Miniature Stonehenge Discovered In Wiltshire, UK 152
CmdrGravy weighs in with exciting archaeological news, "one of the most important prehistoric finds in decades" according to the article: a miniature Stonehenge a mile from the famous site. "Bluehenge," as the find is being called because of the assumed color of its (now-missing) stones, is believed to have been put up around the time of Stonehenge, 5,000 years ago. "All that remains of the 60-ft.-wide Bluehenge are the holes of 27 giant stones set on a ramped mount. Chips of blue stone found in the holes appear to be identical to the blue stones used in Stonehenge. The four-ton monsters, made of Preseli Spotted Dolerite — a chemically altered igneous rock harder than granite — were mined in the Preseli Mountains in Pembrokeshire and then rolled, dragged, and floated the 200 miles to the site on the banks of the Avon in Wiltshire."
Re:Logistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:4 Tons vs. 50 Tons vs. 1100 Ton (Score:3, Insightful)
that was the least scientific 'scientific blog' i have ever read... with the obvious exception of timecube...
you need to learn the physics you are debating, saying 'from my perspective' doesn't a theory make...
Re:Recent Stonehenge Excavations (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, quite a lot of us Brits forget that there are many quite different native languages, let alone accents, on these fair and drizzly isles. English is arguaby the language of some fairly recent immigrants who were invited in to do a job and then didn't want to go home again afterwards.
From another perspective, all the "native" languages are just the languages of somewhat less recent immigrants.
All the native languages are in the Celtic family, which in turn is part of the larger Indo-European family. The Beaker culture people who built Stonehenge may have spoken a Celtic language, or Celtic languages may have come in later during the Iron age. Either way, before the Celtic languages Brits almost certainly spoke something completely different.
Pity they didn't write things down, though.
Re:4 Tons vs. 50 Tons vs. 1100 Ton (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is, we lose a large percentage of our knowledge - it doesn't take levitating rocks for this to be true.
For instance - I'm into firearms, and a good friend of mine is quite fond of old English sporting arms. He has an English flintlock that is the absolute most amazing piece of engineering i have ever seen. The barrels are side-by-side and regulated - as in, you can put 2 rounds within 1" of each other at 100 yards with this thing. There are no companies that we know of making contemporary muzzle-loading weapons. Today's newly manufactured flintlocks are generally very touchy and unreliable, but the old ones are incredibly reliable; they had to be.
As a society, we have forgotten how to make quality flintlock rifles, just as we have forgotten how to move gigantic stones by hand.