39 replies to this topic

[dyn coed]

is it a general consensus that megalithic man built all these stone monuments with his own muscle, or could he have had help?
i ask because of years of reading various books on the subject, theorist have always assumed that it took "so many men" to construct these monuments, and i've always been led to beleive that this was so.

julian cope's book, "the megalithic european", has been the only one who seems to makes the connection through all the findings of oxen bones at sites in the uk and europe, that maybe, as an agricultural society, we might have used oxen to transport and construct these monuments. 1 oxen produces the same power as around 20-30 men, surely it would have been simpler to use these to transport and raise stones with?

have i been reading the wrong books?

[wally]

Dye coed
In your opinion, how many men verses oxen would be needed to move and stand on end say a 20,000 pound block?
using only simple tools of course.
Wally
www.theforgottentechnology.com

[dyn coed]

my background, much like yourself, has involved moving large objects. over the years, having moved from quarrying to forestry, i also have encountered ways of moving large masses, so i understand your viewpoint.
but the question i raise is, surely if, like today we have an easier means to move objects, surely megalithic man would have used it too!?

if prehistoric man had gained the intelligence to work with measurements and calculate numbers, surely he would have had the intelligence to give himself an easier life.

as to the question you raise, i guess it would be likely that less oxen would be involved than human.

[wally]

The use of brain power over muscle power seems likely to me.
simply creating proper conditions and moving mass not weight.

[dyn coed]

one of the famous hypotheses in the building of stonehenge and the transportation of the blue stones from pembrokeshire is that they were hauled by teams of men, no mention has ever been made that maybe this was not so. it seems in some instances modern man has thought less about this subject. every time an experiment has been done, it has always shown that we use our modern brains to come up with an "amazing new way" of moving mass using our own strength.
with hindsight, we have 3-4000 years of thinking and engineering experience to help us, these meaglithic builders didnt.

your experiments with moving objects of several tons by yourself has to be commended, but it doesnt necessarily mean that megalithic man did it this way, it only demonstrates what might have been achieved.

[wally]

My estimates on manpower needed is far less than others.
Have moved up to 30,000 pounds alone, that would mean a very small crew of maybe 6 men could build Stonehenge? Or 800 men to move the stones at GP, that number fits the size of the ancient village. It would also help explain how it was done at different times in history and at different locations. That shots down world travelers and vistors from a advanced technology.
BTW they had at least a few thousand years to figure it out.
I only had 35.
Wally

[Jimit]

To Wally and Dyn Coed. As you can imagine , this subject has been discussed frequently. As far as I am concerned, this site.. http://stonehengineers.co.uk/   puts forward the most plausible solution so far.

On the w/e 14/15 May, an experiment is going to be conducted uusing a 10 ton block of concrete using the theories explained above. The block will be raised from the ground, rotated and moved up hill. At the same time a similar stone will be transported using the more traditional rollers.

The site for this fun will be the National Tramway Museum at Crich just north of Derby. I'm part of the team so I will report back on our progress.  

[dyn coed]

i'm sure our ancestors had enough to do without going out and trying to organise hundreds of men (that were gainfully employed already) to build these structures with great effort(time consuming). i agree with wally that sure, it probably was down to a small group of builders, but i suspect they did use oxen to a great degree.

wally, 800 men in a village?, back then, they might have had 800 in an area the size of a county most probable. the british isles were sparsely populated in that time. Sorry, but you guys cant seem to grasp the fact of the question, that maybe our ancestors used "other" means, ie animals, to give himself an easier time.
to me, your answers make me beleive that he was just a cave man who dragged these objects over great distances to create impressive landscapes with.

surely the general consensus cant be that megalithic man was just a macho "i can move that" figure. maybe he had progressed further up the ladder than we have been let to beleive.

as to any mention of outside help, spacemen or time travellers, dont! keep it real, please!!!

[wally]

The workforce at The Great Pyramid needed is 800.
Stonehenge 6 men.
ET 0.

[bobtheham]

Wally's method of moving big masses is possible for Neolithic people but it relies on one piece that seems to me a bit suspect -- the pivot. I think it's likely that a granite or other very hard stone would still be crushed by the 10-20 tons of mass when all of it is on one pivot. What do you use for pivots, Wally? How do you keep them in place at the balance point? And how do you compensate for irregular large stones such as the megalithic blocks used for the dolmens and even Stonehenge?

I still like the stone rowing technique best -- a dozen men (and women!) can move a very large mass, even up steep inclines. It would require a very large number even of oxen to drag a 20 ton stone up a 10% grade, even on rollers. And there's also the problem of raising the stone upright after you get it there, without a skyhook ;-).

A lot depends on when the lever came into use -- and I'd guess it was very early, probably even Paleolithic, certainly by the Mesolithic. Assuming levers, why would you resort to huge teams of people or animals?

[wally]

bobtheham,
1? the pivot, have had some exchange with a testing engineer, he claimed non-porus granet whould  make the best pivots. Of course there is natural iron found in metorites, that stuff is hard.
concrete is quite soft only 4000 psi, much softer than most common rocks, but still it would only take 5 square inches or 2 1/2 inch round of contact surface to support a 20,000 pound stone.
2? maintaining balance, inertia. like spinning a top. The more mass the slower the rotation is needed to create stibilty.
3? the lever i use is the object itself, when i first started 6 years ago now i had my preschool-age grandkids moving  and raising blocks weighing over a ton.
The barn i moved alone 5 years ago was 30 ft by 40 ft and 16 ft in height, thats not a regular shape.
True flat sided rocks are much easier to work with.
Didn't need a sky hook to stand the block for Discovery Channel, did that with a simple wood frame shoring box and some 2x4s.

[Jimit]

Going back to the use of animals to move stones...I'm not sure, but I don't think that oxen had been domesticated in the Neolithic period here in Britain. More info welcomed.

[dyn coed]

i guess finding ox bones in ceremonial pits in henges, dolmens all over britain cant possibly mean that they hadnt some use for this animal then?

[Jimit]

I agree that they were slaughtered for food and ceremonial purposes but is there any proof that they were domesticated?

[Nigel]

Whichever main method of transport was used, and I accept there are a number of possibilities, I find it hard to conceive the joorney could have started at all without levers.

The sources, near Avebury, are a crowded jumble of stones, some half buried, all different shapes and sizes, set in a steep valley. I think manoevering them up, out, around, along and up would need two things for certain: levers and a lot of swearing.

Also, the Stones at the Avebury and nearby monuments aren't Stonehenge shaped or worked - they're supposed to tend towards slab shapes geologically, which they do, but having said that they're actually all different and incredibly awkward to handle. Yet they were delivered "as found". To me, this points towards the use of some sort of cradle, or logs lashed underneath, like the Stonehengineers are intending. That way, the process would be rendered a bit more uniform.