Stonehenge 181
Image by wysefool

So there were Drove Routes from South Wales to Wessex. I read that it was ancient...

I must admit to thinking that it was a nice fit with the Bronze Age BBQ on Salisbury Plain, Using Cattle from Wales (Or so they reported)..

I was using the logic of - If there was a trade in Beef between S Wales and Wessex then they would have taken the Route for the Cattle to arrive in the best condition in the quickest time..

Away from the wet and forested lowland - Much like the use of the Ridgeway really. And if this was the best Route for livestock then it might be possibly the best for stone transport...

Tony

No, stones and cattle have different qualities entirely. With a lump of stone you'd take it in a straight line, grimly, in the shortest possible time. It'd be dangerous as there's be permanent risk of severe injury. With cattle it's different. They'd wander about and refuse to budge sometimes and race to a patch of lush grazing at others. The risks of droving would be of being robbed of the beasts by local people, rather than of being crushed by a hefty piece of stone. The model of droving depends on a centralised pre-industrial landscape rather than a dispersed agricultural landscape as in prehistoric times. See also the film Fitzcarraldo recalling that the actual boats in the Amazon were moved in a dismantled state.