Getting Stoned

No!  Nothing To Do With Those Musical Zombies -
Nor is it to do with ingesting anything illegal, because that would be bad, and we here at BOOJUM! strive hard to maintain our SFW status.
     Here an aside.  To make some sense of what follows, you need to be aware of a strange subculture dubbed "Ancient Astronauts", which consists of people whose worldview is "I don't understand therefore aliens did it", where those aliens are astronauts who visited Planet Earth waaaaay back in Biblical times.  They spent their time sight-seeing, doing a little shopping, and building Stonehenge/the pyramids/the Easter Island heads in their spare time.  Art?

 - and sometimes when they were drunk

     Which brings us - if you're not interested in archaeology, classical history or cold hard logic, you might want to skip all this - to the Baalbek Trilithons.  I know this sounds like Battle of the Star Trek Aliens, so I'd better detail further.

A Baalbek attacks!
(No jokes about horns, please - remember, SFW)

     Baalbek is a location in Lebanon, where an ancient temple to the god Baal had been erected.  A "Trilithon" comes from the Greek for "Three" (Tri) and "Stone" (Lith), and typically refers to two upright pillars supporting a horizontal one.  Art?

Immobile Stones

     In Baalbek, the trilithons are actually all laid horizontally at the Temple of Jupiter, resting on a foundation of lower stones, all of which are whacking great bits of stone.  Art?

With puny humans for scale

     Each block masses in at about 800 tons, which is pretty hefty, and here the AA proponents pop up and gurgle in astonishment, before saying "I don't know how it was done, therefore ALIENS!" and then they high-five each other and go off to drink beer made from wheat found in crop circles.*
     Well, unfortunately for these bampots (a technical description), a compelling solution was found way back in 1977 by a French chap, Jean-Pierre Adam.  He used descriptions of similar means of movement from other classical texts, and a lot of maths and physics, and came up with - winches.  Art?

     He worked out that it needed no more than 144 workers turning capstans to be able to move each stone on rollers - with a lot of calculations behind that theory.  The quarry was, after all, less than a mile from the temple site.  The Romans, who built the Temple of Jupiter, were after all extremely accomplished builders, masons and architects, who had centuries of experience in moving big bits of granite.
     Okay!  Time to strap the motley into the traces of a dog-cart and see how fast we can whip it along!

A Dog-cart
(CAUTION!  Will not work with a Border Terrier)

     
Getting Started
I have started - that title gives it away, eh? - on my book of Codewords, and note that the first few at least give you 3 letters to begin with, leaving only 23 more to find.  This may sound like a small difference, but having that extra letter makes the solution considerably easier to find.  Art?

Helpful cat is - well, pretty useless at word quizzes, as a matter of fact

      I am also pleased to say that I've found the competition, since otherwise a stern letter to the editor was in order.  Art?

     My guess is that the four-letter answer is "SWIM", and since this is only the third quiz in the book, we shall soon find out.**

Finally -
Looking for an image that would accompany a short article to help reach word count and round this post-meridian post off, I came across the following.  Art?

Not what you think -

     I did, initially, believe this to be a variant on the Van Oord vessel, which has similar superstructures, used to position itself on the seabed.  Art?


     There is a certain similarity in design, you'll admit.
     However, the ship at top is not designed to raise itself clear of the water.  Those cylinders are Flettner rotors, which use the energy of wind passing over them to generate forward thrust, and achieve a saving in power consumption of about 30%.  They are, in effect, sails, although without all the complicated rigging needed for acres of canvas.



*  This is a real thing.  Sometimes I worry about humans.
**  I know, I know, it's hardly a rock 'n' roll lifestyle, but I am 137.