4 ms·

About 2/3 down of this page suggests grease has been tried before and was not effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_about_Stonehenge#Construction_t

• dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  As someone who's moved a lot of machinery the hard way (i.e. not paying someone else to do it with a fork lift) I like the stone rollers and wood track the best. One dude with a pry bar can roll a >3-ton (per the manufacturer, not just a guess) mill sitting on rollers sitting on 2x4s sitting on rough ground (protip: vary the thickness of the lumber depending on how much you want it to conform to the ground). A 100+ people should have no problem rolling a 40-ton stone if said stone is sitting on a wood and roller sandwich. If you have a 10yr project deadline you could build a few miles of track a year, get the whole village together, roll the stone a few miles over the course of a week then throw a party to celebrate how far you've moved the stone then leave it to sit for 6mo and do it again.
  • andorov 7y ago
    In Peru I saw are several very large stones sitting on the trail between the quarry and a partially finished temple. One of them at the bottom of a very steep hill. Our guide did speculate that getting the stones on site was a gradual process.
  • kitd 7y ago
    And presumably, with a large enough team, the "track" could be lifted once the stone has gone over it, and relaid at the front JIT. I also think that the people of the time were very adept at working with large tree trunks. Many late stone-age structures used them extensively, eg large round houses, platforms on lakes, etc. Fashioning smooth round rollers would have been relatively straight-forward for them IMO.