Re: stones and people | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

FourWinds Aug 19, 2003 21:17:29

Replying to nigelswift

The point about the smaller population/effort only possibly applies to the Bronze Age monuments - stone circles, small tombs etc.

It has no effect on the likes of Newgrange which has nearly a quarter of a million tons of cairn rubble. Likewise the big long barrows have a lot of small rocks in them too.

500 tons of it (the quartz and granite facia) came from 100km away :-)

What has to be remembered is that most circles use reletively local stones. The blue stones are an amazing exception.

Nigel's extended raft idea is a good one. If you had two canoes with a raft across them, like a catamoran (sp?) you could easily drag them ashore, jack them up and remove the boats, lower them and carry on moving them. Nice!

nigelswift Aug 19, 2003 21:28:57

Replying to FourWinds

A catamaran arrangement sounds just right. Perhaps, instead of "canoes" just two dirty great oak logs and you could run just their front ends straight into the bank, leaving the remainder still floating. You could drag the cargo and upper raft straight off them without needing to take them out of the water.
That design would be mega stable, ideal for the ocean voyage as well.

GordonP Aug 19, 2003 21:35:24

Replying to FourWinds

Talking about rafts, pig of a job sailing a raft down the coastal waters of Wales. Sea travel is a bit like flying, only dangerous when near land (mostly anyway).

Proper boats would not have been an impossibility even in the stoneage. The builders of Stonehenge knew about mortice and tenon joints (nothing to do with Morroco) a carpentery joint. For years I thought that boatbuilding required metals, lately I've concluded that the existance of the bluestones on Salisbury Plain screams out "boatbuilders".

PS Don't need a boat to cross a river, use stone support logs and stone fulcrums.

Regards Gordon

Stone Shifting