Re: Route of the Sarsens. | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

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Route of the Sarsens.

GordonP Feb 12, 2008 18:57:20

Replying to nigelswift

Hi Nigel
Nice to hear from you again. Seems to me though that you fail to appriciate the problems of dragging really heavy stones on rollers.

Before our experiments it was known that stones up to 10 tons could be moved on successfully using rollers. We now know that stones weighing up to 12 tons can also be moved this way. The question is how far per day? How far could a team move such a stone before they became totally knackered? Believe me had you been part of the pulling team that day you would begin to appriciate the problem.

Furthermore when using rollers the problem increases expotentialy with the wieght of the stone. With stone-rowing it does not.

nigelswift Feb 12, 2008 19:21:49

Replying to GordonP

I do appreciate the "totally knackered" problem Gordon. My simple point was that if you double, treble and quadruple the workforce it reduces commensurately. So instead of about twenty rowers or fifty draggers (as you had at Foamhenge) they might have had 1000 draggers, which puts a different complexion on things. Whether they did we really don't know but I recall you originally proposed stonerowing as a viable method for if numbers were limited and I agree it is, but if they weren't I'm a lot less sure. Unless we know that bit of information we can never be sure. You need a bit of rock art ideally.