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Geologists Find Where Some Stonehenge Rocks Came From, Debunking Old Research (cnn.com)
Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from CNN: A team of 12 geologists and archaeologists from across the United Kingdom unveiled research this month that traces some of the prehistoric monument's smaller stones to two quarries in western Wales. The team also found evidence of prehistoric tools, stone wedges and digging activity in those quarries, tracing them to around 3000 BC, the era when Stonehenge's first stage was constructed. It's rock-solid evidence that humans were involved in moving these "bluestones" to where they sit today, a full 150 miles away, the researchers say. "It finally puts to rest long-standing arguments over whether the bluestones were moved by human agency or by glacial action," University of Southampton Archeology Professor Joshua Pollard said in an email. Slashdot reader schwit1 adds: "This leaves the question of how..."
TL;DR It was aliens
No, that's Britain.
Have we learned nothing from the Lord of the Rings: Wizards. That's how the stones were moved.
It's obvious how they were moved.
They were moved by a truck and a crane after being dynamited out of the quarry.
We can still do this today, when everything is going downhill in civilization.
or Fed Ex?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Thomas More. Than man who liked to torture people so that their souls went to heaven? Great role model!
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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
And the reason for this insulting abuse of a whole nation would be...?
Haven't we established that 3000 BC people had figured out rolling large rocks on logs? Had quite possibly figured out the pulley? And just maybe had barges or wagons?
You don't quarry stone unless you already know how to get it where you need it, and humans in 3000 BC had far more 'technology' than we like to remember.
Why are we always so disbelieving that by the time 3000 BC humans had solved a lot of problems and gained a fair bit of knowledge about the world around them?
I've been reading this is the established hypothesis for, IDK, prolly 10 years or more now. There's sure as hell a lot o f"documentaries" and documentaries o NGC/BBC/etal that have been saying that as long as I can remember.
And I am not alone: https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and...
I dunno. The equal sign ("=") was invented by the Welsh mathematician, Robert Recorde, from Tenby, Pembrokeshire.
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I can think of a few uses for Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Have gnu, will travel.
You weren't as uppity as your Scottish cousins?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You can stand up for you country better than that. Beat him with a leek and make him eat it.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I dunno. The equal sign ("=") was invented by the Welsh mathematician,
But the equal sign has always been quite uppity, always butting in on both assignment and comparison.. Far too well to do.
Along with Thomas à Kempis, another believer in a sado-maso diety. Who wouldn't believe with them?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The new parts aren't quoted or are understated.
1. We already knew about the quarries, what we didn't have were the actual tools used. We now have them, including wooden items.
2. We already knew about how they could have moved the stones, they're smaller and lighter than sarsens, we didn't know the route. We now know some were transported overland.
3. We didn't know if the stones were quarried specifically for Stonehenge or for a circle in Wales that was dismantled and recycled. We now know it was the former.
The real mystery is why people make a mystery of the known, when the unknown is potentially more interesting.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I thought they were hewn into the living rock?
Previous iterations of the stonehenge were made from straw. But that one was blown away, so then they made the next one out of wood. That one also blew away.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Space aliens obviously. Or more mundanely, by a lot of motivated people hauling a bunch of rocks a really long way on logs or a sled of some kind.
You left out the postal service. If they had used the postal service, the stones would have been stolen or thrown away halfway there.
One guy can move big blocks of stone by hand.
This construction worker figured it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Just use the hardness of stone in your favor.
He places the rock on 2 small stones, balances it on one, then rotates and lets it down on the other. And there's rolling logs, etc.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
The M4?
sag
Maybe an anthropologist can explain why 'moving stones' around was such a demonstration of faith for the ancients. Stonehenge, Carnac, later Pyramids, Moai, possibly the earliest demonstration of group 'engineering', but why? Or maybe these are their only achievements that haven't been erased by time.
That's more of a second career. Equals sign as assignment didn't feature in the very earliest computer languages. Typically they had syntax along the lines of "set x to 0" or "transfer 0 to X" or some kind of symbol carrying that sense, like this: "0 -> x" (note reverse of now conventional order).
But one language made an odd decision. In FORTRAN you'd say "n = 0" to mean "assign 0 to integer variable n", and instead used the text ".EQ." to represent the equality predicate. And it turned out FORTRAN was *very* influential.
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Have you heard welsh spoken. Makes klingon seem pronounceable.
Nullius in verba
Welsh??? Klingon??? What is the difference??? They both sound like someone hocking up loogies...
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Porch pirates would have stolen them
The next question isn't "how?", it's "why?" Presumably, there were lots of other places much closer where the stones could have been quarried.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
A napkin with a crude diagram, annotated with the text 18"
if it was Fedex, they would have been broken 5 ways.
Have you seen the state of Stonehenge?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Fortran eh? That's a good nugget to tuck away.
My own entry into the computer world was the Apple 2 line.
Assembly had "LDA X" in its many addressing modes, and basic had "LET X = Y"
But basic was a relative latecomer even at the end of the 70s so always assumed it wasn't the first language to do that.
Tom Jones. Maybe not useful, but entertaining. (He's actually a pretty good blues singer - with a great voice).
Or John Cale. Or Dylan Thomas. Or... John Cale singing Dylan Thomas.