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Stonehenge and its Environs
Re: The bluestone debate
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GordonP wrote:
Until they became tired, perhaps 30 minutes at most.

And were did these 640 men (and there women and children live) and who supported them for at least 20 years?

Why would intelligent Homo sapian sapiens (modern man) use 640 men to do a job that could have been done by just 60?



Exactly because it was the most intelligent thing to do since 60 men could NOT do it in the same timescale.

True, they would need to take rests. But even 10 minutes on, 20 minutes off would still produce vastly better progress than stone-rowing.

And where did this 20 year figure come from? Maybe that's the time it would take to do it by stone-rowing, but dragging is much faster.

Simon got hurt because the stone was going faster than he could safely feed in new rollers. I reckon it was doing about 4 miles an hour uphill when the accident happened. Even if they could ONLY last half as long as you suggest they'd still have covered a mile.

Neglecting obstacles and only counting 3 hours of actual motion per day, they'd still cover the distance from the Marlborough Downs to Stonehenge in a small number of days. Taking a large contingency figure for the difficulties of the terrain into account and they might have achieved about two stones per month.

I can't remember the exact distance, but stone-rowing only got us a few tens of yards after around half an hour's effort and the stone was veering off-course because of the slope.

I'd say "no contest". Dragging wins hands down.


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Steve Gray
Posted by Steve Gray
18th November 2008ce
20:57

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Re: The bluestone debate (GordonP)

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Re: The bluestone debate (GordonP)

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