The shortcomings of the human transport hypothesis

"Who ordered this thing? Anyway, what's it for? I reckon it will bring us far more trouble than it's worth...."

Since some people are apparently celebrating a great victory for the human transport theory in the Bluestone Transport Stakes, let's just remind ourselves that celebrations are a little premature....

1.  There is no sound evidence from anywhere in the British Neolithic/Bronze Age record of large stones being hauled over long distances for incorporation in a megalithic monument (Thorpe et al., 1991). Many of the claims of long-distance haulage ignore the evidence of glacial transport routes for large erratics; but some large stones might have been moved short distances prior to erection. And it is self-evident that stones were moved about in the Stonehenge area during building work.

2.  Field observations show, consistently, that the builders of Neolithic monuments across the UK simply used whatever large stones were at hand (Burrow, 2006). The builders were pragmatists and opportunists, and they were not stupid. Thus said Stephen Briggs.

3.  If special or sacred stones were being transported to Stonehenge, it is vanishingly unlikely that they would all have been collected in the west, to the exclusion of all other points of the compass (John, 2018a).

4.  There is no convincing evidence either from West Wales or from anywhere else of bluestones (for example foliated rhyolite or spotted dolerite) being used preferentially in megalithic monuments or revered in any way (Darvill and Wainwright, 2016). 

 
5.  If long-distance stone haulage was an “organised activity” for the builders of Stonehenge, it is noteworthy that there is no evidence of the development of an appropriate haulage technology leading up to the Late Neolithic and a decline afterwards. In other words, there is no sign of any diffusion of innovation (Rogers, 2003).

6.  The evidence for quarrying activity in key Preseli locations is questionable (John et al., 2015b). No archaeological or cultural links have been established between Stonehenge and the proposed “quarries” at Craig Rhos-y-felin and Carn Goedog.

7.  The sheer variety of bluestone types argues against human selection and transport. There cannot possibly have been multiple “bluestone monolith quarries” scattered across West Wales (Thorpe et al., 1991).

8.  No physical evidence has ever been found of ropes, rollers, trackways, sledges, abandoned stones, quarry worker camps or anything else that might bolster the hypothesis (Kellaway, 1971). Bevins et al (2025) might argue that these thngs were ephemeral and were unlikely to survive for 5,000 years or more -- but this argument is no more convincing than mine when I say that ancient glacial deposits might exist, degraded and still undiscovered....

9.  Experimental archaeology on stone haulage techniques (normally in “ideal” conditions) has done nothing to show that our ancestors could cope with the sheer physical difficulty of stone haulage across the heavily wooded Neolithic terrain of West Wales (characterised by bogs, cataracts, steep slopes and very few clearings) or around the rocky coast. Burl (2007) made this point forcefully, and it remains forceful today.

10.  No convincing evidence has ever been found of a “proto-Stonehenge” in West Wales, built of assorted local stones that were dismantled and taken off to Stonehenge. Mike Parker Pearson's claim that a “giant stone circle” at Waun Mawn in Mynydd Preseli was the source and the inspiration for Stonehenge has been criticised by Darvill (2022) and others and has now been abandoned (Bevins et al., 2022).


There are other problems too, of which more anon.........