is also provided by the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation." "And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you." "Thank you." "In the year 1304," "Edward Longshanks, more formally known as King Edward I of England, mounted the greatest siege of his reign against the Scots and their castle at Stirling." "The attack dragged on." "Impatient for victory," "Edward ordered 50 carpenters to immediately begin building a monstrous new weapon - so powerful it would breach the strong walls of Stirling Castle." "Details about the weapon design are tantalizingly vague, except that it was nicknamed Warwolf, and its appearance outside the walls terrified the garrison." "Was it the atomic bomb of the Middle Ages?" "With one blow," "Warwolf leveled a section of wall, successfully concluding the siege of Stirling Castle." "What kind of a weapon was Warwolf?" "What are we doing?" "Are you ..." "Do you want to go up there now?" "Do you think you'd better take a pair plyers up in case that ..." "Hew Kennedy is a Shropshire landowner and medieval armor expert." "10 years ago, he became intrigued by a picture of a machine drawn by Leonardo da Vinci." "It appeared to be a device for throwing dead horses, called a trebuchet." "Inspired by the power of a machine that could hurl such heavy missiles," "Hew decided to try building one himself - a quest which eventually led to this piano-flinging contraption, a mechanized catapult made from a laminated beam, scrap metal, telephone poles and steel cable." "In essence, a trebuchet is a giant seesaw with a very heavy weight at one end" "and a much lighter missile attached to the other." "As the heavier weight drops, the lighter projectile is whipped by its sling towards the enemy." "Hew is convinced that Warwolf, Edward's great wall busting siege engine, must have been a trebuchet." "If you chuck a thing that heavy at a stone wall it'll shatter it." "Stone missiles are a lot more effective than grand pianos." "To test out Hew's confidence in the destructive capability of a medieval trebuchet," "NOVA is preparing some hard sandstone balls weighing 250 pounds - and a wall." "It's made of sandstone and lime mortar." "In construction and design, it is based on the upper section of a typical castle wall of the 13th century." "Hew wants to build a trebuchet capable of knocking it down, but at a range of 200 yards, it will require precision as well as brute force." "... from this point of view, it's much more ..." "Michael Prestwich, a medieval historian, will ensure that Hew's next trebuchet will be based on an authentic 13th century design." "And I suppose when its got to the top of its trajectory, it starts coming down again." "(Yeah.)" "It really looks quite frightening." "Yeah." "But I'm glad I wasn't standing underneath it." "It would bust up a building all right, wouldn't it?" "It's the first time I've seen a full-scale trebuchet in operation." "To see the high trajectory of it and the way the missile and the sheer speed with which it falls, it is a fantastic sight." "Trebuchets began in the Far East, in China." "But what they were there were hand-pulled machines worked by quite large teams of men." "Prepare to loose, loose." "In many ways, quite limited in what they could do." "The big advance came when Arab engineers got hold of these devices and put a big counterweight on so that instead of teams of men pulling it, the beam was pulled down by a great counterweight." "They were far more potent and far more effective." "These machines were ... picked up by western engineers, and by the middle of the 13th century, it's very clear that" "French, English engineers were capable of building really quite large machines." "Some of the best military engineers were employed by Edward I - a master of military tactics." "He was one of the most vicious and single-minded rulers of his time." "Soon after ascending the throne in 1274," "Edward decided to squash Welsh independence and bring Wales under his personal rule." "He was a bully, frankly, and I think many people would think of him as a really nasty piece of work." "He was utterly determined." "Nothing was going to get in his way." "Edward's strategy was to ring the mountain stronghold of the Welsh prince with a chain of powerful castles." "Richard Holmes is an historian of military tactics." "He built eight new big castles, which were really state of the art." "They were immensely strong, well thought out." "And most of them could be supplied by water so they were very difficult for the Welsh to besiege." "And Edward believed that you controlled the countryside by castles like this." "They're like nails holding the landscape down." "And their garrisons could issue out, attack enemies in the area." "And until the castle was taken, nobody could really dominate that landscape." "They were extraordinarily expensive to build, and were a very severe drain on the royal exchequer." "In the short term, though, they worked." "Edward and other English lords designed their Welsh strongholds with the trebuchet in mind." "For example," "Caerphilly Castle was surrounded by manmade lakes which kept a besieging army and their siege weapons at a distance." "Castles were what modern tactitioners would call force multipliers." "They enabled a relatively small garrison to operate at the absolute maximum of effectiveness." "And a castle like this is carefully organized to maximize defensive firepower." "There are loopholes in the walls and the towers for archers to shoot through." "And here the walls are cunningly organized so that the second set of walls is higher than the first." "And therefore an attacker facing this face of the castle not only gets the defensive fire of the first wall, but he's got archers shooting at him from the higher walls behind it." "It's a real nightmare." "At the end of the 13th century, what was the effective range of an archer?" "And what was the effective range of a trebuchet?" "The historical reports differ." "Hew, how close are you going to have to bring your trebuchet to the walls to do serious damage, do you think?" "Probably 200 yards, we will need to be within that to smash it up." "At 200 yards, is Hew's trebuchet out of range of archers defending the castle?" "To find out, a dummy representing the trebuchet's chief operator is placed at that distance." "I'm sure an arrow would land amongst us if we're at that range." "You could easily shoot 200 yards with that massive bow of yours, couldn't you?" "Yeah, 300 yards." "Yes." "Well at 200 yards," "I think it would be ... putting you a bit worried, wouldn't it?" "Yes, it would." "I'm the first to accept that from this sort of range the trebuchet would be doing serious damage to the castle walls." "But I think this does suggest that ... it's no easy business." "And the garrison that knows its business can probably keep a trebuchet at the very limit of its range." "And the fact that we had some going over the top" "I think is mighty hopeful from the archer's point of view." "I wonder what happens if you ... slap one into him from here?" "Could I..." "Come on then." "It's all right, he's swallowed it, hasn't he?" "Gone ... gone right through ... right through the dummy, kept only in by the fletchings." "Bit of a bellyacher I reckon, yeah." "Edward's castle-building campaign in Wales had taught him how to design well defended fortresses." "Turning his attention to conquering Scotland, did Edward also have the ability to successfully attack them?" "As the king marched northwards to take the castles that guarded Scotland, he brought with him some of the biggest siege engines, or trebuchets, ever built." "The siege of Caerlaverock, conducted by Edward I in 1300, we've got remarkably a really good account of this in a contemporary poem." "It describes the way in which the knights rode up to the castle all in their great armor, trying to perform great deeds of valor." "In fact, they were driven back by the garrison, hurling stones and such at them." "And it wasn't the knights, it wasn't these people with the great acts of bravery." "It was the engineers, men of really quite low social status in comparison, with the great siege engines." "It was they who compelled the garrisons to surrender." "And the poem describes the way in which the great boulders came down from the sky, into the courtyard, crashing down, causing all sorts of damage and mayhem inside." "The minute the casualties started, the garrison simply surrendered." "So it wasn't the knights, it wasn't a great act of chivalry to capture this castle." "It was the work of the experts, the engineers." "It's difficult to tell, I mean ... that one's obviously got a ..." "Joining Hew Kennedy in his quest to build a trebuchet is mechanical engineer Wayne Neel, a professor from Virginia Military Institute." "... is the golden section." "This one actually is one to two, and this is one to three." "Wayne will design the trebuchet." "He is basing it on a picture he found in a 13th century Spanish manuscript." "The illustration gives no idea of the true scale of the trebuchet because the artist has made the machine smaller than the soldiers standing next to it." "If the drawing isn't practical from all points of view, you begin to wonder about all the other points of view." "It may be that the things they have got in the right proportion they did by accident." "Even an artist like Leonardo will draw a plan for something that is totally impractical, but it indicates how it could be made." "That's all." "It indicates how it could be made." "With the manuscript as a starting point," "Wayne uses a combination of engineering theory and trial and error to come up with a working model." "The prototype looks promising to Marcus Brandt, a carpenter who will help Wayne build the trebuchet." "But there's a problem." "The model rocks dangerously." "This would be a serious flaw in a full-size trebuchet with several tons in motion." "The machine basically tends to wanna ... tip forward as that weight comes down." "It wants to drop straight down, so it tends to pull the machine forward making it in this case tip." "To resolve the problem," "Wayne re-examines the medieval illustrations of this type of trebuchet." "He's struck by the fact that many have wheels, so he decides to build a new model." "Not only do wheels eliminate the tendency for it to tip over, the movement also boosts the trebuchet's performance." "Shoot away, come on." "Hew doubts that wheels will make a trebuchet throw farther, so he insists on a demonstration." "For the first throw," "Hew holds down the model." "The projectile travels 20 feet." "Now let's try it with - letting it loose." "Yeah." "Well, it's certainly better, isn't it?" "Yes." "I didn't ..." "When the trebuchet is allowed to roll, the missile goes an extra 10 feet." "Why?" "The falling counterweight drives the trebuchet forward." "Like a pitcher stepping forward, this adds momentum to the throw." "The forward motion also permits the counterweight to drop further in a straighter line." "The closer the counterweight follows this optimal path, the more energy it captures for throwing." "What I find odd is the idea about it moving and having to move in order to give more energy to the missile." "I would have thought this was - on the face of it, nonsense." "But obviously if Wayne's tried it, and it goes further, then it can't be argued with." "Now that Wayne has confidence in his model, the project moves to Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands for a full-scale test." "The trials will take place in the shadow of Castle Urquhart, which may have been besieged with similar weapons during Edward I's Scottish campaigns 700 years ago." "Wayne and Hew arrive at Castle Urquhart to inspect the timber that is delivered by barge." "As in the Middle Ages, heavy duty English oak is the choice for building the carriage and trestles." "But the throwing arm will be made from a more lightweight wood," "Douglas fir." "Wayne calculates that a tree trunk of at least two feet in diameter is needed to withstand the stresses of hurling 250 pound balls." "How about this one, Wayne?" "It's the right size." "That would be the right diameter." "Be a shame to cut that down, wouldn't it?" "Yes." "Let's get the chain saw and whack it down." "Would we have a go?" "Get out of it!" "Haul away." "After it is floated across Loch Ness, the log is quickly hauled ashore." "Work immediately begins on hewing it into an eight-sided throwing arm." "The next job is to assemble the base." "40 carpenters, mainly from the United States, but also from Britain and Germany, have volunteered to spend their vacation here." "They're all timber framers who specialize in traditional construction techniques." "Without nails, they connect large pieces of wood using mortise and tenon joints." "Beautiful." "1, 2, 3 ..." "While the timber framers immerse themselves in medieval methods," "Wayne employs the tools of a modern engineer to check and recheck his design." "In particular, he's hoping that the wheels will give him the same boost in performance as they did on the model." "Spin on, spin on." "Up at the target wall, work is almost complete." "The wooden structures on top are called hoardings." "They provided additional protection for defenders during the siege." "Attackers would build similar barriers to protect the trebuchet team from arrow fire." "Well, this is the target wall that we've got for the trebuchets - a modern reproduction of a castle wall." "It's a pretty good reproduction I think, it's got all the details of the crenelations." "And what's important about it is the width." "It's a good five foot thick." "The way that it's formed is that there's an outer skin on either side, and within that a fill of rubble and mortar." "And that provides a very solid core." "This is exactly how they did it in the Middle Ages." "And ..." "I'm very glad that I'm not standing here while the trebuchets are actually shooting." "The target wall is modeled on the outer walls of Harlech and Caerphilly, two of the best defended castles in Wales." "Faced with the daunting task of taking a castle like Caerphilly, what siege tactics would an attacker adopt?" "A castle like Caerphilly, like this one, presented an attacker with a knotty problem because it's got layers of defenses, with sandwiches of water between them." "A bit like the layers of an onion." "So an attacker arriving here would encounter the moat, a water defense, so that he couldn't mine underneath it without his trenches being flooded." "His best bet if he possibly can is to take the place by surprise or by guile." "To trick his way in - to get in before the garrison's ready for him." "If he can't do that, he's then got to mount a formal siege." "And ultimately ... he'll starve it out." "Gates had once been the castle's weakest point." "But by this stage in history, they'd become its strongest." "They're defended by gatehouses, these are very powerful towers with arrow slits in them." "So anyone attacking the gate is subjected to close-range fire." "And there's a portcullis which drops down just behind the attackers, and even if an attacker does manage to take the gatehouse, then he's got another moat, two more gatehouses, and he's got to do the whole rotten business" "all over again." "Meanwhile, rotten weather has besieged Castle Urquhart." "And after a week of daily downpours, the trestles that support the throwing arm are ready to be raised." "Pull." "Pull." "Pull." "At the top of the trestle, the throwing arm rotates on an axle that has to be both strong and exact." "... and counterweights so it has to be fairly precise ..." "Marcus Brandt has taken on the job." "Well, we've got to address the issues of axles." "We've got two sets of axles with this fixed arm, fixed counterweight machine." "We've got the axles down here to carry the wheels, and we've got this more precise axle up here which carries this 8 tons of weight and ... arm." "And it has to be fairly precise." "We've set up a great wheel lathe which is a precursor to modern lathes." "It's just a great big flywheel." "It's powered by muscle and it turns this 10" x 10"" "down to an 8" x 8"." "Marcus restores old buildings in Pennsylvania, and has enthusiastically embraced the idea of using medieval technology." "It's a very medieval feel to the whole project." "We've got all the trades going at once." "We have the stone masons busy, we've got all the carpenters and the axes flying and the chips and the smoke and the mud." "Boy, if ... if it weren't for the jets flying overhead occasionally, you'd think you're in the 12th century." "Villages were often established next to the castle of a nobleman or the king." "English society was very hierarchical, with the king and his nobles at the top, and then the rest of society cascading down from that." "Now the castle wasn't just important militarily, they were an economic power as well." "There were communities built up round the castle to supply it." "And the castle provided protection as well." "At their best these noblemen were protectors, at their worst they were ... often something rather like mafiosi, uhm... leeching off the local countryside." "So living under the shadow of a place like this had advantages, but disadvantages too." "How you doin', Phil?" "Goin' up too much there?" "In order to position the heavy throwing arm, the timberframers place an A-frame above the trestles to support the pulley system - a standard medieval device." "A block and tackle dramatically reduces the number of people required to pull on the ropes." "Now block and tackle is a fairly simple device." "It magnifies your pull." "If I were to lift my own body weight with a single rope," "I would have to pull down 200 pounds to lift my 200 pounds of body weight up." "With this," "I'm hooked up to this double sheath pulley, and I've got four lines which share the load equally, so 200 pounds here is only 50 pounds on each one of these ropes." "So to lift my 200 pounds up," "I only have to pull 50 pounds here." "Now mind you, I have to pull four times as much rope, but it really works." "The next phase of construction is the most dangerous." "Without the help of a modern crane, the timber framers must trust the strength of two slender poles and the rigging of their ropes in order to raise the one ton throwing arm." "One accident, one slip, one failure hidden in the heart of this timber and we're out of business - simple as that." "It's looking real good right now, going right on in there like we planned it seems." "We are in place." "Yeah!" "With the throwing arm in position," "Wayne needs to attach weights that will power the machine." "He chooses lead because he believes lead was used for the counterweight of Warwolf," "the mysterious and terrifying siege engine that clinched the assault on Stirling Castle." "There is good historical evidence for this." "In a letter Edward wrote just before the siege, he demanded that lead be removed from all the churches." "One of the things that they needed for the siege of Stirling was heavy weights for the counterweights on the engines." "And they sent orders out to strip all of the church roofs in the entire surrounding area." "So all of this lead, lead sheets, would have been brought to the siege and then melted down in order to form the counterweights." "Wayne's calculations tell him that in order for his machine to throw a 250 pound ball, he'll need about six and a half tons of lead counterweight." "It takes a week to melt down the scrap and form it into a collar that can be bolted onto the arm." "Wayne's come up with a really neat solution for a lead counterweight made various pieces bolted together." "But it is expensive." "Lead is difficult to get hold of." "It's complex to make this." "There is a much easier solution, which is to use a large box as a counterweight." "Something like this, which you could fill with earth, with stones, with anything you'd got." "Fill it up." "You could put as much or as little in as you wanted, and that would affect the range of the machine." "And you'd simply then have to put this ... box on the machine, swiveling ... roughly like that." "A survey of medieval illustrations suggests that swinging counterweights were the more popular design." "A man who has been working with them longer than anyone else is traditional French carpenter Renaud Beffeyte." "Renaud is convinced that Edward's great siege engine, Warwolf, had a swinging counterweight box." "The simple design of the box makes it not only cheaper, but easier to build than one with a lead counterweight." "Here we got." "And Renaud has found graphic accounts of the destructive power of some really big siege machines." "I found account medieval " "An account," "Yes." "a medieval account." "And they pay 300 bullets in three days, then they shoot 300 bullets on the same place on the same wall." "After three days, the wall was destroyed." "So you think the real purpose of something like this is ... is simply to ... attack a castle from a distance and bring the wall down?" "Yes." "Yeah, yeah." "500 years before Newton's apple, medieval engineers had figured that trebuchets with a swinging counterweight are the most efficient at using the force of gravity." "Like adding wheels to a fixed-counterweight trebuchet, the hinge allows the swinging counterweight to descend further in a straighter line, capturing more energy for the throw." "15 years ago," "Renaud came across the notebook of the 13th century French architect," "Villard de Honnecourt." "In it he found the plan for the base of a trebuchet and a description of the swinging counterweight box." "Unfortunately, the page showing the rest of the trebuchet was missing." "But with his knowledge of medieval carpentry and his experience of building over 30 small trebuchets," "Renaud realized that if the design were ever built, it would be monstrous - the height of a five-story building." "Ever since this discovery," "Renaud has wanted to construct the full-size trebuchet." "Finally, he will get the chance at Castle Urquhart in Scotland." "At the start of a medieval siege, a trebuchet engineer would typically seek out as big a throwing arm as possible." "Renaud inspects a good-sized oak log that he hopes will be suitable." "Using the same geometric principles employed by the medieval engineers who built castles, cathedrals and siege machines," "Renaud starts designing his trebuchet." "The key decision is where on the throwing arm to position the main pivot point, or fulcrum." "Medieval engineers worked this out by observation." "In this largely illiterate society, carpenters used animal figures like these as an aid to remember geometric formulas." "Now that Renaud knows where to put the main axle, he can design the trestle, base and capstans to raise the counterweight box - because they are all sized in proportion to the throwing arm." "But just as he begins building the trebuchet," "Renaud is called back to France." "In his absence, work progresses on the base." "Work also begins on drilling out the main axle hole in the throwing arm." "Unfortunately, there is some confusion about the size of the opening, and a nasty surprise awaits Renaud's return." "Hi." "Good morning." "Hi." "Good morning." "Renaud's been away for a couple of days, and while he was away, we cut the axle hole." "It's quite apparent that a lot of meat has gone from the timber and we're left with quite thin sections on either side." "I think the beam, the throwing arm, can break here, in this part." "Renaud's concern is that we've gone too much to this extreme where we've taken out too much wood of the throwing arm and made the axle too strong, and his concern of course is that on our first throw," "that it's going to do something like that." "Renaud is left with no alternative but to hope that a couple of planks will be strong enough to splint the weakened throwing arm." "Finally, work starts on raising the great trestles." "With each passing day, the situation at Castle Urquhart more and more resembles a siege of old." "With two trebuchets to finish, there is a nagging feeling that Renaud's machine may not get done before the timberframers must return home." "Over at Wayne's trebuchet, work on attaching the lead weights is finally finished." "All that remains is to cock the arm." "Even with the help of pulleys, this requires 40 people." "With a 13,000 pound counterweight, it's a much bigger job than any one imagined." "And it will have to be repeated for each fling." "The trigger mechanism is not strong enough, and buckles alarmingly as it takes the full weight of the throwing arm." "It's bending as we're releasing the arm, and we're wondering whether it can hold the weight right now." "To avoid an accidental firing, they reinforce it with a length of chain." "They've got lots of engineers on this and maybe they've got it right, but I think it's quite difficult to get it right." "It's chaos, the sun is going down," "I don't have a clue whether or not we'll finish even one of these machines on time." "Well, we're under the gun now." "It's kind of touch and go whether we're gonna get this thing put together and actually fling both machines, but if I know this crew, come hell or high water, we're gonna make this thing fling." "There goes your light (laughter)." "The next morning a 250 pound sandstone ball is quickly positioned in the sling for the first throw." "I'd rather have a blow this long..." "It's got about a 50 percent chance of going in the right direction." "It could go in the lake there by mistake ... because these adjustments are ... not well known to us." "You ready?" "This is it." "One, two, three, fire in the hole!" "Even with 12 timber framers pulling, the firing pin won't budge." "It's quite normal that, I mean, triggers are very stiff." "We found that at home." "It takes a lot of effort, which is as well, in some ways." "Despite Hew's predictions that a trebuchet on wheels would shake itself to pieces, the reverse is true." "Wheels dampen the recoil." "Everything appears to be working as Wayne predicted, except the range." "The ball only traveled about 170 yards, falling short of the wall." "What are we ... 30 yards short, and about 5 feet low." "I thought the throw was flat, which means we've got to " "I think shorten the sling so it releases sooner and goes higher, which should get us to the wall." "Just like his medieval counterpart," "Wayne uses a process of trial and error to alter the trebuchet's range by adjusting the length of the sling." "With the first throw, a long sling resulted in a late release and a low trajectory." "By shortening the sling," "Wayne believes the ball will be released earlier, resulting in a higher path." "Wayne's adjustments have the desired effect." "The second throw has perfect range, just missing the target to the right by two feet." "I think we took the King's ear off." "Good job, Wayne!" "So it needs a slight adjustment, and then it would be a direct hit." "Tomorrow is another day." "What will be the last day for Wayne and his team dawns, with the wall still intact, but clearly under threat." "Meanwhile Renaud's trebuchet is still not finished." "This morning they rush to complete the counterweight box that is hinged to the throwing arm." "We've got the one treb built;" "the other one is about 99% of the way there." "We flung two stones last night with Wayne's treb, but we really don't want to let Renaud down, and we don't want to let ourselves down." "We really want to see this thing fly before we go." "Still, with time so short, it's unclear that Renaud will get a chance to fire his trebuchet at all." "After last night's narrow miss," "Wayne's trebuchet is repositioned to be more in line with the target." "All we're doing is shifting it slightly to the left." "We were throwing to the right a little far." "So we've shifted it about one inch, so that hopefully we'll be dead on center." "With the same 250 pound ball as yesterday, and the sling at the same length," "Wayne believes he is now dead on to hit the wall with his third attempt." "(... three, two ...) ... one." "Fire in the hole!" "The third shot is identical to the second in distance." "At a range of 200 yards, adjusting the wheels one inch to the left placed the missile bang on top of the hoarding." "We've gotten wood," "I don't know if we've contacted any stone yet." "But we've knocked the hoarding pretty well." "It was maybe a little high, and we've come down a little bit." "That must be the old hole there, mustn't it?" "That's the hole." "It's still a bit on this side, isn't it?" "If you'd been standing under that hoarding, you'd have had a jolt." "With the trebuchet lined up on the target," "Wayne only has to shorten the range by a hair to hit the stone battlements below." "So this time what we've done is lengthen the sling about six inches, so we're hoping to fire a little bit flatter and get to the top of the hole - the top of the wall." "It's quite difficult," "I think probably, isn't it, on those small adjustments?" "I mean, do you think " "Yes, small adjustments are difficult to do." "We could ... perhaps not get so lucky this time, but it's been very good so far, hasn't it?" "(Well, we'll see.)" "Worried that this may be the last attempt," "Wayne makes a sudden change of plan." "He replaces the 250 pound ball that he's been using with a jumbo 300 pounder." "Wayne figures that the heavier ball, clocked at a speed of 127 miles an hour, should breach the wall." "But he is wrong." "We're going back to the 250 pound ball, instead of the 300 and see if we can get a little bit more height." "They've only got time for one more shot, the American team, and ... they've been very near, but they might miss it again." "And if they don't get it, do you think you can get it with yours?" "Maybe if we are more lucky, then we can destroy this wall." "Yeah." "Well, we'll see." "It's French against Americans." "No, it's - no, no, it's not against." "That's your way." "Putting on their kilts for good luck," "Wayne's team rushes to get in one final shot." "We did it!" "Come and take a look at the rocks over here." "It just pulverized the stone on the inside." "It confirms what we came here to prove, didn't it?" "We - they've had a lovely hit, smack in the middle, and it smashed it." "And it's busted it right through to the back." "So it's quite obvious that if you've got one of these trebuchets and you've got a castle like this, and you've got plenty of time to shoot it, you're going to knock it into a powder." "We can reduce this to rubble." "Intoxicated with success, the timberframers bid adieu to the Highlands." "But the next morning," "Renaud is heartened to find that he's not been completely abandoned." "Ed Levin and a handful of the Americans have decided to stay on in Scotland to help finish the job." "I'm sure it's good enough." "No, it's linking to the second..." "What's happened?" "The biggest concern is whether the throwing arm has been fatally weakened at the point where the main axle passes through it." "To avoid stressing the arm," "Renaud decides to only partially load his counterweight, using four tons of sand in the 12 ton capacity box." "But there are risks to this approach." "We're all suitably cautious in having the 250 pound sandstone ball end up in the castle wall rather than in the loch, or drop down on the machine, or ... any of the other places it has historically been known to go." "Nobody knows quite what they're doing, so that's what makes it fun." "A moment of birth." "And terror." "Yeah." "Well, birth is usually accompanied by terror." "Now we are ready for shoot." "It's ... getting me nervous." "... three, two, one, fire in the hole!" "The heavy ball and relatively light counterweight result in the missile landing dangerously close to the trebuchet." "Well yeah, I mean, we knew that there wasn't enough weight in really, didn't we?" "It was just an experiment." "The counterweight is not so heavy." "We must put two bag more." "Two tons." "Of sand." "Yes, of sand, yes." "Two more tons of sand are added." "I don't think there's enough weight for it to go really well yet." "This machine wants a lot of weight." "10, 12 tons probably, to make it go properly." "Renaud thinks if we keep putting little bits in, he might just get there without busting the axle, which is natural, of course, because it's his machine." "Fair enough." "Five!" "We are going to get a good shot." "(Four!" ")" "I'm sure, sure, sure." "(Three, two ...) ... one, fire in the hole!" "Renaud's optimism is justified." "The missile falls just a few yards short of the wall and a bit to the right." "The team decides to give it one more day." "But the next morning starts with snow, followed by a heavy downpour." "Well, basically we're at the last day, we've got - between the rain and the mud, we've got a rigger's nightmare." "It's really taken its toll on the ropes, the mud grinds in and it starts tearing up the fibers." "The water helps make the rope stretch, and if you look around the place, there's ropes in the mud and no rigger likes seeing that." "So we're doing the best we can to keep our ropes clean, but it's an uphill battle." "Last night's final shot was short of the wall because it was thrown too high." "Renaud believes the sling is slipping off its prong too soon." "So to delay release and lower the trajectory, the prong is bent forward." "We've got the right amount of loft, we've got the right amount of range, we're just ... missing the target off to the side." "For days, Renaud has suspected that his trebuchet is pointing just to the right of the wall." "But the loaded machine is too heavy to shift, and he faces the possibility that he may have to go home having achieved only a near miss." "At the last minute," "Marcus offers a solution." "If we had our preferences, we'd be able to move the machine over a little bit, but we're afraid of shattering the machine, particularly with all the weight in the basket." "So we're gonna move the channel of the ball a little bit to the side so we can change our angle of attack." "The range is good, but we just want shift it over to the left a bit." "By shifting the channel that holds the ball slightly to the left, they hope to redirect the missile." "It works " "almost." "Another three feet and Renaud would've had a direct hit." "Unless shifting the channel was just a fluke, one more nudge to the left should bring the trebuchet right on target." "Go, baby!" "Come on!" "Oh, that looks good!" "Perfect, yes." "At right." "Yeah!" "After two throws which are slightly high of the wall itself," "Renaud orders a minute adjustment of the prong in order to lower the trajectory." "With frayed ropes and a storm threatening to close down the siege, everything now hangs on Renaud's ability to quickly get on target " "and he does." "A bull's eye on the battlements." "Well done!" "This whole wall, if you run your eye down here, it's bellied out, there's cracks all through it." "Anybody standing back here would've been mincemeat." "In a real siege it would only be a matter of time before the wall is reduced to smithereens." "In terms of the kind of dialogue that existed between attack and defense, it is very clear now to me that the ... appearance of the trebuchet on the scene shifted that balance radically in favor of attack." "I've gained tremendous respect for the medieval engineers." "They were able to build a ... frightfully powerful and highly accurate and easily adjustable machine." "If you're under siege, you've got to try to knock these things out before they're actually built, cause once they're built, you're sunk." "The trebuchet is ... this big machine who can broke the wall and also ... a trebuchet must be the ..." "Wolfwar." "Warwolf." "Wolfwar?" "Warwolf." "Warwolf." "It's so difficult, we must change this name." "Warwolf." "It is clear from the experiment that both types of trebuchets work." "Because it could so easily be increased in weight, the swinging box design was the improvement that tipped the balance in favor of attack." "So the great wall-busting siege engine Edward employed at Stirling Castle was almost certainly a trebuchet with a giant swinging counterweight." "The weapon that dominated siege warfare for 200 years." "It was not until the late 15th century, the end of the Middle Ages, that the superiority of cannon clearly emerged, and the trebuchet ... vanished into the mists of time." "Become a medieval engineer." "On NOVA's Website, build your own trebuchet and knock down the castle walls." "Converted into subtitles by m06166"