Stonehenge was moved from Wales

Venusian Broon said:
It's clear that there was a lot of sailing/boating by Neolithic peoples
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We tend to forget how much we have used the sea, rivers and canals for transport, or that even up to the 1950's most things were still carried by boat, and in places like Holland and Venice they still are. Even with wheels (which I'm not sure if they had) heavy things get bogged down in mud. They didn't have roads, and as already pointed out by others, there are quite a few hills between Wales and Wiltshire, and the UK would have been more heavily forested. Not only that, but you need to cross the river Severn and the river Avon anyway. So, at some point, boats are likely to have appeared.
 
Indeed one of the big issues with going back that far is that so much material is simply lost. Wooden boats that became damaged were likely pulled ashore, dried and then thrown on the fire or repurposed into other things. Even those that survived the age and were otherwise abandoned, would have rotted down unless abandoned in specific conditions to preserve them. Even Stonehenge is said to have had a lot of wooden construction elements to it which are simply lost to time as well.

Technology is also not a linear process. It's fully possible for ancient people to have made some great discoveries that were later lost even if you ignore the advance of technology which can leave older tech forgotten. Heck even today with paper and records there are many inventions and technologies and refinements that are often locked up in one persons mind and are never clearly/fully committed to records. Even where records are made you have to know where that record is and even that it exists to find it and make use of it. Indeed I suspect whilst in the ancient past loss of information was due to lack of preservation; in the future we'll have loss of information due to the sheer volume of preserved information.

An archaeologist in the future might have to spend years trawling through archives of cat photos to find an article on caterpillar tractors from the 1900s
 
It’s interesting that Stonehenge has local stone, stone from Wales and now stone from Scotland. It’s also interesting that the Scottish stone came from the Orcadian basin and that there was a known, thriving neolithic society in the Orkneys at the time.

Given how soft it is relative to other stone, could a sandstone slab that size survive glacial erosion and travel so far? It would have to be even larger than it is now to be carved into an altar stone.

I’m left wondering if there was a specific significance behind the spread of locations. Was it an attempt to create some kind of rapport or commonality between the different neolithic groups. A kind of Stone Age United Nations if you will:)
 
It's seriously interesting that the stone could have come from Orkney, because it's already been suggested that Stonehenge was modeled on an existing stone circle on Orkney - Ring of Brodgar, I think, though I'd have to check.

In which case, it looks like the active moving of a religious center from Orkney to Wessex, and that has to have an interesting background context. It's almost like Stonehenge become the ritual center of a new kingdom.
 
I'm sure I've read/watched somewhere that Henge making seems to have come south from the Orkneys.
 
"Nigel, boyo, where the bloody hell has Stonehenge gone?"
"Well, Chief Druid, I've done what you said. It says '150m South-East' on this parchment you gave me, so now Stone'enge is in England."
"Metres, Nigel! Metres!"
 
Brian G Turner said:
It's seriously interesting that the stone could have come from Orkney, because it's already been suggested that Stonehenge was modeled on an existing stone circle on Orkney - Ring of Brodgar, I think, though I'd have to check.
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I’ve visited the Ring Of Brodgar. Interesting place. A lot of the stones are broken or have chunks missing. Apparently this damage was caused by lightning strikes. It seems strange at first but then when you look around you realise there are no trees and the stones are the highest points it kind of makes sense.

I’ve always been more intrigued in why the stone was moved so far to build Stonehenge rather than how it was moved. I think it’s probable that religion was involved but now I’m wondering why so far south? Was it a general migration south in a cooling climate? Was the moving of a stone from the Orcade Basin something akin to how we take our keepsakes with us when we move house? Probably remain a mystery forever.
 
You only appreciate stone circles when ypu get up close to them. I've been at Stonehenge with the rising of the Sun (quite memorable), but the stones at Avebury just down the road feel more special. Perhaps something to do with the tv series 'Children of the Stones', but they are... eerie.

As to why stones have been dragged/floated/(teleported!?) hundreds of miles? Stonehenge was a special place, and to make it even more special, it required extraordinary efforts to build. Hence materials being moved incredible distances.

I think the immediacy of today makes construction of edifices over several lifetimes seem extraordinary. But back in the day, that was the way of things. Designers of large buildings such as cathedrals knew that they likely wouldn't live to see their dream become reality; but that didn't matter. I think back then people accepted being a small cog in a much larger machine. Which is the entire opposite of how things are today; hence our amazement/incomprehension.
 
paranoid marvin said:
You only appreciate stone circles when ypu get up close to them. I've been at Stonehenge with the rising of the Sun (quite memorable), but the stones at Avebury just down the road feel more special. Perhaps something to do with the tv series 'Children of the Stones', but they are... eerie.

As to why stones have been dragged/floated/(teleported!?) hundreds of miles? Stonehenge was a special place, and to make it even more special, it required extraordinary efforts to build. Hence materials being moved incredible distances.

I think the immediacy of today makes construction of edifices over several lifetimes seem extraordinary. But back in the day, that was the way of things. Designers of large buildings such as cathedrals knew that they likely wouldn't live to see their dream become reality; but that didn't matter. I think back then people accepted being a small cog in a much larger machine. Which is the entire opposite of how things are today; hence our amazement/incomprehension.
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Passing the stones at Avebury on a misty, quiet morning is a weird experience.
 
mosaix said:
Passing the stones at Avebury on a misty, quiet morning is a weird experience.
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As impressive as it is, Stonehenge feels more like what it has become - a prehistoric fairground attraction.

Avebury, and the adjacent Silbury Hill and West Kennet Long Barrow feel like the real deal. Walking around them, often in solitude or with only a handful of other people, you can easily imagine being transported back several thousand years.

Stonehenge, with its conveyor belt of buses, tourists and railings elicits far less. If it was a toss up between visiting Stonehenge and Avebury, the latter would win hands down every time.
 
paranoid marvin said:
I think the immediacy of today makes construction of edifices over several lifetimes seem extraordinary. But back in the day, that was the way of things. Designers of large buildings such as cathedrals knew that they likely wouldn't live to see their dream become reality; but that didn't matter. I think back then people accepted being a small cog in a much larger machine. Which is the entire opposite of how things are today; hence our amazement/incomprehension.
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Sagrada Familia in Barcelona - started in 1882 and still not yet finished, more than 140 years later.
 
I was lucky enough to be invited to Avebury for a mid-summer's night celebration. I've never been to such a joyous party [for lack of a better word] that still felt sacred. The moment of the sun-rise was full of wild cheering. Magical!
 
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