Pre-Biblical Archaeology

[Minimalist]

Please forgive my rambles.)

It's a message board.....you're supposed to ramble!


The thing with the trebuchet is that it used a couple of tons of counterweight to throw a stone weighing around 130 pounds. If you were concerned with "lift" instead of "distance" I suppose the idea could be adapted. The Romans used counterweights for elevators in the Colosseum but the military adaptation was learned from the Chinese much later on.


Levers? What is it made out of? Steel is a modern creation and a lever made of a soft metal would be of less use than one made of wood. I suppose one could raise part of a stone, prop it up and go to another side and raise that. Sooner or later, though, you reach a point where you also have to raise the fulcrum and it must be on a stable platform as well. I can't see the method being very fast or efficient.

Creating roads implies a level of civilization which archaeologists swear did not exist. True, cattle going back and forth between pastures and corral would pack the ground down but are you going to drive cattle 250 miles to the Preseli Mountains just to create a road? Besides, as you say the surface would be dry and hard.....when it wasn't raining....which it does a lot in Britain. The Egyptians weren't big on roads, either, but they did build some around their ceremonial sites....but nowhere else.

A lot of men, digging, can accomplish quite a bit in a short time, no question about that. A Roman legion would dig a moat and build a fortified camp after every march. While "Woodhenge" is impressive one can certainly see the ease with which it could be constructed. The same cannot be said for Baalbek and Sachsayhuaman. "Seahenge" looks like every other stone circle in Britain and the purpose for them is obscure, to say the least. Just using logic it would seem that the more of them there are the less likely they are to be religious. If they are everywhere there is nothing special about them so why should the gods go to them?

My gut feeling is that archaeology either has it wrong about the level of civilization in pre-historic Britain or they have it wrong about the need for such a civilization to organize a major building project. Right now, I'm leaning towards the former.

[Beagle]

Guys, I'm not remotely an engineer. Like you I've read about and watched various demonstrations on TV about moving large stones.

But the nagging feeling I have is that it just doesn't ring true. If anyone would just make an experimental attempt to move a stone as heavy as one of the trilithon stones at Baalbek - using the materials at hand for the time - then he/she would really be doing a service. Right now I'm not leaning either way Mini.

Stan, as we spoke before about your website, you seem to love the outdoors. I just got home from camping out in some of our local forests.
There's just no better medicine. About eight years ago I completed one of those non-credit courses at the University of Tennessee and got my Masters Gardener certificate. Believe me, if you've been a gardener for a long time - you won't learn anything.

[Minimalist]

It has been tried and they have failed without even attempting to move any really large stones.

Remember, Lehner's obelisk project couldn't even get the stone out of the ground let alone move it.

[Beagle]

Yeah, I know, but to me those seemed like rinky-dink attempts. Let's imagine the resources that a powerful ruler might be able bring to the picture. MANY men with lots of strong ropes. Or whatever.

I don't think I've seen a study or experiment that examines the real hard core physics of the problem. Where are the engineers and the physicists?
This is 2006 and school children are still learning this 1950's movie stuff.

[Minimalist]

Regardless of how many men are available there would seem to be a practical limit of how many could work on a given stone without getting in each other's way.

[Beagle]

Yes, not to mention the strength of the "ropes".

[stan]

Beagle and Minimalist,
I give you both credit for saying "I don't know." Often that is the wisest position, although I am constitutionally almost unable to say it!!

BUt, of course, I don't know how the Ballbekians built the Trilithon, or how stonehenge or the Pyramids were built.

As I said before, you've got several mechanical steps:
Quarrying,
Transportation,
Fitting
And lifting (Mini's addition}

For each of these steps, there would have to be different skills, different
specializations. So suggesting leverage for parts of the process doesn't seem far fetched, although it can't account for everything.
But I believe that whatever processes were used followed the laws of physics and probably employed some adaptations and combinations of
simple machines.

Minimalist, maybe they didn't care about efficiency in those old days.
In china in modern times big work gangs pulled barges up the rivers by ropes. The Levees of the Mississippi were built by mules and men.
(By the way, some folks say the levees are the largest man-made structure on earth.

As far as getting the bluestones to Salisbury Plain, don't you agree there are two choices: by land or by sea? And if they did it by land, it took
a lot of planning, and no doubt some clearing away of obstacles, some
minimal road maintenance? You said above that the Neolithians were not "supposed" to be able to build roads, but you can see how merely
ditching the sides would improve the ground for travel.

I seem to recall that above said there was agreement that rolling logs could not have been used under the bluestones, but why not? There must have been plenty of trees in Britain 4000 years ago. That would beat dragging them.

In Seahenge, Pryor pointed out that certain areas such as Salisbury Plain were highly concentrated with neolithic and bronze age wooden and stone structures. He thinks that the landscape itself was sacred, and that's why the concentration of burials and various earthworks. This is a nuance I have not heard from anyone else. Think of it this way: in a given cemetery, even today, there may be thousands of graves.




http://www.stonehenge-avebury.net/Illus ... susmap.jpg

[Minimalist]

He thinks that the landscape itself was sacred, and that's why the concentration of burials and various earthworks.

And, Stan, I have an almost 'constitutional' reaction whenever everyone tries to ascribe every facet of human behavior to ritual and religion. No one knows what the earthworks were for but I can think of lots of reasons for them that have nothing to do with religion (defense, communal living, extended-family homesteads, etc) and it certainly does not seem odd that if there were human habitations there would also have been cemeteries nearby. Most cultures that practice burial do not keep the graves in the backyard but neither do they put them on the far side of the moon. It is just not that outrageous to have cemeteries near villages. Certainly not to the point that one has to postulate that the entire region was some sort of sacred precinct.

Secondly, you seem to be coming down on the side which suggests that archaeology does not give proper credit for the existence of a civilization in Britain at the time. I don't know if you have ever tried to get a committee of volunteers to do anything but it is a lot easier if you can hold a gun to someone's head and say "you do this!".

Unless there was some presently unknown hierarchy it just seems inconceivable that such a project could be organized across such distances and with so many independent or at least quasi-independent clan leaders. If this was a pre-civilized, pre-agrarian region they would not have the surplus of labor and food which would have been needed to get the job done, not to mention the fact that this effort took place over an immense span of time. Who was the driving force to keep the project going?

There was a special on moving the stones by water on National Geographic or something. They lashed two dugout canoes together, and they may have used a few cheats to get the stone aboard (I can't remember) but when they finally did the stone pushed the boats down to the point where they had about 4 inches of freeboard area above the waterline. This was in a calm bay and they blithely stated that they could paddle (with space for about 4 rowers!) across the open sea and deliver them to Salisbury. If so, plenty of them sunk and they should still be sitting there on the bottom of the sea. Maybe some divers should go have a look?

[stan]

I'm not able to argue with you further about how many of the sites were "sacred." Check out Pryor's book some time. It has alot of interesting details. He is a field archaeologist and was in charge of the excavation of Seahenge. (He thinks the circular woodehenges were not dwellings, but ceremonial structures, whereas the remmants of houses he found
were rectangular.)

In reference to the building of stonehenge, you seem to be defending the
view that the early Britons were incapable of doing it. But that is manifestly false, unless someone else did it...and who would that be?
So why not speculate abut how? Eventually someone will hit on the answers. I don't think the results will be bizarre. Surprising, interesting, but not bizarre.

Of Stonehenge, the "Atlas of Archaeology" (Dorling Kindersley) says,
"A ring of 57 Aubrey Holes (used for cremation burials) - dating to c. 3000 bc - are just inside the ditch. The stones were put up from 2400 BC onward. The larger stones are sarsen, a local quartz sandstone......
There are also smaller bluestones from Wales set up in a circle and horse -shoe withing the other settings...."

So there's the sacred angle in the burials.
Then, the bigger stones are local. Since the bluestones are smaller, it doesn't seem so far fetched that somebody could move them to Salisbury Plain.
Most megalithic monuments in europe are made of unshaped stones, but
Stonehenge is made of shaped stones, so there are still the issues of
quarrying, cutting, and lifting.

How about Doug or RK from across the poind "weighing in" on this one?
I admit my "knowledge" of this is pretty thin.

[Minimalist]

In reference to the building of stonehenge, you seem to be defending the
view that the early Britons were incapable of doing it.

Archaeology claims that there was no civilization in Britain with the requisite skills to organize a project like this. But, as you say, there it sits.

My gut reaction is that answer will turn out to be incorrect and there was some overlord with the 'stones' (pardon the pun) to pull this off.

Of course, I have no proof of that so it remains a matter of speculation.

[Beagle]

[img][img]http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h298/LL3850/th_12-0302.jpg[/img]

Click to enlarge.

This fellow is called the "idol" at Tiahuanaco. Interestingly he is holding a bound book in his left hand.

That alone tells us a great deal about the level of civilization that built the megalithic structures there.

[stan]

How do you know that's a book?

[Beagle]

Thank you Stan for keeping me on the "straight and narrow". I can't seem to break the habit of posting without provenance.

When I read your reply I did a quick reference check and came up with Von Daniken. I'll retract the whole post before I source him.

I remember it from a long time ago and this idol is supposed to represent the God Virachoca, and he holds a knife (or staff) in one hand and a book in the other. He has been called the "messenger"

I will find reference tonight or withdraw the post. Thanks again.

[Minimalist]

Your question to Stan reminded me that Hancock had mentioned objects in the hands of idols at Tiahuanaco. Hancock calls them "unidentifiable" objects in the caption of a photo, however, something else caught my eye.
He quotes the record of a Spanish visitor who was told by the Indians that "the stones had been lifted miraculously off the ground, "they were carried through the air to the sound of a trumpet."

Ridiculous, of course......except the stones at Giza and Nan Madol were also said to have flown through the air.

[Beagle]

The only thing I would wonder about there is the translation from the native tongue. Especially the word "flew" or "flown"