In many sites in the World mankind has excavated caves, temples and houuses in the mountains and hills. One of the most spectacular examples are the temples of Ellora not far from Aurangabad in the region Maharashtra in India. Tens of temples have been carved in the wall of the 2 kilometres long basalt cliff. The amount of rock which has been removed in course of time is gigantic. But it took many centuries to realize this magnificent work. The first temples were built in the 7^th century, the last one in the 10^th century.

The geological structure of the cliff is very well suited for the construction of huge buildings since as result of geological processes millions of years ago layers of different materials have been created one on top of the other. The temples are created in the basalt layer.

Three different religions built these temples. The oldest group are the Buddhist temples and the most recent ones are devoted to Jainism. The others are the Brahmin temples. The temples of different religions so near to each other express the tolerance of the religions to each other since the older buildings were never violated by the newer religions. Or could it be that the buildings were created by som sort of  - for us unknown – central authority? An authority that also had access to technology to remove such huge amounts of hard basalt, and to create the most sophisticated shapes in extremely hard rock?