Stonehenge rocks may have come from closer than imagined

[Formless]

Its the difference between hundreds of meters and hundreds of kilometers, apparently. I'll admit, I don't know that much about the history behind this debate concerning Stonehenge, so if anyone does, how hilarious should I find this oversight?

[fgalkin]

So, they found that instead of one hill in the Preseli mountains, it came from another. It still doesn't answer how they covered the remaining 149 miles to Stonehenge.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Napoleon the Clown]

Or maybe humans are crafty bastards that can accomplish ridiculous things if they really want to. (I'm saying this as a "I'm saying the picture is a joke" not as anyone claiming it was aliens) If we could get people to the moon and back on multiple occasions then I see no reason to say that people back then could pull off moving that much stone that far. Just how they did it is up for grabs, of course. Aside from the obvious: It sounded like a good idea at the time and they had nothing better to do.

[Zwinmar]

But..but..ancient aliens are responsible for everything....right? /sarcasm

I'm betting alcohol was involved. Lots and lots of alcohol.

[Kitsune]

But..but..ancient aliens are responsible for everything....right? /sarcasm

I'm betting alcohol was involved. Lots and lots of alcohol.

Isn't that the way they moves giant rocks in Egypt as well

[InsaneTD]

Alcohol, The foundation of all the wonders of the world.*




*Not actually the foundation of the wonders of the world.

[madd0ct0r]

alchohol was the reason a friend woke up with a red phone box in his bathroom. They couldn't even work out how to get it out again until they'd gone back to the pub.

[fgalkin]

Or maybe humans are crafty bastards that can accomplish ridiculous things if they really want to. (I'm saying this as a "I'm saying the picture is a joke" not as anyone claiming it was aliens) If we could get people to the moon and back on multiple occasions then I see no reason to say that people back then could pull off moving that much stone that far. Just how they did it is up for grabs, of course. Aside from the obvious: It sounded like a good idea at the time and they had nothing better to do.

Yes, but HOW exactly did they do this?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Irbis]

Isn't that the way they moves giant rocks in Egypt as well

Ancient Egypt was a superpower state for 3000 years, though, we don't even know if Stonehenge builders had anything like a state or how advanced their culture, trade or architecture were.

[Thanas]

They most likely had a good collection of trade networks and culture, given how advanced the cultures that succeeded them were. People nowadays look at them "Oh, they don't have huge temples like the Romans, the savages". But actually, their metalworking was par none and their mining (while lacking the scale of Roman mining) was great as well. I have no doubt that if a coalition of tribes got together (and we know they did) they could do this and more.

We also know that Stonehenge was only part of a vast cultic network spanning several sites even dozens of kilometers away.

[Kitsune]

Isn't that the way they moves giant rocks in Egypt as well

Ancient Egypt was a superpower state for 3000 years, though, we don't even know if Stonehenge builders had anything like a state or how advanced their culture, trade or architecture were.

I was joking that lots of alcohal is probably involved in all cases of getting people to move giant rocks

[Irbis]

They most likely had a good collection of trade networks and culture, given how advanced the cultures that succeeded them were. People nowadays look at them "Oh, they don't have huge temples like the Romans, the savages". But actually, their metalworking was par none and their mining (while lacking the scale of Roman mining) was great as well. I have no doubt that if a coalition of tribes got together (and we know they did) they could do this and more.

We also know that Stonehenge was only part of a vast cultic network spanning several sites even dozens of kilometers away.

Which is what I said? They were undoubtedly advanced, but we don't even have idea how their belief system or culture looked like, or if they were ruled by kings, priests, or semi-democratic system (all 3 options were used by succeeding cultures). I agree due to this people tend to look down at them, I just wish we could know more.

[Thanas]

Which is what I said?

You said none of the sort. You also seem to be of the mistaken idea that I was arguing against you. If I did, I would have quoted you.

[the atom]

Why exactly is the movement of these stones considered such a huge mystery? Isn't it established that people back in those days generally used logs whenever they wanted to move heavy stones from one place to another?

[Simon_Jester]

I must confess that I've never understood this either. We know that people succeeded in moving very large statues with pre-industrial or non-industrial technology in historic times. If you can get together a several hundred man work gang, if you know the principles of leverage, if you have good timber and the materials to make decent ropes, there is really nothing stopping you from hauling around ten to hundred-ton rocks in principle.

It strikes me as requiring a great degree of ignorance to look at a structure made from extremely large stones and say "this could not possibly have been done by humans, it must have been done by giants/wizards/aliens." Why would anyone in the modern era think that?

On the other hand, it is nevertheless interesting to think about the details of how this was done. And no doubt the ancients knew more about the details of moving superheavy rocks without heavy machinery, since for them this was a common occurrence while for us it is a 'mystery.'

But in this respect it is like the "mystery" of the exact composition of Greek fire (we know several ways it could have been done, we just don't know exactly which one), and less like the "mystery" that a modern skyscraper would present to the ancients (who would have literally no idea how some of the construction work was done).

[Napoleon the Clown]

I suspect the part that is most difficult to account for isn't that they moved such big rocks, it's that they moved them so damn far.

[InsaneTD]

And why they did it. They had to have had a reason. We may never know though.

[K. A. Pital]

Can anyone tell me why people are so fascinated with huge rocks? I mean, taking out huge rocks is nothing special - the Romans did it, the Egyptians did it, and now we more or less know how they did it if not in complete detail. A huge and ugly rock barely touched by human hands does not look anachronistic. Doesn't evoke any thoughts about time travellers, aliens or civilizations advanced way ahead of their time.

You know what does? Small-scale stuff. The tiny stuff. Like this pre-Inca stuff:


Holes measured here.

I think that advanced drilling like in the above examples is way more interesting than the Stonehenge, which is not much different from this:

[Welf]

Can anyone tell me why people are so fascinated with huge rocks? I mean, taking out huge rocks is nothing special - the Romans did it, the Egyptians did it, and now we more or less know how they did it if not in complete detail. A huge and ugly rock barely touched by human hands does not look anachronistic. Doesn't evoke any thoughts about time travellers, aliens or civilizations advanced way ahead of their time.

Maybe because we expect more from the Romans or Egyptians. And for us it is less mysterious to see rectangular building planed and executed by disciplined organization since we do the same today. But a few massive rocks set up by an unknown culture with no large cities or (known) kingdoms is something different.
Also, I don't think Britain has much more to offer and the Anglo-Saxon world tends to amplify the awesomeness of their history.

[Pelranius]

There's also been a lot of "Merlin/Satan/Giants did it" with regards to places like Stonehenge and the Mycene ruins in folklore going back to the Middle Ages.