Physical Limits of Pre-Industrial Megalith Transport Revealed by Probabilistic Regime-Aware Modelling

This work presents a unified probabilistic framework for evaluating the physical feasibility of pre-industrial megalith transport across multiple mass regimes. The study integrates deterministic mechanics, Monte Carlo uncertainty modelling, regime-aware classification, and hybrid transport simulations combining rolling, sliding, slope assistance, and mechanical advantage systems. The framework evaluates archaeological benchmark cases including Giza (~2.5 t), Baalbek (~800 t), and the Yangshan stele (~16,000 t), demonstrating that feasibility emerges from collective engineering architectures rather than single transport mechanisms. The study introduces the Technology Margin Index (TMI) as a quantitative measure of engineering flexibility under varying transport conditions. Simulations include extensive sensitivity analysis, probabilistic failure attribution, and stress-testing protocols designed to distinguish robust transport regimes from physically unstable scenarios. Results suggest that many large-scale ancient transport operations were physically achievable within known pre-industrial engineering constraints, while also identifying upper mass domains where collapse becomes unavoidable. This repository preserves the manuscript version submitted for academic evaluation and serves as an open-access research archive for reproducibility, citation, and future interdisciplinary discussion. Keywords: megalith transport; probabilistic modelling; Monte Carlo simulation; ancient engineering; archaeology; rope mechanics; rolling transport; Baalbek; Yangshan; engineering limits; pre-industrial logistics; physical archaeology.