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Stonehenge single handedly!

Olowkow

Philosopher
Olowkow
Joined
Oct 29, 2007
Messages
8,230
No need for aliens when constructing Stonehenge, the pyramids, or Easter Island statues.

http://sortingoutscience.net/2007/12/07/casual_friday_--_stonehenge_by_hand/

I just had to share this with those of you who enjoy the beauty of human ingenuity. I have a good friend who moved a huge lathe out of his basement and onto a truck to drive it to the repair facility to have it rebuilt....all by himself. Then, moved it back into his basement. This reminded me of him.

Same guy who built a miniature Gatling gun that fires 300 round/min of .22 bullets.

Any other feats you have found like this?
 
Obviously tough to relate back to the original construction of the monument, but it does graphically demonstrate that the Neolithic builders would have had access to simple but powerful techniques that could have been learned by trial, error, and experience over centuries before being applied on Salisbury plain. I've always thought the aliens/secret tech theories were the height of arrogance - because we high-tech people can't conceive of how it was done with simple tech, it can't be possible. Well, it bloody well was, as this guy shows.
 
Big Les said:
Obviously tough to relate back to the original construction of the monument, but it does graphically demonstrate that the Neolithic builders would have had access to simple but powerful techniques that could have been learned by trial, error, and experience over centuries before being applied on Salisbury plain. I've always thought the aliens/secret tech theories were the height of arrogance - because we high-tech people can't conceive of how it was done with simple tech, it can't be possible. Well, it bloody well was, as this guy shows.
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Absolutely - and the thing people forget, they got the chance to bury their mistakes - we really have no idea how many tries it took to get those stones up. They try one idea - it fails, they try something else.

Even the pyramids have enough "Close but no cigar" examples to satisfy most quality control experts
 
Olowkow said:
Nice rope!:D
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Thanks. That was a moment of pride right there. Of course, if you go to the end of the series of photos, well, that was a bigger moment of pride.

http://house.staticengine.com/FrontYardLanscaping2007/slides/Shrubs003.html

The second rock-wall up, the wooden fence, all those shrubs, the tree, and all the mulch were the end result.

Heh, and I just remembered that when I had friends over to pull out the other fence posts, we made a little Stonehenge of our own:

http://house.staticengine.com/FrontYardLanscaping2007/slides/100_1265.html

That is not me in that photo. :)
 
Good pull, Tiktaalik. Exactly the link I was going to post when I read the thread. Of course, there could be reference to the Coral Castle construction, but most of that is steeped in "mysticism". But still a good story.

My favorite Easter Island story comes from a guy telling the story, where he truly said, "and the strange thing is the island contains no similar rock structures like the shape of the heads."

Uh, they mystically formed and were quarried in that shape? :rolleyes:
 
Actually some new finds coming out of Easter Island have thrown up some interesting finds. The island legends said the statues 'walked' which has always been poo hooed for fairly obvious reasons.

However examination of the bases indicate they where bevel edged intentionally and the statues were walked using a series of ropes, similar to how you would move a large refrigerator and such, by pivoting it on successive edges
 
BenBurch said:
The only part that was unconvincing was the hose to wash out the sand.
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You can probably get away with buckets of water and workers whose safety you don't care about.

The only thing I would have to see is if you have enough space between each of the pillars in stone henge to use the system he had.
 
MG1962 said:
Actually some new finds coming out of Easter Island have thrown up some interesting finds. The island legends said the statues 'walked' which has always been poo hooed for fairly obvious reasons.

However examination of the bases indicate they where bevel edged intentionally and the statues were walked using a series of ropes, similar to how you would move a large refrigerator and such, by pivoting it on successive edges
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That's actually an old theory - I saw a documentary over a decade ago (Chronicle maybe?) that showed how that might have been done.

Personally, I think that whilst reconstructing things inspired by legend can be fun and interesting, it's just as likely that a given legend has no bearing upon reality at all. So the fact that it could be done, + the existence of a legend, doesn't mean that it was done. Ancient people didn't really separate myth from legend, so actually getting the statues to "walk" might not actually lead to, or could even detract from, any new meme along the lines of them actually walking, Godzilla-style, into place.
 
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