Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: Prior to researching this episode, what what would occupy your mind?
Speaker 1: What visuals would would stream into your consciousness? When someone
Speaker 1: uttered the words stone Hinge, spinal tap, Yeah, of course
Speaker 1: you big spinal tap fan form Back in the day,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I was a big spinal tap fan
Speaker 1: that just like everybody else, you know, that's permeated the
Speaker 1: fabric of the culture that I experienced. So for me, Stonehenge, yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely spinal tap. But also you know this sort of
Speaker 1: mysterious groupings of rocks in the hinter land and with
Speaker 1: spinal tape referring to a particular scene right where they're
Speaker 1: there's dancing, there's dancing, there's a stage scene. But there
Speaker 1: also is some um, some stone Hinge philosophy flying out
Speaker 1: with some of the members of the band who are
Speaker 1: talking about the reason for its existence. And that is
Speaker 1: kind of the big question, um that we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into in this pair of episodes. What is Stonehenge like?
Speaker 1: Why is it there? How is it built? These are
Speaker 1: all these these mysteries that that's sort of a swirl
Speaker 1: around it, and it's easy to sort of stand outside
Speaker 1: of the discussion of those mysteries and just sort of
Speaker 1: pick up contact information and contact ideas about it. And
Speaker 1: I feel like that's what I've done mostly throughout my
Speaker 1: life is I've never really been that interested in Stonehenge,
Speaker 1: so I've only just sort of picked up little bits
Speaker 1: here and there. I've certainly never been there, and I've
Speaker 1: just heard things about UFOs, about aliens and it never
Speaker 1: really bought into that. But that's just kind of the
Speaker 1: coloring that the subject has taken on. For me. It's
Speaker 1: just sort of an abstract, uh collage of UFOs and
Speaker 1: ancient aliens and pagan priests like sacrificing goats and go down.
Speaker 1: I don't know why goats are so involved in it
Speaker 1: for me, but but yeah, just sort of a general
Speaker 1: vision of that kind of stuff without me ever really
Speaker 1: thinking all that much. Well, what we're gonna try to
Speaker 1: do today is we're gonna talk about so the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts of Stonehenge because we can't really understand the
Speaker 1: meaning of it or with all these theories about why
Speaker 1: it exists in the first place, without actually looking at
Speaker 1: the building of it, which is in itself fascinating. So again,
Speaker 1: think about this megalith structure and this mysterious pile of rocks,
Speaker 1: and mostly people kind of came up with, as you say,
Speaker 1: these sort of theories of it. Could be aliens, it
Speaker 1: could be uh, you know, a celestial observatory. But in
Speaker 1: order to really get to the meat of it, you
Speaker 1: have to sit there and say, how in the world
Speaker 1: was this erected in the first place. It's insane. And
Speaker 1: before we get into this sort of bird's eye view
Speaker 1: of the complete structure, what it would have looked like,
Speaker 1: and it's heyday. I wanted to mention that Stonehenge finally
Speaker 1: has its own visitor center. Oh really cold? That long?
Speaker 1: That long? I mean it has something like a million
Speaker 1: visitors a year. No visitor center. Well it's which means
Speaker 1: no bathrooms, I'm assuming. Yeah, and I'm thinking, Pheinge, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking. You can just squat behind the behind
Speaker 1: the stones, Yeah, Papa squat hinge. Alright, So the basics,
Speaker 1: where is it? Obviously it's in the United Kingdom, it is.
Speaker 1: It is in the plains of Salisbury, England, and we'll
Speaker 1: get more to why it actually is probably at that
Speaker 1: specific location. But it's a nice sort of like grassy
Speaker 1: looking area if you look at all the photos, and
Speaker 1: of course it's circled by highways because some people will
Speaker 1: complain the monument just hasn't had enough respect over the
Speaker 1: centuries for people to understand that perhaps it's it means
Speaker 1: much more to us than we realize about these sort
Speaker 1: of life and death rituals and what it means to
Speaker 1: be humans. But instead here you have this little byway
Speaker 1: cutting through around it. Yeah, for the longest it was
Speaker 1: just kind of a big stones It really went until
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century or so people started really getting a
Speaker 1: little more serious about trying to figure out what it meant,
Speaker 1: what it meant, how it was built, and and really
Speaker 1: giving it the importance that it's due. Yeah, alright, so
Speaker 1: let's give a little view of it. In its final form.
Speaker 1: Stonehenge had a path leading to a circular ditch, creating
Speaker 1: a bank of earth. This is the hinge part, by
Speaker 1: the way, So if you hear that word hinge, it's
Speaker 1: referring to this sort of circular structure that's made. And
Speaker 1: if you pass the heelstone, and you would have noticed
Speaker 1: a ring of fifty six pits just within the ditch
Speaker 1: and in the circumference of it. And these are like
Speaker 1: post hole ditches, like a little round ditches right exactly,
Speaker 1: but they're empty. At this point we'll get to why
Speaker 1: that is. Two stone pillars would have flanked the entrance
Speaker 1: and a sarsen circle. These sarsen stones composed of these
Speaker 1: huge upright stones about eighteen feet high and seven feet thick.
Speaker 1: They were set in an outer ring about a hundred
Speaker 1: feet across. Now today only seventeen of these megalists are standing,
Speaker 1: and you have a few ten and a half foot
Speaker 1: lintels spanning the tops of these. At one point they
Speaker 1: had um I believe they were called triathons. Five of
Speaker 1: these triathons at the center. There are only three of
Speaker 1: them right now. Now. Within this was a horseshoe of
Speaker 1: bluestones around a pillar known as at that time an altarstone,
Speaker 1: because it was thought that this perhaps is where a
Speaker 1: sacrifice would have happened, where would have been cut exactly,
Speaker 1: And then a banked path would have led from Stonehenge
Speaker 1: to the river Avon. Yes, and that's important to note too,
Speaker 1: that it is adjacent to a river, and that's going
Speaker 1: to be more and more important as we we get on.
Speaker 1: But in the same way that highways enable humans to
Speaker 1: visit it today, proximity to a river would have been
Speaker 1: important in Newly at the times. Yeah, because it was
Speaker 1: thought that around a tenth of the population would have
Speaker 1: actually traveled here to Stonehenge for various reasons that we'll
Speaker 1: get into later. So this wasn't just a sort of
Speaker 1: as we think of it as a drive by tourist attraction.
Speaker 1: This was that this was a destination. This is where
Speaker 1: you went. Yeah, this was sort of like the first
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, rising from the landscape. You know, so out
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere. If you build it, people
Speaker 1: will come. That's another movie, but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But no, the comparison to Las Vegas is very apt
Speaker 1: because we're talking about on a very simple level, man
Speaker 1: made structures that are rising above the landscape and it's
Speaker 1: really today that's nothing, but it's but it's interesting to
Speaker 1: think back to a to a neolithic world and imagine
Speaker 1: the power of that. I mean, really you have to
Speaker 1: you have to think of like the monoliths and in
Speaker 1: in a two thousand and one to kind of get
Speaker 1: the same sort of power. Yeah, and let's talk about
Speaker 1: what it might have been like five thousand years ago
Speaker 1: during this Neolithic age. We're talking about before wheeled vehicles,
Speaker 1: before the use of metals and tools were widespread. Um,
Speaker 1: but you did have the stone axe here. This is
Speaker 1: this is in full force and people use it to
Speaker 1: clear forces and and shape the timbers of their homes.
Speaker 1: We're talking about small settlement that are scattered and people
Speaker 1: who are keeping livestock and they move with their herds
Speaker 1: and they raise barley and wheat. So um. One picture
Speaker 1: that comes out of this is that this is these
Speaker 1: are people who have a lot of resources in terms
Speaker 1: of food, and so we know that one of their
Speaker 1: basic needs are being met. So it would make sense
Speaker 1: that they begin to really focus on other things beyond,
Speaker 1: like perhaps what Stonehenge means to them, and you know,
Speaker 1: is it this burial ground and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: Because as well go forward, you'll see that Stonehenge was
Speaker 1: a mega project. Certainly for these people, this was a megaproject.
Speaker 1: And you have to have space in one's life to
Speaker 1: do that. You have to have certain needs, have to
Speaker 1: be net. You know, it's like taking on an enormous
Speaker 1: hobby in your life. If you're gonna, say, build a
Speaker 1: ship in a bottle, you probably want to wait till
Speaker 1: the house is a little calm, you know, till they
Speaker 1: at least some of the kids are old enough to
Speaker 1: not break it or demand all of your spare energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this would be like the Neolithic people's me time or
Speaker 1: their yoga time. They probably would have uh devoted it
Speaker 1: to this. And I wanted to read this great quote
Speaker 1: and I were talking about this earlier. It's um it's
Speaker 1: from Colin Richards. He's a professor of World prehistory history
Speaker 1: archaeology at the University of Manchester, and he says Stonehenge
Speaker 1: is an expenditure of labor on a grand scale. It's
Speaker 1: easy for us to forget that these people were creating
Speaker 1: something which had never been created before. It's a bit
Speaker 1: like their own Space program. Yeah, and that inevitably brings
Speaker 1: me back to our conversations with Neil de grasse Tyson,
Speaker 1: who spoke about the actual Space program and its existence
Speaker 1: as a megaproject on scale with something like Stonehenge was
Speaker 1: something like the Pyramids. It's something like uh, the Great
Speaker 1: Wall of China, and you have to act yourself. What
Speaker 1: motivates people to do that sort of thing. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's a great point that you make, because if
Speaker 1: you're talking about the space program, then you were talking
Speaker 1: about generations of people who are trying to move this
Speaker 1: agenda forward. If you were talking about the Neolithic period
Speaker 1: in Stonehenge, then you are talking about five thousand years Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a fifteen hundred year period in when
Speaker 1: Stonehenge was built in three phases. And moreover, you were
Speaker 1: talking about these uh pine posts initially being erected at
Speaker 1: that site ten thousand, five hundred years ago, so that
Speaker 1: long ago people had an idea of what this site
Speaker 1: might mean to them and what it could become. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we'll get more into the meaning as we we progress,
Speaker 1: but again, we really need to to lay the groundwork
Speaker 1: about the construction of it and the physical characteristics of
Speaker 1: it to truly appreciate it. Yeah, and and just to
Speaker 1: give everybody context to this is not the only hinge
Speaker 1: hanging around in in the UK. There are about a
Speaker 1: thousand other stone circles that can be found um, and
Speaker 1: a lot of timber circles too. In fact, you have
Speaker 1: some timber circles which may have reached fifteen ft high,
Speaker 1: and so these sort of monuments could have been a
Speaker 1: burial ground for the dead, or it could have been
Speaker 1: families prominent families in those areas, just raising this, uh,
Speaker 1: the these monuments to themselves essentially. But Stonehenge is different
Speaker 1: in this way because again it's drawing people from all
Speaker 1: over the area as opposed to just being this localized phenomenon. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
Speaker 1: back more on Stone. All Right, we are back, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this ultimate remodeling project undred
Speaker 1: years in the making. And if anybody is interested in
Speaker 1: looking at this in detail, you can check out the
Speaker 1: English Heritage Stonehenge site. And these are actually the people
Speaker 1: who are responsible for bringing the visitor center or visitor
Speaker 1: center to fruition. But they have some really great information
Speaker 1: about what this construction might have looked like, what would
Speaker 1: have been built first. Yeah, this is a this is
Speaker 1: really key and it's so certainly something that I feel
Speaker 1: like you don't pick up on when you're just sort
Speaker 1: of doing the sort of usual pop culture absorption of Stonehenge. Infoe.
Speaker 1: You just think, oh well, at some point, some dudes, odd, hey,
Speaker 1: let's erect some stones, let's build this shape for whatever purpose.
Speaker 1: And they just did it, not realizing that what you're
Speaker 1: seeing is um is a design that that evolves over time,
Speaker 1: the construction that takes ages to complete. Yeah, and again
Speaker 1: we're talking about the sort of technology that they have
Speaker 1: available to them at that time. We're talking about antlers
Speaker 1: to dig ditches with, and um, these hammerstones that they
Speaker 1: would have held in their hands to try to actually
Speaker 1: shape the stones and to cut down timber and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. Because yeah, they got the stones there,
Speaker 1: and then you still had to to to work on
Speaker 1: them to give them in to just the desired a
Speaker 1: correct shape, and then to make sure they're fitting in
Speaker 1: with the other stones. Oh yeah, we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in a second. To this tongue and groove. It's amazing
Speaker 1: to look at and say, oh, I cannot believe that
Speaker 1: this was constructed during that time period. And you start
Speaker 1: to think about the depth and breadth of that effort
Speaker 1: over over so many, you know, thousands of years, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. So okay, T Dred years ago, you get
Speaker 1: this timber post put up that to say X marks
Speaker 1: the spot. Now, if you look at about three thousand BC,
Speaker 1: you'll see that that hinge that's when that was beginning
Speaker 1: to be built. Again, we're talking about the antler. They're
Speaker 1: scraping this away, and that earth was piled up to
Speaker 1: make this inner and outer bank, and then within the
Speaker 1: ditch that's where this ring of fifty six timber or
Speaker 1: stone post would have been. Now, I thought that those
Speaker 1: stone posts held the original bluestones that were later moved
Speaker 1: to the middle. Yes, And that was really opening to
Speaker 1: me as well, the idea that you had this sort
Speaker 1: of temporary design that was there for a while, and
Speaker 1: then all the stones were moved in, and then that's
Speaker 1: where we get those holes. They weren't as one might think, bathrooms,
Speaker 1: you know, that's right. I mean that's the other thing
Speaker 1: is that if you take this information and just take
Speaker 1: it at face value, of course, you would come up
Speaker 1: with a million different theories as to why they were
Speaker 1: doing what they were doing. And it really is the
Speaker 1: accumulation of history as well as our own current technology
Speaker 1: that kind of gives us a better idea of how
Speaker 1: it was constructed and why it was constructed. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know, about five hundred years later, after this hinge
Speaker 1: was made, the stars and stones, those huge stones were
Speaker 1: brought in and then the bluestones were moved inside. And
Speaker 1: then later you have parallel banks that were constructed as
Speaker 1: a kind of road from Stonehenge to the River Avon.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't apparent really unto I think it was
Speaker 1: about two thousand and ten when researchers Mark Pearson and
Speaker 1: his team were taking some surveys and they could tell
Speaker 1: um by the equipment that they were using, that there
Speaker 1: was actually this road that was dug out underneath the landscape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting, um hearing him talk, because as he
Speaker 1: pointed out, like there was a huge boom of a
Speaker 1: Stonehenge interest in the seventeenth century, so people got pretty
Speaker 1: interested in the site up early on, and they were
Speaker 1: they were digging it up, they were they were looking everything.
Speaker 1: So so the side itself was be thoroughly examined. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know by the time I got to the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: But it's in it's in exploring the realms surrounding Stonehenge,
Speaker 1: looking and this in this case at the space between
Speaker 1: Stonehenge and the river. And as we'll discuss later looking
Speaker 1: at some other sites uh within a close proximity to Stonehenge,
Speaker 1: that ends up giving us a lot more understanding about
Speaker 1: what Stone Hinge was about. Yeah. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is that you know, now we have the technology to
Speaker 1: look at the stars and stones and say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: not only are they a type of sandstone and they're
Speaker 1: harder than granite, but hey, they're found scattered all over
Speaker 1: southern England. And most archaeologists believe that these stones were
Speaker 1: brought from Marble Downs about twenty miles away. And then
Speaker 1: if you think about this, it's kind of nuts. On average,
Speaker 1: these Starson's way about forty five tons each. I think
Speaker 1: the heel stone is like fifty tons. Yeah, these things
Speaker 1: were enormous. Yeah. And then you have the blue stones.
Speaker 1: What kind of our puny in comparison, because we're talking
Speaker 1: about two and five tons each, that's it. They weigh
Speaker 1: about um. But those came from the Pricelli Hills in
Speaker 1: southwest Wales a hundred and fifty five miles away. That's
Speaker 1: worth noting that these blue stones. Just see a picture
Speaker 1: of them and you may think yourself, well that doesn't
Speaker 1: that doesn't really look blue. Well, that They're called bluestones
Speaker 1: because when they're they're nice and wet, they have kind
Speaker 1: of a blue sheen to them. May be cut into them,
Speaker 1: there's kind of an appearance of blue. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not like smurf blue by any means. Unfortunately. Uh, Now,
Speaker 1: there was this idea that these bluestones could have been
Speaker 1: brought to the Salisbury Plains area by the movement of glaciers,
Speaker 1: but at this point most archaeologists think that they are
Speaker 1: actually transported by human effort, and uh, it's not known
Speaker 1: exactly how this was. Probably they were carried via water
Speaker 1: networks or and or hauled over land. And there's a
Speaker 1: couple of ideas about how they could have been hauled
Speaker 1: over land, especially it's forty five ton ones. Yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the theories that's explored in the Nova Special Secrets
Speaker 1: of Stone Hinge. But you can find online and watch
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really good. One of the ideas that
Speaker 1: they explore in that video is the idea that you
Speaker 1: have you have all these little almost a palm sized
Speaker 1: stone spheres, okay, and you find them, so a lot
Speaker 1: of them are just rough and unpolished, you know, and
Speaker 1: then others seem to have some monochuma design. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they're all about the same size like like like almost
Speaker 1: with a degree of precision that is suspicious. And so
Speaker 1: one of the theories as that is that these were
Speaker 1: used as ball bearings so that you could you could
Speaker 1: move a platform across tracks with those bearings, those ball
Speaker 1: bearings underneath them. Uh, and is a way to move
Speaker 1: the stone across across the ground. What I love about
Speaker 1: this is that this was the idea that spring out
Speaker 1: of Andrew Young's brain. He was doing graduate work at
Speaker 1: the University of Exeter and he was obsessed with these
Speaker 1: these stone carved balls and he actually started to take
Speaker 1: up the practice himself and do it over and over again,
Speaker 1: and he had that moment of like, why why are
Speaker 1: the ones that are found the same diameter? We're talking
Speaker 1: to the millimeter And that's why he had his aha
Speaker 1: moment of well, you need uniformity in design when you're
Speaker 1: trying to make something work, if you're trying to make
Speaker 1: make it useful. And that actually was something that panned
Speaker 1: out for him because he and I believe it was
Speaker 1: Pearson's team. I mean, it might be wrong about that um,
Speaker 1: but they actually re enacted this and they got some
Speaker 1: of the larger stones and the smaller stones to work
Speaker 1: on this track platform with these sort of ball bearings
Speaker 1: carrying the stones across or sliding the stones across. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a few missteps along the way, like possibly
Speaker 1: the type of wood they were using, but for the
Speaker 1: most part they proved true. Yeah. And now there's a
Speaker 1: possibility that people may have laid a path of tree
Speaker 1: trunks and rolled the stones over them, um, or even
Speaker 1: just had wooden tracks slathered with with grease as a
Speaker 1: means to try to move them across it. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say maybe all of these scenarios are true, that
Speaker 1: the span of time in which this was built would
Speaker 1: give possibility to to any one of these theories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you keep coming back to this. Uh. That's one of
Speaker 1: the big problems about about stone hinges that you ultimately
Speaker 1: have to try and put yourself in the mindset of
Speaker 1: of of neolithic man and trying to understand not only
Speaker 1: how a neolithic human would approach a physics problem a
Speaker 1: design uh challenge, but how they would they approach the
Speaker 1: cosmos itself, how they approach their entire view of the world.
Speaker 1: And we'll see more of that in the second episode
Speaker 1: that explores the meaning of Stone Hinge. But but even
Speaker 1: in just the purely practical physical challenge of construction, you
Speaker 1: have people just having to think, well, how would they
Speaker 1: how would they view this, how would how would unwield
Speaker 1: humans analyze this problem and attempt to solve it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what were their resources? What were their abilities at that time?
Speaker 1: And what is the dents that that supports some of
Speaker 1: these theories. And that's what is so nice about that
Speaker 1: Nova documentary, The Secrets of Stonehenges. It really does build
Speaker 1: a case, uh for not only how it was built,
Speaker 1: but why it was built. Um. But first let's get
Speaker 1: to that shaping the stones. We talked about those hammerstones.
Speaker 1: We're talking about more than fifty hammerstones that have been
Speaker 1: found at the Stonehenge site. And again when we talk
Speaker 1: about these hammerstones, we're talking about these um stones that
Speaker 1: fit in the palm of the hand, and they have
Speaker 1: evidence of chipping away at other stones, like lots of
Speaker 1: chips that came off of the stones as they were
Speaker 1: they were doing the fine work on it. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: repeated striking. There's a lot of pitting in there. So
Speaker 1: they would have been used not only to sculpture the stones,
Speaker 1: but also to create this sort of tongue and groove
Speaker 1: joint system, which is amazing to me when you see
Speaker 1: these these up close pictures of the joints going together. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously describing something like this can be a bit of
Speaker 1: a challenge in a podcast, but essentially you want to
Speaker 1: imagine first of all those vertical stones, okay, and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna put those lintels on top. You're going to
Speaker 1: to cap those stones who create this elevated um a
Speaker 1: ring of stones, right, Okay, So this is that kind
Speaker 1: of um iconic trilothon sculpture that you see with the
Speaker 1: two uprights and then the one capping the very top, right,
Speaker 1: So you have the little pieces that that form the lentil. Okay,
Speaker 1: think of if you have to ever have like a
Speaker 1: kid's rail railroad tracking where you have the different curve
Speaker 1: pieces and you stick them together and it forms a
Speaker 1: circle for the little train to go around. All right,
Speaker 1: So each of those little bits of track come together
Speaker 1: and and and in this case, they're gonna come together
Speaker 1: on the top of the vertical stone. Okay. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is so if you're looking at this bird's eye perspective,
Speaker 1: imagine this circle of these lentils that are topping the
Speaker 1: upright stones, and they're all tongued and grooved, so they've
Speaker 1: got that kind of like snaky, sinewy line going through that.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly together. I mean, we're talking about level within
Speaker 1: inches here. And then those actual bright stones that are
Speaker 1: supporting the lentils, those have stone cap like these little
Speaker 1: stone balls. Yeh, like bumps kind of I think in
Speaker 1: terms of legos and the way that legos interact, there's
Speaker 1: like a bump and then the bump goes into a hole. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's easy to miss that. You look at stone
Speaker 1: engine if you just you you don't, if you don't
Speaker 1: absorb any of the extual info about it. You think, oh, look,
Speaker 1: there are two rocks, and then somebody, some caveman or
Speaker 1: something just stuck another rock balanced on top. No, it's
Speaker 1: fitted right, and then someone just bumped into it, and
Speaker 1: that's why the other ones foll Well, No, you're right,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's got this little rock sort of
Speaker 1: sculpture on top, rounded, and then you have the lentil
Speaker 1: which is hollowed out to fit perfectly over it. Again,
Speaker 1: they're using hammer stones to do this it's insane. Now,
Speaker 1: if that seems crazy, you also have to look at
Speaker 1: one of the other, perhaps less obvious questions. You have
Speaker 1: this giant stone, all right, and you want to and
Speaker 1: it's just laying on the ground, or it just laying
Speaker 1: on some some you know, greased piece of wood, or
Speaker 1: on some some some logs or whatever you've got. You've
Speaker 1: you've managed to transport it all the way to the site.
Speaker 1: How are you going to get that thing up and
Speaker 1: make it vertical? It's it's you're talking tons and tons
Speaker 1: of rock here. It's not a simple matter of just oh,
Speaker 1: just roll some more some more logs under it and
Speaker 1: it will eventually stand up. Yeah, I mean you have
Speaker 1: to use counterweight essentially. And people would dig a large
Speaker 1: hole with a sloping side, and then the back of
Speaker 1: a hole would be lined with a row of wooden steaks, right,
Speaker 1: and then the stone was then moved into position and
Speaker 1: hauled upright using plant fiber ropes and probably a wooden
Speaker 1: a frame, and then weights may have been used to
Speaker 1: help tip the stones upright. So again you've got the
Speaker 1: counterweight idea. And that whole would have been packed with
Speaker 1: a bunch of rubble to to keep all of that
Speaker 1: secure in there. It's just a little bit crazy to
Speaker 1: think about this. Yeah, and then you still have to
Speaker 1: raise the lintil portion of it. You've got to get
Speaker 1: get those stones up, the horizontal ones that are a
Speaker 1: top the vertical ones, and that's a whole different situations.
Speaker 1: Can they believe probably involved using timber platforms yep to
Speaker 1: raise the horizontal lintels into place first of all, and
Speaker 1: then just kind of make sure they're all hooked in
Speaker 1: there in that tongue in groove system. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you gotta do some fine tuning on top of that,
Speaker 1: just to make sure that everything's lining up. And then
Speaker 1: then you're set for centuries for thousands of years. That's right.
Speaker 1: Quite a barn raising actually, Alright. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: Stonehenge is built. And you know, through through all of
Speaker 1: this though, I'm imagining people working on this. I'm imagining
Speaker 1: uh Neolithic men and women uh just you know, pounding
Speaker 1: with their stone tools to shape these things, or or
Speaker 1: painstakingly erecting this this stone. And I'm just imagining one
Speaker 1: of these dudes just poking his head up and say,
Speaker 1: why are we doing this again? What? Why are we
Speaker 1: devoting all of our free time to constructing this, this
Speaker 1: thing that I may not live to see completed. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's the thing that's so intriguing about it,
Speaker 1: because you wish, you just wish that you could go
Speaker 1: back in time and hear some of the stories and
Speaker 1: the mythology and and and just the reasons for for
Speaker 1: why they were doing us, because I imagine that it's
Speaker 1: some very rich storytelling and keeping this uh, this monument,
Speaker 1: not only just erecting it, but adding to it over
Speaker 1: year period. That's a very strong and compelling story that
Speaker 1: was told. And So in the next episode of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, we will get into the wise,
Speaker 1: we'll get into the theories regarding and really the strong
Speaker 1: theory that we have now regarding why they did this
Speaker 1: to begin with plot spoiler Aliens. Yeah, there you go. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's like it's a one second episode. The
Speaker 1: next one Aliens. Al Right, Well, hey, in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to reach out to us, let us
Speaker 1: know about your experiences with Stonehenge, be they in person experiences.
Speaker 1: Have you visited Stonehenge and if so, what were your
Speaker 1: thoughts about it? How did it do the site have
Speaker 1: a really profound impact on you or is it just
Speaker 1: kind of stone Let us know. We'd love to hear from.
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