Exactly, it’s just an “evolution” of the whole White Saviour bit they love so much.
On the flip side, there was an article on the BBC website around a year ago. Basically the article was explaining how archeologists had no idea how the ancient folk made Stonehenge so accurately plumb and level, and how they’ve been experimenting for aaaages trying to figure it out…
Now, I’m a stonemason. And I can tell you exactly what they probably did, but the Big Brain people don’t like to ask people who work trades. (Or maybe they are just asking the wrong ones)
If you have figured out rope or string, and you have access to wood and a few stones, then it’s incredibly easy to level off an area, to make an accurate circle, and to make the tops of all the standing stones level and the uprights plumb.
A basic plumb-bob is incredibly easy to make, in this instance we would use as straight a piece of wood as we can find, a length of rope tied to the middle of it, with a stone tied to the other end. For the uprights, get straight logs as long as each stone going into the ground. Now we have our standing stone analogues, and a plumb-bob. Dig the holes for the uprights, plop the logs down in the hole, if the plumb-bob isn’t pointing straight down between the two logs, one side has to go down.
There, mystery solved. Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.
That one, was the BBC being contrarian and stupid, or trying to drum up Stonehenge as an attractive mystery, it has been common knowledge among archeology enthusiasts that Stonehenge is an impressive monument, but that it is nothing that we can’t replicate with manpower, a bit of a budget and basic tech available since we have rope.
Exactly, it’s just an “evolution” of the whole White Saviour bit they love so much.
On the flip side, there was an article on the BBC website around a year ago. Basically the article was explaining how archeologists had no idea how the ancient folk made Stonehenge so accurately plumb and level, and how they’ve been experimenting for aaaages trying to figure it out…
Now, I’m a stonemason. And I can tell you exactly what they probably did, but the Big Brain people don’t like to ask people who work trades. (Or maybe they are just asking the wrong ones)
If you have figured out rope or string, and you have access to wood and a few stones, then it’s incredibly easy to level off an area, to make an accurate circle, and to make the tops of all the standing stones level and the uprights plumb.
A basic plumb-bob is incredibly easy to make, in this instance we would use as straight a piece of wood as we can find, a length of rope tied to the middle of it, with a stone tied to the other end. For the uprights, get straight logs as long as each stone going into the ground. Now we have our standing stone analogues, and a plumb-bob. Dig the holes for the uprights, plop the logs down in the hole, if the plumb-bob isn’t pointing straight down between the two logs, one side has to go down.
There, mystery solved. Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.
Case in point, this hairdresser rediscovered Roman technique
Nice! Thanks for the tidbit of knowledge!
That one, was the BBC being contrarian and stupid, or trying to drum up Stonehenge as an attractive mystery, it has been common knowledge among archeology enthusiasts that Stonehenge is an impressive monument, but that it is nothing that we can’t replicate with manpower, a bit of a budget and basic tech available since we have rope.
Well, I’m glad that archeologists aren’t as dim as they were made out to be!