We FINALLY Know How Stonehenge Was Built

hey 42 here there are few places on earth more mysterious than a circle of standing stones these giant chunks of rock known as megaliths are a historic and scientific conundrum i mean who in their right mind would devote substantial time to standing up tons of stone and why there is a power in these megaliths an air of mystery that to this day causes rancorous debate between scientists historians and the slightly odd stone sodomites who visit these sites every summer and winter solstice awaiting the first rays of the morning sun to split the earth in two and out a tree priestess or ancient druid as with all good mysteries the major questions lie in the how and the why why these stone circles exist all around the world from the british isles across europe and oddly in the horn of africa in various configurations is still a matter of hot debate it seems however the arguments divide between those all too familiar combatants of science v worship in the science camp it's commonly postulated they were used as astronomical observatories circles such as stonehenge or the ominous ring of brogdar or stennis in orkney seem to be precisely arranged in such a way so they align with the movements of the sun and moon you know that feeling when you come up with a revolutionary branch of mathematics only to be told that someone has beaten you to it well sorry pythagoras old mate but most stone circles seem to have been built with extraordinary geometric precision well before you committed your theory to papyrus in 2016 gail higginbottom lovely surname gail from the university of adelaide announced the results of her studies of callanish on lewis and stannis on the isle of orkney in northern scotland using 2d and 3d modelling techniques she was able to confirm that the stones aligned perfectly with the sun and moon at different times during their cycles and these patterns repeated in standing stone sites around the uk around 50 percent of sites are aligned with the summer solstice sun and the other 50 with the winter solstice convincing though this argument may be it still doesn't completely piss on the chips of the worship camp paganism is steeped in its worship of the sun and moon and so rather than stone circles being solely celestial observatories they were likely places where people gathered to celebrate and worship nature cue the naked dancing hippies naked moonlight dancing aside they also served as a convenient place to dump all the dead people there have been countless human bones found on sites of standing stones and we know the ashes of local people were ritualistically brought to the center of stone circles and of course there was a healthy dose of human sacrifice at least we think the historicity is slightly shaky here and there were bloodlessing rituals and practices to contact dark forces from the other side the other side of this world that is not the neolithic town centre why those pesky pagans bothered building these back-breaking structures may not be known but what's slightly more interesting is how they did it and a good place to start our exploration of this little poser would be the most iconic in the world stonehenge the rocks our ancestors used to build stonehenge consist of two distinct types of stone blue stone and the larger sarson the blue stones are the smaller ones weighing in at around two to five tons each and they form what was once the inner circle the larger sarson stones muscle in it around 25 tons with the largest the heel stone breaking the scales at a massive 30 tons to equate that to elephants as one does the heel stone weighs in at around four and a half african elephants or four and a half mammoths i suppose would be more historically appropriate the enormous sauce and stones comprise the outer circle with an additional sauce and lintel above each pair what's remarkable about this ancient masonry is that these historical lintels have a tongue and groove shape cut out to slot together as well as a convex and concave system to affix them atop the vertical stones these intricate shapes are usually only found in woodworking she finds them in a stone structure from thousands of years ago no less is nothing short of astonishing now you'd think hefting these into place would be no walk in the park or should that be planes but these silly neolithic buggers only went and made their lives more difficult by being exceedingly picky about the provenance of their materials the lighter blue stones were transported from the priscilly hills in south west wales a whopping 155 mile jaunt from stonehenge the 20 to 30 ton sauce and stones were only brought down from marlborough a mere 20-mile journey but even with this short trip 30 ton blocks definitely fall into the excess luggage category furthermore stonehenge was built around 3000 bc predating the arrival of the recently invented wheel in britain by roughly 500 years so how did they do it the most recent idea is that the lighter blue stones were transported by water somehow shipped along the bristol channel which seems fairly logical however from there on evidence for the remaining land journey and construction phase become a little hazy being built in those bad old days before the wheel archaeological theorists speculate that log rollers were used to shift the massive boulders over the undulating landscape vast numbers of logs were repeatedly lifted and relayed to create an endless conveyor belt once in place the stones were thought to have been raised by digging pits and constructing pulley systems consisting of large wooden a-frames and ropes woven from plant fibres still this all seems an extraordinary feat and rather enterprising for a society that was a full thousand years away from smelting bronze and sticking said lump on stick to better kill other man who still has rock on stick so naturally others have turned to more imaginative theories presenting the 42 may or may not have built stonehenge hall of fame in first place aliens aliens either lifted the stones with their big sexy spaceships or shared their knowledge with the dumb earthlings enabling them to do the grunt work themselves i mean yes give humans a technology to lift huge stones but don't give them i don't know a head start on electricity or you know the wheel next up is giants the stones are big giants are big makes perfect sense case closed some translations of the bible do speak of an ancient race of giants called the nephilim who was supposedly wiped off the earth by noah's great flood thoughts around giant involvement in stonehenge's construction can be slightly justified when we look to the oldest surviving record of stonehenge dating from the 1100s the brute chronicle gives us the history of the founding of britain by brutus of troy and in this tome an image can be found which depicts a giant helping to build stonehenge ably overseen by none other than our final candidate merlin yes our foreign legend is all over stonehenge so the merlin theory ties in very nicely legend has it merlin and king arthur's dad ufo pendragon led a raiding party to ireland to steal stones from a mystic stone circle called giants dance he then accio stones them onto ships and back to salisbury a simple reveling in the love he got from dabbling with stone circles some credit merlin as the creator of the 2000 plus standing stones in cognac brittany rather than nicking stones from other places this time instead he used his magic to turn an invading roman legion into the wide variety of boulders that make up this of a worldly site that is some serious magic gandalf hang your pointy hat in shame now whilst any of those could be true and when i say any i mean none most rational types have come to the startling conclusion that all megalithic constructions were built by a huge team of people working together i mean it's not as if a tuberculosis ridden skinny little man could do it all by himself could he well perhaps he could today humans are busy building yet more ugly housing estates and fast food restaurants rather than arranging pretty rocks in a field except for one man who only 100 years ago built what is one of the only modern era megalithic structures coral castle encouraged to depart for america after being dumped by a 16 year old on the eve of their wedding yikes 28 year old latvian edward leadskellen moved to florida and immediately began construction of a top secret project he only worked under the cover of night and alone allowing no curious locals to catch a passing glimpse leedskallen was building himself a castle from nearby limestone and coral rock furthermore carving and lifting car-sized rocks into place or by himself wasn't enough he claimed he was using no modern machinery only primitive tools and wooden frames naturally the locals all had the same thought what the holy hell is that latvian lunatic doing over there and he really was a nut job he distributed pamphlets around the community containing snippets of his political opinions and social critiques such as the schools and churches are cheapening the girls they are arranging picnics or coupling up the girls with the fresh boys and then they send them out to the woods parks beaches and other places so they can practice in first degree love making remember how only a minute ago i claimed it would be impossible for a tuberculosis-ridden skinny little man to construct a monolithic structure turns out i was wrong at one point lee skillin suffered from life-threatening tuberculosis but alleged that his mastery of magnetism had cured him completely of this deadly affliction was it this mastery of magnetism that helped him levitate these massive blocks using a technique his contemporaries called reverse magnetism or did he simply use his perpetual motion holder the tool he referred to when asked about the construction did lee skillin receive help from those aliens just like the builders the stonehenge were alleged to these were all theories tossed around by locals and passed down for the decades sadly the answer was no no and definitely no lead skill in may have been a shovel short of a moat but he was a dab hand engineer he meticulously constructed a block and tackle hoist mounted on a large tripod made from large tree trunks enabling him to lift and maneuver the stone blocks sans levitation the various pulleys and levers from which are on display in the on-site museum today it was also pointed out that the composition of the limestone and coral rocks he used were lighter than those of other ancient standing stones weighing in at a mere 15 tons so it turns out that a middle-aged american could not have constructed weighty megaliths like stonehenge by himself unless of course your name is wally wallington a retired construction worker and carpenter from michigan wallington developed a fascination with moving heavy objects by himself i mean i suppose there are stranger hobbies somewhere wellington began moving heavy blocks of stone after discovering a nifty trick if he placed a single rounded pebble underneath the block he could rotate it indefinitely single-handed with little effort no matter its weight doubling down on this outstanding achievement he added a second pebble and realized that by rotating the block a half turn in each direction sequentially he could move a one-ton block horizontally at 91 meters per hour wally was on a roll well more like a pivot but he would soon be rolling next he built ridged roads from wood each ridge being the same width as the stone block mechanically this contraption was simple but it meant when the block began to roll its momentum and weight kept it moving archimedes famously said give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and i shall move the world well old wally wellington was a budding greek polymath himself because he said give me a rock and i'll move your bard mate that's right he moved his friends 30 by 50 foot barn 274 meters by himself naturally the next step was to construct his own stonehenge he had mastered moving stone but not raising them so he devised a seesaw that used counterweights to enable him to stand gigantic blocks single-handed so could a middle-aged chap from michigan have answered the question posed by archaeologists for centuries that is how were these monumental stone circles built just by rolling up his sleeves and pissing about in his garden well it seems he just may have done but even if our neolithic ancestors has this insight it's been estimated it still would have taken some 30 million man hours to build stonehenge if you want to visit these mystical places you'd better act fast because they're slowly but surely sinking into the ground especially stonehenge it was actually none other than charles darwin who made the discovery in 1877 he popped down to salisbury plains and noticed earthworms would burrow into the soil at the base of the stones and get busy feasting away then they wiggle away from the stones and deposits that earth up to several meters away this means the ground level is steadily rising around the stones causing them to sink some of the prostrate stones those that have fallen over may soon be permanently covered with topsoil nevertheless you've probably got another few thousand years before those wiggly bastards are done covering the whole of this ancient place thanks for watching you can now buy my new book stick a flag in it on amazon or get the audio book on audible you'll find a link to both in the description below thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,358,184

Rating: 4.8867402 out of 5

Keywords: stonehenge, mystery, neolithic, england, monument, history, who built stonehenge, unsolved mystery, neolithic revolution, english heritage, stone age, ancient, neolithic age, how was stonehenge built, stonehenge solstice, wiltshire, prehistoric, england highlights

Id: vqM6NpTf3HM

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 19 2020