Stonehenge and its Environs 134
Image by Chance

tiompan wrote:
tonyh wrote:
Talking of vegetation. It's not just the ground that has to been considered. moving a load through brushwood or woodland would be extremely difficult..

Tony

Good point . Not often considered .
Perfectly valid point. In west Wales we are referring now to at least 20 different sources for the bluestones (Darvill's recent talk to Soc of Ant) dotted about all over S and W Wales. We are not talking about open chalk downlands here. We are talking about JUNGLE!! Bogs, slippery river banks, incredibly dense woodlands. Instead of carrying on a fascinating dialogue about technology, might it not save everybody a lot of intellectual effort if we just get this question out of the way first: how likely is it that Neolithic tribesmen would have even attempted to collect stones from at least 20 different locations in a densely-wooded terrain with deep river valleys, steep slopes, and boggy ground here, there and everywhere?

"Instead of carrying on a fascinating dialogue about technology, might it not save everybody a lot of intellectual effort if ...."

Well the discussion about technology relates to sarsen transport, not bluestones. If you can shift the biggest sarsen (which they did) you are doing something 7 or 8x harder than shifting the biggest bluestone and 15x harder than shifting the smaller ones. So it's worth discussing!