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The Blue Stone Enigma

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goffik G
goffik Jun 25, 2009 07:41:22
Replying to nigelswift

I remember that the overwhelming conclusion from the Stonehengineers experiments being that the stones - wherever they are from, and however far they needed to be moved - would be done so using any means necessary...

So, if a boat were the easiest route for a part of the journey, they'd stick it on a boat! If dragging it were the easiest way, lash a few ropes to it and drag it! If it needed to be rowed, get some levers under it!

I've seen some interesting theories (Margaret Curtis' garden in Callanish is a bit of a museum to stone-moving methods!) and all seem, to me, to be perfectly feasible at some point in a stone's journey.

The glaciation theory isn't a new one, and is just as valid as any other. The fun of it all is that - as has been said to death - we really don't know!

I don't know how many books have been written on the subject - especially about bloody Stonehenge! ;) - by archaeologists, geologists, engineers, carpenters, photographers, etc, etc... but you can be sure of one thing - there'll be more where they came from! Which is no bad thing! And no doubt there'll be even more theories as time goes on! And so there should be.

G x

N nigelswift
nigelswift Jun 25, 2009 08:35:46
Replying to goffik

I remember that the overwhelming conclusion from the Stonehengineers experiments being that the stones - wherever they are from, and however far they needed to be moved - would be done so using any means necessary...

... and easiest, if they acted like normal folks do everywhere. Seeing things in those terms only gets complicated by occasional speculations that they may have done things the hard way "for ritual purposes".

The reason I'm a believer in dragging (in conjunction with the application of levers where necessary) as the lead possibility in the human transport half of the explanation was the sheer ruddy raw power that was displayed for a few seconds at Foamhenge. It was a total shock and no-one expected it. Nearly all the theorising and experiments have assumed that rollers were needed but it seemed pretty obvious to a lot of us that they simply weren't - something to do with the fact that a stone weighing 3 or 4 times more than a bluestone stone got pulled off the rollers and carried on uphill regardless.

So on the basis of that simple observation I don't see why a large number of bluestones couldn't have been shifted from the coast to Salisbury Plain by means of stones dragged along pathways (maybe more than one per team, the ergonomics seem inarguable) in a couple of days. If you had the manpower you'd just do it wouldn't you - and they'd be erected before anyone had even built a quay down by the river.