Builders of the Roman colony at Heliopolis, now Baalbek in Lebanon, begin a vast temple whose podium holds three limestone blocks of about 800 tonnes each, among the largest stones ever moved.
Contested history
Consensus: Roman builders raised the temple platform and its giant trilithon blocks from the late first century BCE into the first century CE, on a site settled since the Bronze Age.
Roman constructionEstablished
German and Lebanese excavations date the platform, and unfinished blocks of the same kind still lie in the nearby quarry.
A pre-Roman lost civilization laid the megalithsUnsupported
No dating evidence places the giant courses before the Roman period.
Giants or aliens moved the stonesDebunked
The quarry preserves tool marks and abandoned blocks from ordinary Roman stoneworking.