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Stonehenge and its Environs

The Secrets of Stonehenge

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FourWinds F
FourWinds Jun 2, 2009 07:15:33
Replying to Littlestone

Apparently, Mike Pitts thinks that if you had people with large poles you could propel large stones along. If you had enough of them you could "practically row it along". Hhhmmmm .... that sounds familiar!

I enjoyed the program and only screamed a couple of times at the gogglebox. I actually think the link is there between Durrington and Stonehenge - the similar radiocarbon dates say that much. However, I don't agree with the conclusions. If you excavate a church and its graveyard you find a place for the dead and a temple for use by the living that celebrates life. Why should this be different? Probably only to fit in with your theory, that's why.

The erosion marks in the top of the avenue were interesting. I know they are natural, but surely the got their sequence wrong. They reckon they were caused by water running between two natural banks. Well, why couldn't they have been formed by water running down between two manmade banks? There's no evidence of two natural banks, but we know there were two manmade ones! I was at an ancient roadway on a steep hillside this weekend in Mayo and the ground was scarred with similar grooves down its length. Granted, these grooves were in the soil that had accumulated since the road went out of use (about 150 years ago), but the effect was the same.

What is great is that a project of this scale found funding. The new finds are amazing: stones at the end of the avenue, possible mortuary structures, the huge road from Durrington to the river & the sheer scale of the housing around Durrington.

N nigelswift
nigelswift Jun 2, 2009 07:56:22
Replying to FourWinds

"If you had enough of them you could "practically row it along". Hhhmmmm .... that sounds familiar!"

I nearly fell off my chair when he said that! Bet Gordon Pipes did too.
It was Gordon's idea but discussed, refined and (I think) NAMED here.

Ideas from Derbyshire carpenters, further developed and named on amateur websites don't usually get taken seriously but it looks like it has happened. To be fair to Mike Pitts he has always been sympathetic to the idea. I hope when he writes it up he acknowledges the sources. He might mention that Stukeley proposed moving the stones using "leavers in the nature of a galley oars" but he was unaware of that until June 2005 by which time the whole method had already been exhaustively discussed here.