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Stone Shifting
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nigelswift
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Re: Stone Shifting
Aug 16, 2003, 08:48
Moth, I'm mortified as I was only 25% joking ;)
as the idea of cursuses as racetracks was recently resurrected on the forum and got quite a bit of support. If they could really move stones so well, maybe they would take a sporting pride in it.

Gordon, the more I think about this the better it seems, purely because it’s so simple.

One thing I was wondering:

In your system, the forward motion of the stone is powered by the oarsmen moving the levers backwards. In other words, they were levering it forwards, a bit at a time. As you say, this involves a high degree of synchronizing, and then a gap in proceedings whilst the levers are re-positioned and the exercise is repeated.

It seems quite likely that they’d conclude that the effort would be made even easier if they harnessed men or animals to the front so that they were pulling as well as levering. If they did that, wouldn’t they rapidly realize that it was simplest to rely purely on pulling, and to forget about “forward levering”. After all, what they’d have is a virtually weightless stone, with little friction, on wheels effectively, (if the levers were round-section, as you’re suggesting) and all they’d need to be doing is overcoming the stone’s mass inertia by whipping a few bullocks (shut up, Moth!).

In this scenario, the responsibility of the oarsmen would simply be to continuously press down on the levers (i.e. keep the stone permanently elevated) and at the same time keep walking forward at the same speed as the bullocks, keeping the levers at right angles to the stone. The levers would be continuously rotating in their hands, but I would have thought they could manage quite well. On this basis, in engineering terms the oarsmen would be carrying out a function analogous to a wheel nut!

On this basis, perhaps they could move stones at a steady rate without stopping. They’d only need a continuously replaced track comprising 2 parallel lines of logs, and cross-logs would only be necessary as something to rest the stone on when they’d stopped the run.

Having seen “Strong Men” pulling airliners along I could quite believe they could overcome the stone’s momentum and go at a fair rate, limited only by the speed they could lay the track.

You’re right, your project is just screaming for further practical experiments. I think this site is absolutely full of potential oarsmen and wheel nuts so please bear us in mind!

If you’re serious about an Avebury demo, Dr Mike Pitts is trying to get permission for a stone re-erection next year
http://www.users.myisp.co.uk/~gtour/Dig2003/NtEh.htm
and Pete Glastonbury is also connected I think. Someone here may be able to give you a contact email.

But you MUST keep us informed, as I wanna be a wheel nut!
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Re: Stone Shifting (Moth)
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