This is an updated version of a story first published on Dec. The original video can be viewed here. If faith is a mystery, there are few places in the Christian world where the mystery is deeper than in Lalibela. Eight hundred years ago, an Ethiopian king ordered a new capital for Christians. At 8, feet, on the central plateau of Ethiopia, stand 11 churches, each carved from a single, gigantic, block of stone. No bricks, no mortar, no concrete, no lumber, just rock sculpted into architecture.
As Scott Pelley first reported in , not much is known about who built them, or why. But the faithful of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church say there's no mystery really.
The churches of Lalibela were built by angels. The northern highlands of Ethiopia rose 31 million years ago when fissures in the earth flooded the Horn of Africa with lava a mile deep. On hillsides you can still see columns of lava frozen in time. Iron made the basalt red and, gases trapped inside, made the stone light, as light and pliable as air. Christians laid their mark on Ethiopia before the year They found the ancient stone welcomed the bite of a chisel. The churches were carved around the year by people called the Zagwe.
Their king, Lalibela, is said to have traveled the 1, miles to Jerusalem. Legend has it, when he returned and Jerusalem fell to the Islamic conquest, Lalibela ordered a new home for Christianity. Fasil Giorghis: And he came back with an ambitious idea, a vision of creating an African Jerusalem, a black Jerusalem here in the highlands of Ethiopia. Fasil Giorghis is an Ethiopian architect and historian who walked us through the rock of ages.
Fasil Giorghis: Well, there are three groups of churches, and each group is interconnected within itself. Fasil Giorghis: Well, it was built starting from outside. They formed the shape. And then they start digging or excavating downwards. Scott Pelley: So they dug, essentially, a trench around the whole perimeter which left them with a giant cube of solid rock. Chipping inside, largely in darkness, artists sculpted many rooms with no room for error. Archways, vaults and columns imitate traditional construction even though, in solid rock, there's no need to hold up the ceiling.
