Anyone who has ever stood in front of a Roman monument knows how enormous the stones used are. Of course, there is no comparison to the stones used in pyramid construction, but they are still so heavy that min could not simply lift them alone or in a small group of construction workers:
Huge stones at the Roman aqueduct – Pont Du Gare in the South of France
As far as I know, not a single crane has survived the almost 2000 years, so that today we know how it worked, mainly from Vitruvius’ descriptions. In addition, thanks to the Haterii family of builders, who were very active in Rome around 200 AD, we know how the cranes worked. Chr, we know what such a crane might have looked like. On one of their tomb reliefs you can see a crane with a treadwheel. Unfortunately, I have not found a photo on the internet where the licence rights allow me to show the photo here. Therefore, here is the Google Image Search link with the corresponding search term [Google Image Search].
As you know, I am not a historian or archaeologist etc.. Therefore, I cannot provide detailed expert knowledge here. However, I was interested in how such barges could be turned. During my research in relevant forums I found out that this is not known. Supposedly, nothing has turned up so far that would indicate a turning movement. There is still a lot of exciting research to be done!
