So a 6 tonne stone was transported from Scotland to Stonehenge 5,000 years ago

6 pages in and no one posted this!?

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Probably originally had grooves on the bottom and they sat it on a couple of bogie axles and drove it down like the Flintstones.
 
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Minusorange said:
www.yahoo.com

Stonehenge mystery deepens as altar traced to Scotland

A central stone of the famous Stonehenge monument in southwest England came from 750 kilometres away in northeast Scotland, surprised scientists said Wednesday, solving one mystery but raising another: how did its prehistoric builders move the huge slab so far?Another option was that the...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com

Pretty impressive when you think of all the various topography they would have to overcome if it was just pushed along on log rollers and how did they manage to get it across rivers, they must have surely come across some rivers and their bridge building skills would surely not be advanced enough to hold 6 tonne stones, to push it 750km they must have been ripped to get it up the hills, also how did they know where to push it to ? They wouldn't have a map or roads to follow so there must be some trial & error in the journey where they got lost on the way ?
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Impressive but it also suggests there may have been a United Kingdom long before 1707 as it would have meant one tribe would have been crossing the land of other tribes as the moved the stone through Britain
 
I was at Stonehenge a few years ago. It felt quite an eerie place.
Why did the Neolithic people select a particular stone in Scotland over 700km away?
Did they use wooden rollers to move the rocks?
Fascinating.
 
lunar said:
I was at Stonehenge a few years ago. It felt quite an eerie place.
Why did the Neolithic people select a particular stone in Scotland over 700km away?
Did they use wooden rollers to move the rocks?
Fascinating.
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My understanding is that log rollers were usually only used for lighter items and short distances. 6 tonnes might be light enough, but 700+ Km is too far. Moving stones within a quarry, sure, log rollers would work for that. But not long distances.

The most likely method for heavier weights and longer distances is sledges. There are surviving ancient Egyptian depictions of it being done that way and modern experimentation has proven that it works. It's hard work and slow going, but it can be done. Multiple ropes can be attached to the sledge and multiple people can pull on each rope. Get it done in an organised way and you can shift weights a lot heavier than 6 tonnes, especially with other people going ahead prepping the way. You can also use seasons, e.g. dragging the sledge over frozen ground is a bit easier. At least one of the Egyptian depictions show a person at the front of the sledge pouring liquid. Maybe just water under the runners of the sledge, which would make the going a bit easier.

I'm not sure about this one though. 700+ Km is a hell of a long way to drag 6 tonnes on a sledge. Plus the weight of the sledge, which would be a lot. You need a really hefty sledge for this sort of thing. Also, going uphill is very limited. Anything more than a gentle slope isn't doable.

Rafts existed back then, so using water where possible would have been likely (that's probably most of how they got the Welsh stones to the site). But I wouldn't fancy rafting a 6 tonne block around the coast. The water off the west coast isn't as bad as the water off the east coast, but it's very far from being a millpond.

Maybe a combination of rafting along rivers and sledging overland between usable rivers.

Must have been a hell of a job that took ages and was not safe to do. Which makes the "why" an even bigger question. It would have been far easier to get a slab of stone the same size from far closer. The biggest stones came from ~30Km away. Bringing a 6 tonne stone from there would have been relatively easy. So why get one from pretty much the opposite end of the island? Also, what was the contact between the two tribes? 700Km is a long walk. Why were the two tribes in contact at all? Can't have been war - the distance is far too large for that to make any sense and there's no way the stone could have been taken as loot, as a trophy. Trade? In what? What was valuable enough to trade 700+ Km without wheels or even pack animals? How did one tribe even know the other tribe existed? Or care? I think that's something else interesting about this discovery - there must have been more connectivity in neolithic Britain that I had thought.
 
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Angilion said:
Must have been a hell of a job that took ages and was not safe to do. Which makes the "why" an even bigger question. It would have been far easier to get a slab of stone the same size from far closer. The biggest stones came from ~30Km away. Bringing a 6 tonne stone from there would have been relatively easy. So why get one from pretty much the opposite end of the island? Also, what was the contact between the two tribes? 700Km is a long walk. Why were the two tribes in contact at all? Can't have been war - the distance is far too large for that to make any sense and there's no way the stone could have been taken as loot, as a trophy. Trade? In what? What was valuable enough to trade 700+ Km without wheels or even pack animals? How did one tribe even know the other tribe existed? Or care? I think that's something else interesting about this discovery - there must have been more connectivity in neolithic Britain that I had thought.
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Makes far more sense to me that it came indirectly moved around over a longer periods of years, probably had other uses, before ending up at Stonehenge. Those kind of stones were used in building sites of significance like burial mounds for people of importance, etc. at the time, etc. and probably had a value attached to them.
 
Angilion said:
My understanding is that log rollers were usually only used for lighter items and short distances. 6 tonnes might be light enough, but 700+ Km is too far. Moving stones within a quarry, sure, log rollers would work for that. But not long distances.

The most likely method for heavier weights and longer distances is sledges. There are surviving ancient Egyptian depictions of it being done that way and modern experimentation has proven that it works. It's hard work and slow going, but it can be done. Multiple ropes can be attached to the sledge and multiple people can pull on each rope. Get it done in an organised way and you can shift weights a lot heavier than 6 tonnes, especially with other people going ahead prepping the way. You can also use seasons, e.g. dragging the sledge over frozen ground is a bit easier. At least one of the Egyptian depictions show a person at the front of the sledge pouring liquid. Maybe just water under the runners of the sledge, which would make the going a bit easier.
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Egypt was a well organised, bureaucratic single state civilisation unified under a single ruler and theres only a single river to punt it down too, prehistoric britain is a little bit different
 
Blackjack Davy said:
Egypt was a well organised, bureaucratic single state civilisation unified under a single ruler and theres only a single river to punt it down too, prehistoric britain is a little bit different
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Their location was key and there is also the long dried up river Ahramat that branched off the Nile that also helped. There may be other long since gone rivers that branched off the Nile still to be found.

Turns out they may have used water power to ingeniously get the massive stones up inside the pyramids too. I think that was a recent news story.

Anyway, as for Scottish stone in Stonehenge. I can't see somebody having a holiday up North and going 'i fancy me some of that down South' so trying to work out why it's there first rather than how many be useful.

FWIW I've got nothing :)
 
Angilion said:
Must have been a hell of a job that took ages and was not safe to do. Which makes the "why" an even bigger question. It would have been far easier to get a slab of stone the same size from far closer. The biggest stones came from ~30Km away. Bringing a 6 tonne stone from there would have been relatively easy. So why get one from pretty much the opposite end of the island? Also, what was the contact between the two tribes? 700Km is a long walk. Why were the two tribes in contact at all? Can't have been war - the distance is far too large for that to make any sense and there's no way the stone could have been taken as loot, as a trophy. Trade? In what? What was valuable enough to trade 700+ Km without wheels or even pack animals? How did one tribe even know the other tribe existed? Or care? I think that's something else interesting about this discovery - there must have been more connectivity in neolithic Britain that I had thought.
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Yeah, the communication/ trade point is a good one.

700km is a solid 20 day walk, under reasonable conditions. It would have crossed multiple kingdoms/tribal territories. Negotiating passage by land would have been a diplomatic nightmare.

That's assuming it wasn't shipped by sea.
 
Angilion said:
Must have been a hell of a job that took ages and was not safe to do. Which makes the "why" an even bigger question. It would have been far easier to get a slab of stone the same size from far closer. The biggest stones came from ~30Km away. Bringing a 6 tonne stone from there would have been relatively easy. So why get one from pretty much the opposite end of the island?
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Presumably thought it had some magical and/or medical significance theres evidence of the Blue Stones brought from Preseli that people took chips of stone with them particularly those with medical issues/disablility its already known that the area of stonehenge had some unusual geological features that would have been visible in the past like a series of straight lines scored in the bedrock that would have looked like some kind of road, its a glacial feature but would have been quite startling once upon a time especially if you have no logical explanation
 
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