Indonesia "Pyramid" built by 2,000 people

Mount Padang, the largest Megalithic site in Southeast Asia, has been renowned since the 16th century. It has even been mapped out by the National Archeological Research Center.  

The Gunung Padang Megalithic site [Credit: Wikipedia]

It faded away for awhile due to lack of attention. Only recently, Indonesia was surprised upon the findings of the Archeological Catastrophic Team that the site buried a 4,700 BC high-tech, man-made structure.  

Dr Didit Oentowirjo, one of the members of Archeological Catastrophic Team, has also tried to calculate the amount of stones and people needed to construct the structure. His assumption was based on the geoelectric and georadar data.  Didit also estimated the time it took to build the pyramid.  

Here’s his calculation.  Didit assumed that the staged structure holds 5 levels with the dimension of 50 m (length) x 100 m (width) x 10 m (height). If each dakon stone (similarly pitmarked stones from the bronze-iron age period of Indonesia) has the dimension of 0.3 x 0.3 x 1.5 m, then “it would need 3,703,703 dakon stones,” the Team told VIVAnews, today, Feb 21.  

Sketch of Mount Padang [Credit: Tim Katastropik Purba]

Roughly 2,000 people were participated in the construction. “Every 2 persons would transport one dakon stone from the stone masons to the peak. It would take 4 hours for the efforts, with the assumption that they worked for 8 hours a day. “Each day there would be 2,000 stones transported.” 

The weight of one stone would be around 300 kg.  It is estimated that during that period, the “pyramid” builders would have already used the pulley technology to reduce the weight of stone for each person from 150 kg to 75 kg.  

Then, in relation with the the construction period, Didit divided the total amount of dakon stones with the total amount of the transported stones in a day.  “So, it would only take 1,851 days or 5 years,” explained the Team.  

In conclusion, the pyramidal structure was not unreasonable at that time. “The grand 5-level structure in Mount Padang could just be built by 2,000 people from 2 villages within 5 years.”  

Source: Viva News [February 21, 2012]