Stonehenge builders familiar with ball bearing technology
November 21st, 2010 - 2:15 pm ICT by IANSLondon, Nov 21 (IANS) Neolithic engineers may have used ball bearings in the construction of Stonehenge.
The same technique that allows vehicles and machinery to run smoothly today could have been used to transport the monument’s massive standing stones more than 4,000 years ago, says a new theory.
Scientists showed how balls placed in grooved wooden tracks would have allowed the easy movement of stones weighing many tonnes.
No one has yet successfully explained how the heavy slabs used to build Stonehenge were shifted from their quarries to Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, reports the Daily Mail.
Some, the ‘bluestones’, weighed four tonnes each, and were brought a distance of 150 miles from Pembrokeshire, Wales.
Attempts to re-enact transporting the blocks on wooden rollers or floating them on the sea have not proved convincing.
The hard surfaces and trenches needed when using rollers would also have left their mark on the landscape, but are missing.
Experts hit on the new idea after examining mysterious stone balls found near Stonehenge-like monuments in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
About the size of a cricket ball, they are precisely fashioned to be within a millimetre of the same size.
This suggests they were meant to be used together in some way rather than individually. The Scottish stone circles are similar in form to Stonehenge, but contain some much larger stones.
To test the theory, researchers from the University of Exeter constructed a model in which wooden balls were inserted into grooves dug out of timber planks.
When heavy concrete slabs were placed on a platform above the balls, held in position by more grooved tracks, they could be moved with ease.
Prof Bruce Bradley, director of experimental archaeology, University of Exeter, said: “The demonstration indicated that big stones could have been moved using this ball bearing system with roughly 10 oxen and may have been able to transport stones up to 10 miles per day.
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- Researchers 1 step closer to solving mystery of famous bluestones of Stonehenge - Feb 24, 2011
- British scientists unravel Stonehenge riddle - Dec 19, 2011
- Ancient wooden version of Stonehenge found in Britain - Jul 22, 2010
- Stonehenge's 'little sister' discovered by archaeologists in England - Oct 03, 2009
- Megaliths similar to Stonehenge found in UK - Apr 10, 2010
- Excavation reveals 2300 BC as date for Stonehenge construction - Sep 22, 2008
- Stonehenge was surrounded by two circular hedges 4,000 years ago - Feb 06, 2010
- Stonehenge ''was a cremation cemetery, not a centre of healing - Oct 10, 2008
- Prehistoric man 'navigated his way across England using crude sat nav' - Apr 20, 2011
- Stonehenge's secrets to be unravelled through laser scanning - Mar 12, 2011
- Creative stone works draw huge crowds at trade fair - Feb 02, 2012
- Mini-Stonehenge found - Oct 06, 2009
- New 'henge-like' monument unearthed at Stonehenge - Feb 02, 2011
- Stonehenge's 'wood version' unearthed - Apr 12, 2009
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