TomBo
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Re: stones and people
Aug 19, 2003, 21:20
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I was tempted to slightly alter the title of this message, but that'd just be too obvious. I wouldn't worry about the hunger, you'll be fast asleep before U-Knowit!
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nigelswift
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Re: stones and people
Aug 19, 2003, 21:28
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A catamaran arrangement sounds just right. Perhaps, instead of "canoes" just two dirty great oak logs and you could run just their front ends straight into the bank, leaving the remainder still floating. You could drag the cargo and upper raft straight off them without needing to take them out of the water.
That design would be mega stable, ideal for the ocean voyage as well.
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GordonP
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Re: stones and people
Aug 19, 2003, 21:35
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Talking about rafts, pig of a job sailing a raft down the coastal waters of Wales. Sea travel is a bit like flying, only dangerous when near land (mostly anyway).
Proper boats would not have been an impossibility even in the stoneage. The builders of Stonehenge knew about mortice and tenon joints (nothing to do with Morroco) a carpentery joint. For years I thought that boatbuilding required metals, lately I've concluded that the existance of the bluestones on Salisbury Plain screams out "boatbuilders".
PS Don't need a boat to cross a river, use stone support logs and stone fulcrums.
Regards Gordon
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Moth
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Re: stones and people
Aug 19, 2003, 21:48
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Yeah eating camel poo does that to ya...!
love
Moth
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GordonP
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Re: stones and people
Aug 19, 2003, 22:19
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Just sitting here thinking about stoneage boatbuilding. Take a dugout canoe, then another, then another. Place them side by side. Like this.
UUU
With me so far? The left hand peak is the port gunwhale, the right hand peak is the starboard gunwhale. Join them together ( with mortice and tenon joints) than get rid of the peaks inbetween. Now we have a flat bottom boat. OK maybe I am mad, but gosh it's fun.
Regards Gordon
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nigelswift
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Re: stones and people
Aug 19, 2003, 22:51
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Yes you are and yes it is!
I'm still struggling with "Don't need a boat to cross a river, use stone support logs and stone fulcrums" but I think I'll try to get my head round it by morning.
I've a horrible feeling it's all going to end up with me thinking the stones got to Stonehenge via Worcester! ;)
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GordonP
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Re: Stone Shifting
Aug 20, 2003, 05:47
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Hi Four Winds
Been thinking about your cairn rubble idea. You may be right.
This is all guesswork so bear with me. Problem how to sift 20 ton of rubble one mile. Raft of headcarry?
Raft. Pile 20 ton on raft. Take 16 people with levers, one trip one day, job done.
Headcarry. one person total load in basket say 50 lbs Walk one mile with full basket then one mile back with empty basket. 20 trips total in one day = 500lbs. 16 people =8000lbs = 8tons roughly.
Maybe you are right
Regards Gordon
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moey
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Re: Stone Shifting
Aug 20, 2003, 08:07
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Just caught up with this, this morning, PC problems have limited my access.
I like the idea of this, and am impressed by Gordon's research - get out and "do it" that's what I like to see.
A couple of points / queries though.
Maybe, I'm not reading it properly, but I don't really "get" the erecting the stone bit, I see the theory I think, but I'd like to see it work. I'm not sure about the 'crashing' the stone down, firstly it seems too imprecise (think I've just made that one up) too much margin for error especially whe you think that many stones are (or seem to be) very carefully angled towards points. Wouldn't there be a chance of major damage to the stone as it crashed down like that?
My main point though - and I am not trying to in any way to rubbish the theory, just need to clear things in my mind - is that Stonehenge apart, there are relatively few circles that are dressed stone. A rough faced, irregularly shaped stone would be much more difficult to control and navigate into the hole wouldn't it?
On the whole a good theory though, and best of luck with your continuing experiments (try an irregularly shaped one for me will you?)
moey
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nigelswift
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Re: Stone Shifting
Aug 20, 2003, 08:11
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I’d been making similar calculations, based on the feeling that if you’re now giving them (admittedly rather slow) twenty ton rubble lorries they’d surely find a way to use them to their advantage.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t have thought the lorries could be seen as replacing such an inefficient use of labour as single workers carrying 50 lb baskets. Labour may not have been all that cheap and plentiful, and this may have pushed them to find more efficient means of moving baskets (dragging along greased trackways etc) so each workers productivity was much higher. Rubble is infinitely divisible, so you’d naturally find the optimum volume for handling it, perhaps also dependant on the distance and gradient, so there may have been multiple solutions. Sarsens on the other hand are indivisible and if there’s a particular super-efficient method available then that’s what you’d go for.
So I take your point absolutely, FW, that if Gordon’s system implies we should downsize the numbers involved in construction then this would be most applicable to the smaller monuments. This thought is echoed in an article in British Archaeology titled “MegalithicTombs Built by Small Teams” http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba20/ba20news.html
The article seems to confirm the labour efficiency of using Gordon’s levers to raise stones and that building small tombs could have been family affairs, but the poor bloke misses Gordon’s golden shaft of inspiration about what happens if you move the lever sideways! And Aubrey Burl was standing there watching! What a missed opportunity!
Such is the fickle nature of fame.
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nigelswift
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Re: Stone Shifting
Aug 20, 2003, 08:15
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Hi Mooey,
There's some stuff about the problems you raise at the link I've put up on the subthread over there >
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