Stonehenge and its Environs 134
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Stonehenge and its Environs

The bluestone debate

GordonP G
GordonP Nov 19, 2008 22:26:13
Replying to nigelswift

At the end of the day I think we will have to "beg to differ on this question".

Although you seem to ignore my reasoning that if you need 640 men to move a stone on rollers then my seemingly slower method of stone-rowing is actually far quicker because I can move 10 megaliths at the same time with such a workforce.

Anyway I am the first man in written history to suggest picking up a megalith in order to move it, that is apart from William Stuckely, but that piece of information only came to light years after I first suggested Stone-rowing in an article in the Derby Evening Telegraph December 1999.

Quite interesting though how he described the transport, stones moved using "leavers in the nature of galley oars". See Stuckely's Stonehenge An Unpublished Manusript 1721-1724 (Yale) by Aubrey Burl and Neil Mortimer.

S Steve Gray
Steve Gray Nov 19, 2008 23:52:43
Replying to GordonP

GordonP wrote:
Although you seem to ignore my reasoning that if you need 640 men to move a stone on rollers then my seemingly slower method of stone-rowing is actually far quicker because I can move 10 megaliths at the same time with such a workforce.
It's not a case of ignoring it, we just don't accept it. Your conclusion is just fanciful.

It took a long time to row the stone a few tens of yards. It moved about 6 inches per stroke and around 10 strokes per minute at best. That's 5 feet per minute or 300 feet per hour, which is 0.0568 miles per hour.

We actually didn't achieve anywhere near that in practice because the levers needed frequent respositioning, they wore quickly, some broke, there was slippage betwen the levers and the support logs and against the bottom of the block, and despite our efforts to slew the stone back on course with the levers it still kept veering away from the intended direction. The actual achieved speed was more like 0.02 mph.

On the other hand the pullers quickly achieved a brisk walking speed of around 4 miles per hour. We started shouting out the number of feet travelled against a tape measure, but it soon got so fast that we couldn't say the numbers quickly enough to keep up.

So the achieved speed ratio was around 200:1 with a workforce ratio of only 10:1.

Even allowing for a conservative 3:1 rest/work ratio, draggin is still at least seven times more efficient.

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