What’s the most plausible theory that explains the technology that was used at Stonehenge ?

In ‘Seventy Greaty Mysteries of the Ancient World’ on the chapter on Stonehenge, Christopher Chippendale writes:

‘The first requirement in building Stonehenge was obtaining the right kind of stones. of the several types used, the most numerous aer ‘bluestones’ brought form west Wales, some 150 miles away. Typically about the dimensions of a coffin, they weight up to about 4 tonnes, it would not have been so hard to drag them overland or to float them on skin coracles along the coast and up on eof the English rivers close to Stonehenge. But not so easy either: in 2000 a team attempting to transport a bluestone of the correct size to Stonehenge struggled to find enough volunteerss to pull it. And once on the boats, the stone slipped into the water and was lost; it had to be fished up off the bottom of the sea so that the trial could continue.

The larger ‘sarsen’ stones at Stonehenge are much heavier, but they come from much closer to hand, ssome 18 miless away. The main difficulty for the builders would have been been in finding enough sarsens of sufficient size – a Stonehenge built to its full design needs 79 of them. The older megalithic circles and avenues of Avebury would have already used up several hundred. Many of the sarsens at Stonehenge have very little of their length underground for foundation support, and Stonehenge does not seem to have been completed to its intended design. Did they run out of stones?

Moving the sarsens, which up to 40 tonnes and more, was the first task. Experiments with a replica stone in 1994 by archaeologist Julian Richareds and engineer Mark Whitby give us confidence as to how this may have been done. The stone would have been levered onto a timber cradle, and the cradle pulled by teams with ropes. It has usually been thought that the cradle would have run over rollers, but the engineers in the 1994 tests found a better way – sliding the cradle on timber rails pentifully greased. Their stone ‘stuck’ until rocked free, and then went well, with a team of 130 volunteers pulling. Modern ropes were used for safety’ss sake, bu tit is known that good ropes of sufficient strength could have been made in prehistoric times from the inner bark of trees. It was estimated the stone could have been pulled a full kilometre in a day on a modest uphill slope, and a full 6 and a half miles on the level or downhill. And we know that Neolithic people were skilled in splitting oak tress to make the rails. Between the Marlborough Dowsn, where the sarsens are found, and Stonehenge iss the Vale of Pewsey – the stoens would have had to be takne down the steep scarp of the valley’s north wall, across the damp valley and up the slope, on to the high downland where Stonehenge was built.

The sarsens can be shaped by hammering with the same stone – a slow business since the sarsen is so very hard and does not break off in large pieces, but is worn away fgrain by grain. Many mauls and hammer-stones of varied size have been found at Stonehenge, where they were later used to hold uprights steady in their foundations. Some of the stones show parallel dips, where the gangs of stone-shapers had worked.

Raising the upright stones was also tested by experiment in 1994. The stone was tipped into a prepared hole, and ingeniously made to topple well by sliding a smaller stone across it, abruptly changing its balance. Neolithic technology could have done that, but would Neolithic minds have had the same idea? Then the stone was pulled upright by ropes running over a timber A frame, by a team of about 130 labourers (men and women of varying age and strength). The final task, once the uprights were wedged securely in their holes with small sarsen stones, wsa to raise the lintel stones on to the top. This could have been done either by pulling the stone up a sloping ramp, or levering it up first on one side, then on the other, on a rising scaffold of stacked logs. whichever method wass used, once raised to the required height the lintels had to be trimmed into shape and moved nto their final position. Since no trace of any ramps has been found, it seems the method using stacked logs is the more likely one.

So, given a labour force of 130 or more, and wit hthe skills in moving stones and shaping timbers that we know Neolithic people possessed, perhaps building Stonehenge wass not so hard as it seemss to us today. At least in the West, we forget what can be done by skill and human muscle-power alone. so part of the mystery is in ourselves, not “how did they build Stonehenge?” but “why are we puzzled as to how they built Stonehenge?” ‘

pt2c – Our Technology- The Vortex Theory by Dr Russell Moon

Information Technology in Theory $60.90 Explore the expansive world of information technology (IT) with this innovative book that will engage as it educates. The purpose of Information Technology in Theory is threefold: to provide a comprehensive and engaging overview of cutting-edge information technologies, to identify and discuss the fundamental principles underlying these technologies, and to investigate the reciprocal relationship …

Learning Theory and Online Technologies $33.90 Learning Theory and Online Technologies offers a powerful overview of the current state of elearning, a foundation of its historical roots and growth, and a framework for distinguishing among the major approaches to elearning. It effectively addresses pedagogy (how to design an effective online environment for learning), evaluation (how to know that students are learning), and history (how past re…

Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization $15.40 In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single principle of physics, the Constructal Law, accounts for the evolution of these and all other designs in our world.   Everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure and evolves in…

…