Posted on 12/30/2010 3:10:25 AM PST by SunkenCiv
It's one of Stonehenge's greatest mysteries: How did Stone Age Britons move 45-ton slabs across dozens of miles to create the 4,500-year-old stone circle?
...A previous theory suggested that the builders used wooden rollers -- carved tree trunks laid side by side on a constructed hard surface. Another imagined huge wooden sleds atop greased wooden rails.
But critics say the rollers' hard pathway would have left telltale gouges in the landscape, which have never been found. And the sled system, while plausible, would have required huge amounts of manpower -- hundreds of men at a time to move one of the largest Stonehenge stones, according to a 1997 study.
Andrew Young, though, says Stonehenge's slabs, may have been rolled over a series of balls lined up in grooved rails, according to a November 30 statement from Exeter University in the U.K., where Young is a doctoral student in biosciences.
Young first came up with the ball bearings idea when he noticed that carved stone balls were often found near Neolithic stone circles in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
"I measured and weighed a number of these stone balls and realized that they are all precisely the same size -- around 70 millimeters [3 inches] in diameter -- which made me think they must have been made to be used in unison, rather than alone," he told National Geographic News.
The balls, Young admitted, have been found near stone circles only in Aberdeenshire and the Orkney Islands -- not on Stonehenge's Salisbury Plain.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
I’ve got it!!!!!!
They waited for severe winters and shoved them over icy cow paths.
FOUR SECONDS APART!!!!
I’m going with ICY paths;) LOL!
Stonehenge is child’s play compared to the pyramids.
Laissez les bon temps rouler.
Now all they have to do is find the ancient sawmill where the druids purchased their 2x4’s and the theory’s complete.
... with a router to carve out a nice trough for the rock ball bearings!
There are estimates that it took several hundred years to complete the structures.
So we also have to question: ‘who kept the architects’ drawings and engineers’ drafts’?????
Archeologists apply modern applications - when they should really ask a few 2nd graders how they would create this circle. Our know-how is the accumulation of centuries of trial and error - we should examine basic human capabilities and resources. (Rivers of ice;)
Are they sure they didn’t use horses to pull the stones?
Then it would be called Hengestone instead of Stonehenge.
I agree. The stones (if actually from Wales, and if not moved most of the way by glaciers) could make a good bit of the trip by water, and these tracks could be moved from behind the moved stone to ahead of it, continuously. The Egyptians moved stuff way heavier than these pipsqueaks over the nice soft sandy soil (including waterlogged soil near the Nile). :’) The largest of the Egyptian moves was a 650 ton statue of one of the Ramses, but the largest obelisks exceed 300 tons.
:’D
Probably the prehistoric inventor of this system had a last name of Hall, hence, Hall’s Balls.
We have no idea how they built it, do we?
But wouldn’t you think they’dve found some of the balls, parts or something?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.