Stonehenge Builders Said to Use Giant Wicker Baskets to Roll Massive Stones

Rolling a 4-ton stone some 200 miles from a Welsh quarry to the site that the world now knows as Stonehenge would have been a daunting enough challenge for even the hardiest of Neolithic-era laborers. There have been any number of explanations offered - the most recent coming last week when a University of Exeter archeology student suggested that wooden ball bearings balls placed in grooved wooden tracks would have facilitated the movement of the massive stone slabs.

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Engineer Garry Lavin, who also happens to be a former BBC presenter, is making the case that giant wicker baskets were deployed by the locals to roll the boulders all that way.

"I always thought that dragging these huge stones was physically impossible because of the friction on the surface," Lavin told the Daily Mail. "The key thing is the technology was always there around them....Woven structures were everywhere at the time, there are even wells which they have discovered were full with woven basketwork. It's just taking that technology and using it in a new way. It is not without some foundation. It was staring us in the face the whole time."

Source: www.cbsnews.com...

The last line says it best: Staring us in the face the whole time.

You have to admit, the argument is strong and just as plausable as any others being floated around-even being transported telepathically by aliens...

Anyway, someone wrote in a post to me recently about: Do Not Under-estimate the Ability of Humans.
I have to say this theory makes the most sense to me though. You? Thoughts?

PS. I find it a tab odd that he didn't test his theory before the article was written/published.

Hmmm I don't know, wouldn't a 1000 pound stone crush wicker? I have sat in a few wicker chairs before and the strength of them was not very impressive.

reply to post by anon72


OK... How did they stack and erect them? "With Wicker cranes?" Don't see this as being the "ANSWER" of the Stone Henge Mystery... "Sorry.."
Good luck with that though...

reply to post by Allred5923



maybe they could have buried the previously uprighted stones in a big mound of dirt, then rolled them on top and dug the whole structure out.

What if Stonehenge was never made humans and it existed long before we were on this earth? What about if it was created by an inter dimensional intelligent race, that utilized these monuments as energy nodes to transport themselves through our universe?

reply to post by Allred5923


How did you go from them being moved a couple hundred miles by this method to them being put in place the same way or the answer to the mystery?

Look at the next reply after yours. Simple enough.

reply to post by sQeptiQ


So a stargate then? nah it would require much more tecnology to be impicated into the design,/ As said above the wiker roller balls would be a good way to transport the things in those day, but still how did they get them up with such precision?

Originally posted by TedHodgson
reply to post by sQeptiQ

 

So a stargate then?

nah it would require much more tecnology to be impicated into the design

Yes, such as utilizing the earths rotation resource as fueled with an electric magnetic core to power up the vehicle and the alignment of the sun to redirect trajectory to an intended destination in the universe (maybe another pyramid or stone henge)




Think of this more evolved race to be as organized as like Comast technicians to installing fiber optics outside your block.

Honestly I really do wish we had a time machine and then we can go back and get real concrete evidence mind you these people must have been determined and they were probably very strong to move these stones maybe hundreds a miles?

S+F

This model is very similar to the "petrie rocker" used in Egypt.

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Four of these tied around a block would also allow it to roll.

Don't underestimate the strength of wicker, it can be incredibly strong when weaved together. They probably did roll stone blocks up earthen ramps to create the lintels at Stonehenge.

Lex parsimoniae, the simplest solution is often the correct one!

I dunno. I'm having a hard time buying into that theory (that and the round wooden balls put in troughs.) The reason I doubt it is that if they had such technology (efficient and quick) then why didn't they use the same thing to build other similar structures.

The scarcity of structures of equal complexity suggests that this was a very unusual effort and not something they could easily do on a daily basis.

(sorry for the academic tone. I've been writing papers. I always sound like I swallowed a dictionary after that.)

Actually this theory has a lot going for it. Here's what I like about it - other ancient cultures contemporary to this time frame were also using reeds (and other woody plants) as the basis for all their building needs. If we consider weaving wicker into stronger shapes as compared to weaving reeds in the lower latitudes, we can draw these parallels;

A Sumerian reed house;
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Modern "marsh Arab" (Iraq) reed house, often referred to as a 'mudhif'; this style of building hasn't changed in thousands of years;
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Interior view; the reed columns can be massive and very strong, some mudhifs can hold several hundred people with ceilings reaching upwards of 50-60 feet.
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An Egyptian 'papyrus' column;
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The earliest columns in use in Egypt were made of reed, when they began carving them out of stone the reed columns remained the basis for their styling. Stone columns representing bundles of reeds were widely used in the Step Pyramid Complex of Djoser for instance. They made columns from papyrus, reed, or palms/palmettes (Charlesmiller.co.uk - Reed Columns).

You can see the wide variety of 'reed' columns carved by the Egyptians here;
Illustrated Egyptian Columns

The point of all this is that early cultures became master at working with reeds, which would be very similar to wicker. Neolithic Britons would have been familiar with wicker as a building tool. Need a hut? Wicker. Need a basket? Wicker. Need to transport something? Wicker. I think for these people every problem had a solution - wicker!

How did they move large bundles of wicker? They Rolled it. Not too dissimilar to how modern farmers roll very large bales of hay. It's only natural to want to roll something rather than pick it up and carry it. The gathered wicker was likely in a bundle that was perfectly suited for rolling. Someone looked at it and thought it would be ideal for moving heavier weights, just bundle it in wicker and roll it!

When it comes to Stonehenge;
We know they moved the stones, and from where.
We know they didn't build roads to facilitate moving these stones.
We know small rollers (wooden or stone "ball bearings") can't roll across a soft surface.

We may never know exactly how they lifted the lintels into place (levers or earthen ramp), but as far as transporting these blocks from a considerable distance away, wrapping them in wicker seems as plausible a theory as any. And the more wicker you swaddle the block in, the easier it becomes to roll! This method might even explain fording rivers, place some stone in the river bed to create a bit of a causeway, even if it's submerged, the wicker bundle would roll on across - the upper portion would have been ideal for hooking with a tow rope connected to draft animals.

As you say Byrd, this project was an unusual effort - for their more mundane building projects, they could have just stuck with wicker and wood. Each of the earliest civilizations mastered their most abundant building material on hand, and it wasn't stone or brick. For the Sumerians and Egyptians it was reed, for the Neolithic Britons it must have been wicker.

The only thing that is missing is how did they roll them.
They would have to clear a path the size of a highway to roll all the stones from where they came from to where they are going. The ground would need to be hard but not hard enough to crush the wicker. To soft and the stones would sink remember they are several tonnage, If this did happen and it took 10 to 20 or more years to move the stones.

Would you not think that there would be a road that would have bin carved out and still in place to this day ?
If it was this simple then there would also be a path that showed where the stones were rolled through.

This path should be visible through aerial photography even after all of this time that has passed.

Thats what I think.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Excellent reply!!!

So informative. One of the main reasons I love ATS. The knowledge at hand is just mind boggling.

STAR

I love this debate and discussions. Byrd chiming in and so nicely. Yours. The next one.

Thinkers......

reply to post by jsettica


You also bring up one heck of a point. The path of movement.

Gotta hit the Pause button on this one-to think about it. Thanks.

STAR also.

Thanks to you and all for the input. Loving it.

having the quarry stone rolled up in blankets of woven reeds would sure have helped in transporting
these large stones from the quarry over there in Wales news.bbc.co.uk...
replacing the need for higher tech , like docks and transport barges that did not get replaced
as time wore on. Which required a lot of manual and thinking labor involved for a one time project
to not be incorporated into the society infrastructure.


one can develop the idea that the wicker reed mats were somewhat bouyant, and only needed
several timbers on each side to create a 'hammock' for the wrapped stone to be cradeled in
so as to transport the stones to an accomodating beach & then rolled to the Salisbury Plain site


good find


CNN CBS news

reply to post by anon72


I can say that there are some very strong forces to be delt with ...through rope/cordage/bambo...

Not sure i like how this person is tryiny to apply it though....
I myself would be much more immpressed if it was done along the lines of an old wine or sugar press...thus creating 20+tons of force thru a few hudred horse hairs...or twisted cordage.....bamboo makes fair cordage..

reply to post by jsettica

They would have to clear a path the size of a highway to roll all the stones from where they came from to where they are going. The ground would need to be hard but not hard enough to crush the wicker. To soft and the stones would sink remember they are several tonnage, If this did happen and it took 10 to 20 or more years to move the stones.

Would you not think that there would be a road that would have bin carved out and still in place to this day ?
If it was this simple then there would also be a path that showed where the stones were rolled through.

This path should be visible through aerial photography even after all of this time that has passed.

I disagree, once wrapped in enough wicker you wouldn't need a road, just open terrain. Think of the wicker matting as a balloon tire, useful fro driving over sand (or even the moon). A regular tire would only get mired, whereas the balloon tire is wide and soft enough to distribute the load over a much greater area. Small rollers would sink into the earth, which is why they wouldn't prove useful except on a hard paved road. Wheeled carts would have made more of a rut than something like these. Whatever trail or path left by moving these has been erased in the ensuing millennium, which perhaps indicates the mode of transportation had little impact on the terrain.

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Like a modern hay bale, having a block ensconced in wicker would have rolled over even rough terrain, and the bigger it's radius, the easier it would have handled obstacles. As a plus, the wicker wrapping would have given you plenty of hand holds. A stone block is not an easy thing to get a grip on.

So.....4 ton block of stone, 8,000 lbs, allow 200 people - thats 40Lbs apiece to drag - not that much at all.

They could have made a cradle from two longish tree trunks, lashed side by side, each - no more than a foot wide at the base put the stone on top - and hauled the whole thing on ropes - sounds pretty easy to my, why all the 'mystery'


Now some of the stones in Brittany or Baalbeck - theres a challenge!

After watching the History Channel last night (UFO hunters and Ancient Aliens) I am back to thinking the humans that were here at the time had help. End of story-I wished.

What kind of help I can't say but Humans most likely didn't built this, or other great works, by themselves.