This reminds us that when the pullers started with the project, all wore yellow gloves and PULLED on the ropes. But many found that very hard work, getting rope burns and blisters on their hands -- and so after a while the organisers developed a sort of harness for each puller, with a bar in front of the chest and a connection behind onto the main haulage rope. So those who were drawing the stone along were facing forward and PUSHING -- and were able to use their body weight much more effectively. The men with the levers who walked along behind the stone were there to lever the loaded sledge back into position when it slid sideways -- as it did with alarming frequency.
In spite of these innovations, and the use of modern ropes and friction-reducing Netlon to increase sliding efficiency on asphalt roads, the stone pull was still an unmitigated disaster, proving without a doubt to all of those involved that the hypothetical human haulage of 80 bluestones from Presell to Stonehenge was just about as reliable as the "aliens from outer space" hypothesis.
Ah, but you're reckoning without the massive horsepower of the aurochs (what's more, they say they STILL exist, in remote North and Mid Wales valleys, especially on nights with full moons).
ReplyDeleteThat would explain why they've found so many aurochsen skeletons fairly close to Stonehenge and just off the A303 at Blick Mead, surely to goodness......
Much more likely, I think, that the afanc was harnessed and forced to do the hauling. There were very few of them in Pembs. It was too much for them, and after hauling 82 stones (no more, and no less) they just died out.......
ReplyDeleteI'll send our thoughts immediately on to the Imagination Section, that essential department at Historic England/ English Heritage at Swindon, with of course a copy to go separately to the Stonehenge Handbook author, Julian Richards.
ReplyDeleteA significant number of these Archeologists appear to share the same geological know how and powers of deduction as Creationists. Perhaps they secretly think that the stones were moved using tame dinosaurs; but are too shy to say?
ReplyDeleteThe last hybrid auroch is said to have died in Poland in the 17th century. Someone recently found some viable DNA and there's talk of cloning them.
ReplyDeleteThere was likely 94 Blues at Stonehenge -- not 82.
Neil
Come along now, Neil....... where is the evidence for that speculation? Lots of holes in the ground?
ReplyDelete"Neil Sings the Blues"...... Tommy Steele eat yer heart out [look him up, Neil, I expect you've never heard of him across the Pond?].
ReplyDeleteNot sure whether the Creationists even admit to the possibility of dinosaurs. Tell you what, though, Neil, it's worth the entrance fee alone at Longleat (near you), to see the indoor exhibition of moving and noisy dinosaurs, courtesy of the Natural History Museum. We were well impressed today.
Brian,
ReplyDeleteLooks like I can neither type nor add! That number should have said 84 - not 94.
It's based on what I believe to have been 56 in the outer ring, with 28 in the Trilithon oval.
These are the 'Two Shipments' I'm always on about.
Further, for only one example, if they got all those sarsens up that hill for the West Kennet Long Barrow -- fully 600 years before Stonehenge -- I feel that moving some 'puny little' Bluestones would have been far simpler
Neil
Any raise on 94? Where are Tony’s popular musical comments when you need them. I suppose I will have to do it, Oh Boy.
ReplyDelete4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Bluestones perhaps?
And leave off the large cattle, Never Mind The Aurochs. It’s Tommy Steele and His little white bull.
Whoops! - what I meant was "Tell you what, ALEX......."
ReplyDeleteNeil, West Kennet long barrow is extremely close to all the sarsen stones on the Overton & Fyfield Downs. Prehistoric man also constructed the West Kennet Avenue quite close by.
WKLB is also very close to The Ridgeway, and there may well have been a sensible route to bring the sarsens from there near EKLB, but..... who knows? I don't. It gives me The Blues not knowing, old buddy.
ReplyDeleteAnother proof that Britons are incompetent.
ReplyDeleteThey are clowns to be laughed at.
Even constantly ridiculed.
G-D
Oh Dear! Looks like the Woolworths-ists are at it again: DOH
ReplyDeleteThe three placed stones form a triangle so therefore this is proof that Neolithic man developed an understanding of Pythagorian and Euclidian mathematics 200 years before these gentleman were born!
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/go-figure-stonehenge-was-built-using-pythagoras-theorem-of-geometry-2000-years-before-the-greek-philosopher-was-born/ar-AAyVX2s
P.S. I suspect that my near neighbours! The parasites and charlatans who live in Glastonbury and make their living from offering false hope to the weak, vulnerable, gullible and terminally ill! Were once again present in large numbers at the Stonehenge Solstice celebrations! Evil Scum! one and all!
As Brian and others have said about the sarsens at Stonehenge;Were the Sarsens for West Kennet Long Barrow all ready up the hill?
ReplyDeleteWKLB stones were probably formed on the hill the long barrow sits on. The Cow Down sarsen drift is only a few fields away. East Kennet long barrow still has unexcavated stones inside and the destroyed Beckhampton Penning long barrow was also chambered. Many of the stones are in the woods at Beckhampton farm.
ReplyDeleteHarestone down lies nearby and has a lot of stones that probably formed a large circle with a cove at the center. There is another sarsen drift a short way from the Alton Barnes white horse at the top of the hill. The stones at Adams Grave long barrow probably came from there.
The Monkton down sarsen drift stretched all the way to West Kennett village and maps from the 1800's show this. That whole area has since been cleared.
Just because there are stones left at the Fyfield drift does not mean that all stones (including the Stonehenge sarsens) came from there.
PeteG
Pete, what leads you to the conclusion that there was probably a large stone circle with a cove in the centre at Harestone Down [SW of EKLB]? Was this mentioned on old maps or Stukeley's visit? Very interesting what you say....
ReplyDeleteReferring to the Post's subject, viz BLUESTONE transport, human or glacial......
ReplyDelete......there's a lot to digest on the glacial hypothesis in Brian's 2018 book, Chapter 7 The Science of the Stones. Here is an extract from its section headed "Other Inconvenient Stones". Pages 179 - 180 includes this:-
Dolerites (spotted and unspotted),rhyolites and sandstones "of the Altar Stone type" were also reported by Cunnington, Colt Hoare and other early workers and by archaeologists including Julian Richards in more recent times. At least 20 "bluestones" have been listed by the Wessex Archaeological Trust in the Stonehenge environs but outside the monument itself...........
..........bluestone fragments from the Cursus are now being found and identified. Rob Ixwe hasidentified some of J.F. Stone's 1947 finds from the Cursus and [nearby]Fargo Wood as "acid volcanics and tuffs" and also spotted dolerite....In 2008 a further "bluestone" from the fill of the [Neolithic] Cursus pit was identified as identical to one of the bluestone stumps in the Stonehenge bluestone circle. That is potentially very significant, since it means the lump of (Ordovician?) sandstone was present before 5,200 BP [Before Present] in this very early [Neolithic] earthwork."
Tony,
ReplyDeletesee Secrets of the Avebury Stones by Terence Meaden.
Harestone down circle has never been excavated so it's not 100% certain.
PeteG
Thanks, Pete. I know Terence Meaden slightly. He's a long - time member of WANHS too. Former Professor of Meteorology or similar and specialist in tornados, amongst several other things.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what Josh Pollard and Mark Gillings make of the Harestone Down circle? Also Ros Cleal at Avebury Museum, etc.
DOH! - Rob Ixwe? Sorry, Rob, that was meant to say Ixer (of course).
Dear Brian
ReplyDeletePage 15 of "The Times" today, reveals that the latest hypothesis put forward by Bevins and Ixer
Is that Stonehenge was a sort of Motorway service station. And that the stones were transported along an early M5/A36, constructed by the Neolithic equivalent of "McAlpine's Fusiliers.
Have emailed you a copy, via your greencroft email.