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Stonehenge

Stone Shifting 3

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While we're brainstorming, how about this for an idea? We get a ruddy great long pole (100 foot tree?) and put one end of it into the hole and onto the bottom of the sloping monolith. Then we tie a strong rope to the top of the monolith and to the other end of the pole. We put rocks into a net attached to the end of the pole and bingo! they will pull the monolith upright. The length of the rope can be such that the monolith just reaches vertical as the net touches the ground. The rotational torque of a 32 foot monolith weighing 40 tons and lying at 70 degrees would be 218 foot-tons, and the weight required at the end of a 100 foot pole to produce this same torque would be 2.5 tons (this allows for the pole starting at 30 degrees from horizontal, rather than 20 to allow for the net being a few feet below the pole).

But wouldn’t it lift the stone, as well as rotate it? You’d have to start with the stone’s base in a hole a bit deeper than you intended, and then pack underneath it when it was upright.
On the other hand if you take you’re whole arrangement and lay it transversely over the tensioned rope… (or have you decided a tensioned rope is too problematical?)