I used to use a mell hammer every day when I was walling. So it's like second nature to have one in my hand. My wrists have thickened with using one for twenty five years. Guitarists often have strong hands. I found a prehistoric hammerstone buried in the peat, near one of my carved stones, pointed end upward. The hammer's recorded on the Portable Objects register but what is interesting about it is to speculate on the strength of a person who might have used it on a daily basis. I know that I'm twice as strong as an average person - equivalent to one of those rugger buggers, perhaps - yet I'd estimate that the prehistoric chipper must have been twice as strong again, just to be able to wield that hammerstone effectively!

But as you have yourself acknowledged a team of 50 stonerowers found it hard to move just a 12 tonner far.

I'm afraid we are going to have to agree to disgree on a very fundamental point, i.e. that huge jobs like 40 tonners require huge workforces, just as huge tug 'o war teams generate far more power than smaller ones. I seem to remember at Foamhenge when you added 25 rugby players to the team they pulled the stone right off the rollers and carried on moving it just on the grass. It was then that I felt that 250 rugby players would have shifted the thing a very long way and fast.

As you know, I don't see this as indicating stonerowing wasn't employed in difficult terrains or to get over obstacles or as an addition to the main pulling effort - and indeed it's entirely feasible they hit upon it due to their use of levers to get over obstacles - it's just that for me brute force can do anything at all if there's enough of it and that would have been pretty obvious to the ancients.[/quote]

Nigel, your memory is playing tricks, I never used 50 rowers I actually used 28, (this was 12 more than neccessary, I was doing an untried experiment on live TV) the team were all volunteers many of whom had little idea of they were trying to achieve. One woman was actually wearing high heeled shoes.

The Rugby players you refer to were actually a team of local tug-a-war experts and at no time even with more that 50 volunteers pulling was the stone ever pulled off the rollers!!! The experiment came to an end when Simon got his arm trapped under one of the rollers.

You igore the fact that dragging a 12 ton stone is expotentially much simpler than dragging a 30 or 45 tonner.

If it is possible to drag a big stone half a mile in one day then why as it never been done. The best effort has been about 100 yards and that was on a greased track not rollers. The topsoil was removed and the straight track laid on the chalk bed on a gentle slope of 1 in 20. Tell me how they were going to change direction without using the crane they used to set up the experiment. I repeat no one has dragged a 45 ton stone more than a few yards without cheating!!!