Stonehenge Built With Balls?

Sounds good to me. They said the saracen stones couldn't be moved this way, but all you need to do is spread the weight out more. Sure it would be more work, but you are moving a 45 ton stone.

Drew

I recently saw a TV show about this (NOVA). It was plausible for the small sarsen stones and it explained the existence of the many small round stones around Stonehenge. The demo they did couldn't handle the large 45-ton stones because the wood got crushed and they had to bring in a powerful tractor since people power was insufficient. With a lot more stones, really hard oak, a few oxen, and some levers pushing the stone from behind it might be plausible for the larger stones, too.

R2-D2 and C-3PO are standing on Salisbury Plain, beholding the remains of Stonehenge. C-3PO says, "Just think, R2, of our glorious heritage. They say this was built by the ancient Droids!"

Sounds dubious to me.
Why would you bother carving tree trunks into 3" balls when you could easilly just select 3" diameter saplings and use 'em as rollers?
Unless you were short of trees, which prob wasn't the case...and even if it were, wouldn't you use shorter lengths of tree trunk and make a dual roller and track ststem?
It smacks of yet more bad experimental archeaology to me.

I mean if the guy found a few bits of wood with holes in, would he leap to the conclusion that they were air bearings???

For your homework boys and girls I want you all to list 3 more likely uses for 3" diameter stone balls, a tin of Tuna to the best answer.

Del

The balls were made of stone, not wood. I think you are correct about using saplings if they were only moving one stone, but the saplings would have been pulverized during the process and they would have needed a continuous supply of saplings (or branches) for each stone that was moved. The combination of stone ball bearings and seasoned oak (or fired oak) rails could have been used multiple times.

1. Snowball fights in the summer time when there wasn't any snow.

2. Stone Age version of Rounders/Baseball.

3. Bocce.

The balls were made of stone, not wood.
NO! The stone balls were made of stone... the balls which aren't present at Stonehenge were postulated as possibly being made of wood which accounts for their nonexistence.
Or to sumarise the whole thing is fantasy.
Del

Oh Del, Del, Del - you are just such a stickler for logic.

Just because;

"The balls, Young admitted, have been found near stone circles only in Aberdeenshire and the Orkney Islands (map)—not on Stonehenge's Salisbury Plain."

Which is to buggery away from Stone Henge - you think this "whole thing is fantasy".

Tut, tut, tut - bad Cat!

The only possible scenario I can construct is:-
If you wanted to set up business as an itinerant hengebuilder (KrisDel^TM Henges of Distinction ltd) then it may be worth while manufacturing a large number of stone balls and hardwood track. Then once you've finished you could chuck 'em in the back of the van and drive to the next job.
That would account for the balls being at the location of the last job and not the first.
Del

Maybe they only took their balls (?) and cut new tracks when they got there?

By the way, you are a good lateral thinker Del (it takes one to know one!)

Yeah now it all makes sense!

"The Ring was begun around the year 2500 BCE. There has never been a true excavation of the entire site, so we're a bit vague on dates. By comparison, 2500 BCE places Brodgar significantly later than many similar sites, like Stonehenge."

Probably why they had to build B9055! (an dem other ones)

Del -- Sorry DNRTFA. I based my comment on the Nova show I saw which implied the stone balls were found in the vicinity of Stonehenge. I read the article linked above and see you are correct. The Nova show explained the existence of the stone balls rather nicely; so the discrepancy is annoying. My bad, though.

Do I still get the can of tuna?

I just checked and someone has opened the can...probably to check the integrity of the contents which have misteriously disappeared.
I'll PM you the empty can...
Del

LOL!!

Your name should have been Ubsport!!!

May I be so rude as to ask what your personal interests are in the wonderful USB Port?

Not that I'm after your tuna Dell, but Romans had balls of about this size, that they tended to "cat-a-pult" merrily about the place.

Bigger ones too.

Early observatories used stone balls to pivot the domes - later iron 'cannon balls'.

And there is always Art Heritage

And collecting of interesting things from nature

I think everyone realises that the builders of Stonehenge had balls (3" stone ones?), but do we need to read about it here?

The (unknown) prehistoric culture that resided near Beirut and built the temples of Baalbek did transport stones of 20,000 tons from a quarry 8 km apart!

The Egyptians routinely did transport obelisks of 800 tons over many 100 km.

Some of these removed to Rome and other capitals 3000 years after their first erection and caused considerable trouble to accomplish this task.

There was a big stone of 1600 tons weight now at St.Petersburg and transported there from near Helsinki by order of Peter the Great.

All this was possible, so why not lightweight 50 tons of Stonehenge?

Making balls is easy but if not found with sufficient roundness and very good diameter matching to all other balls used it is not useful to speculate.

I would prefer a speculation that an improvised crane and good gripper did the work, grip turn 180 degrees and lay down the stone again, relocate the crane and iterate.

With 20 to 50 workers and dual equipment this will do easily 100m/hour.

Cranes were known, grippers and rope was known, so what else?

RHABE

Huh? 20,000 tons ≈ 13,000 ft³. So such a stone might be 10' x 13' x 100'? I'll try to look it up, but I have some doubts....

Baalbeck is famed for having the largest hewn stones in the world. The size of the largest stone is close to the the size above quoted at 20.m x 4.5m x 4.3meters however the weight is given as 1200tonnes. It is in a quarry only one mile away.

The largest stones in the temple complex are approx 600 tonnes. It may be significant that the two largest stones (of 1000 tonnes and 1200 tonnes) are still in the quarry. Perhaps they turned out to be too big to move.

I don't think that balls would be good, rolling logs can be guided quite efficiently, but balls would roll every which way!

Xanasax

The test was made with balls in V-grooves, these give pretty good performance,

used in many precision guide-ways.

But preferably with precision balls and hardened balls and raceways.

The combination of natural stone for the balls and wood for the guide-ways is doubtful. The quality of balls and the yield strength of the chosen wood will severely limit the load capacity.

Maybe with some roll-in this will do better.

Without actual data it is impossible to judge.

But if no balls survived then no balls used.

Except the glowing heads of the actors.

RHABE

Balls would be crummy rolling devices on rough or soft ground. Logs would do much better at distributing the load and bridging over low spots.

Of course, we all know it was done by space aliens, who would have been deified.