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| In 1992 Julian Richards and engineer Mark Whitby, after extensive research, rejected the use of rollers to transport their 45 ton replica stone as impractical. Instead they chose a wooden sledge and a greased track made from substantial Oak beams. A 60m length of track was constructed on a slope of 1 in 20 and great care was taken to make sure the two rails were perfectly level. (The topsoil was removed and the rails were laid directly onto the exposed chalk) In his paper to the British Acadamy Julian freely admitted that had the track been slippy enough zero effort would be required to move the stone down this slope. In the experiment they required 80 men to move the stone downhill, once they had it moving they achieved this at a fast walking pace. To move the stone back up this gentle slope required the entire available workforce of 130 (Julian admitted that had they used animal fat as a lubricant instead modern grease it would have taken 200). Even then they found ot impossible to get the stone moving at first, eventually they used sufficiant manpower from the film crew to "unstick" the stone by bouncing on levers inserted under the sledge. Once the stone was in motion the team was able to drag it back up the track. At this piont the team would have been jubilent if somwhat tired. During the full days experiment the team moved the stone 3 times down the track (requiring little effort) and twice up the track (requiring tremendous effort). In all they moved the stone 120m, in one day, up this very gentle slope. Yet in his paper Julian claimed that had enough track been available they could have achieved a distance of 1k up a slope of 1 in 20. I found this claim incredible, Julian takes no account of the increasing tiredness of his workforce. In 2005 I spoke to some of the Stonehengineers who had spent just 20 minutes dragging our relitively small stone uphill on rollers, the general opinion was that they were fast becoming to tired to continue for much longer. When this factor is taken into account I believe a workforce in excess of 1000 men would be required to move the sarsens up to half a mile in one day. On the island of West Sumba it took 600 to move a large stone (25 tons?) a total of 100 yards in a day. Why was such a large workforce unable to do better? The answer is obvious, after expanding the effort required to move the stone 100 yards they needed a good nights sleep to recover. Building Stonehenge must have been a full-time occupation for an extended period of time whatever the size of the workforce. Yet the people who built it were early farmers, they cleared the forest with stone axes and ploughed the land with wooden sticks, everything they possessed had to be made by hand. Even if the local population and produced enough food, tools, clothes etc in abundance how could they have provided a workforce in excess of 1000 men for any extended period of time? Remember we are thinking of many years not just a few weeks. The only conclusion I can reach is that Stonehenge must have been built by a relitively small workforce. Reply | with quote | Posted by GordonP 13th February 2008ce 09:20 In reply to: Re: Route of the Sarsens. (GordonP) |
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