• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Sigiriya: Impressive Ancient Technology

Could the bricks have been made at ground level and then hauled up to the top on a sort of pallet?
The grooves in the rock could possibly be some sort of locking mechanism, whereby a worker, riding on the pallet with each load of bricks, could slide a plank into the groove thereby giving the guys hauling the ropes a breather and stopping the pallet from slipping back down.
 
Just watched a documentary about the place.
A shame that only the front paws remain of the colossal lion statue.
When the head and body were intact, it may have rivalled the Sphinx in sheer awesomeness.

Below are the paws as they look today and a couple of artist's impressions of how the whole edifice may have looked 1,500 years ago.

lion1.JPG


lion2.JPG

lion3.JPG
 
Last edited:
The rock looks like it's been moulded.

By aliens!

Fantastic find Mytho, I had assumed that I knew of all the more spectacular potentially Fortean ancient sites Worldwide, clearly not.

The guy is clearly playing up/overplaying the "we don't know how they did this/it is advanced technology/ancient alien" angle which clearly the site does no need, it is remarkable in and off, itself. Some of those grooves look like they are to assist climbing and the bigger holes look like they are there for scaffolding or something similar.
 
By aliens!

Fantastic find Mytho, I had assumed that I knew of all the more spectacular potentially Fortean ancient sites Worldwide, clearly not.

The guy is clearly playing up/overplaying the "we don't know how they did this/it is advanced technology/ancient alien" angle which clearly the site does no need, it is remarkable in and off, itself. Some of those grooves look like they are to assist climbing and the bigger holes look like they are there for scaffolding or something similar.
Yes, I'm thinking that there were wooden structures and stairs, perhaps an elevator, running up one side of the rock. Gone now after all this time.
As for the rock cutting, they must have had some method of removing large areas of rock at a time. I wonder if they just broke away chunks with expanding wedges and a heat-chill process that shattered the rock (light a fire then douse it). It looks like the underlying base rock is red sandstone, which isn't that hard to break.
 
Back
Top