Lifting mechanism that predated the crane

[Still Waters]

Fundamentally, the cranes that dot city skylines today aren't hugely different from the ones that the Greeks invented sometime around the late sixth century BCE – a remarkable effort of engineering. But new research argues that the Greeks may have used a clever lifting mechanism more than a century before they even invented cranes.

There's some debate over how the Greeks constructed their huge stone buildings before the crane arrived on the scene, and when lifting mechanisms might have started to overtake the traditional use of ramps to get huge stones in place.

Architectural historian Alessandro Pierattini, from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana has now presented a new analysis of stone from the earliest Greek temples. He claims that blocks were being lifted and dropped into position around 150 years before the crane.

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-ancient-greek-lifting-technique-inspired-the-modern-day-crane