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Devil's Arrows: Ancient builders hauled 55k-lb stones 11 miles for UK stone row
- dmichulke 1mo ago25-tonne stones for 18km in case you wondered
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- robertlagrant 1mo agoFor anyone confused, British people would generally use tonnes (or tons, but maybe not know the difference exactly) and miles.
- nickt 1mo agoOr about 3 double-decker buses for the length of 171 footy pitches.
- gnufx 1mo agoThat's not dimensionally correct! Double-decker bus is a unit of length, and footy pitch is too prosaic to be an approved unit: https://www.theregister.com/bootnotes/2026/05/31/the-reg-online-standards-converter/5248893 https://www.theregister.com/bootnotes/2026/05/31/the-reg-onl...
- frereubu 1mo agoIt's a shame it's not about area then at least we could agree on Wales as a unit.
- tantalor 1mo agoIt's not too prosaic, it's just too imprecise. There is no standard size, and some regulations even allow a range of sizes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch
- gnufx 1mo agoI don't think that's relevant for Register units. Clearly there's a standard brontosaurus somewhere, for instance, otherwise how could we have the conversion table? However, sorry, I was wrong about the football pitch, at least as a unit of area, equal to 194.89nWa per the original article: https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2007/08/24/so-whats-the-velocity-of-a-sheep-in-a-vacuum/1281396 https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2007/08/24/so-whats-the-...
- tantalor 1mo agoYou're not wrong! Personally, I like to use penguin as a measure of height. Everybody knows how big a penguin is, right? It's pretty standard.
- blater 1mo agoto clarify for those of a nautical bent - that's about half a blue whale for about 4/5ths of a dozen nautical miles
- SECProto 1mo agoOr 3928 stone stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)
- walthamstow 1mo agoStones are the Fahrenheit of weight. Useful for the human body but fuck all else.
- lostlogin 1mo agoAre they useful for human bodies? We have a dumb system here in New Zealand. Most people seem to know their height in feet/inches and weight in kilograms.
- wuliwong 1mo agoI initially read the title as 55,000 one pound stones. I was thinking, huh that does seem like a lot of work. (>▽<)
- ButlerianJihad 1mo agoThis must be the origin of the saying, “People who start stone rows shouldn’t build glass houses”.
- vogelke 1mo agoLovely.
- ChrisRR 1mo agoImperial is confusing at the best of times, but couldn't they have said 24.5 tons instead of 55,000 lbs?
- masfuerte 1mo agoThat's the way they like it. American road signs have mad shit like "No trucks over 15,000 lbs".
- thechao 1mo agoThat's because we measure weight in tonnage.
- close04 1mo agoIn the EU and UK the weight of the vehicle is on the signs too [0], or the weight per axle [1]. [0] https://hgvlgvtraining.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/weight-limit-traffic-sign-768x188.jpg https://hgvlgvtraining.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/weig... [1] https://freesvg.org/img/B13a.png https://freesvg.org/img/B13a.png
- walthamstow 1mo agoSurely they don't actually like drill bits measured in fractions of an inch, do they?
- edoceo 1mo agoYes, in USA the bits are in fractions and stuff you purchase will have instructions like, drill 3/8 hole for a wall anchor, or 2+1/4 hole for a door-bolt set.
- dboreham 1mo agoThe American thousands of pounds thing is even more weird than that: I buy gravel from the gravel pit. They weigh my truck and dump trailer in lbs and then charge me per ton. Everyone talks about tons: e.g. I'd call a dump truck operator and ask him to deliver 18 tons of rock, not 36,000lbs. But the weighbridge and road signs and regulations about vehicle and axle weight are always in lbs. If you only read things and never talked to other people you'd never know tons existed.
- cjs_ac 1mo agoAlso, Stonehenge was built (partially) from parts of other stone circles, from as far away as Wales: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203
- graemep 1mo agoand at least one stone came from Scotland: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c207lqdn755o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c207lqdn755o
- pseudohadamard 1mo agoAnd two more were supposed to come from Aliexpress but they got stopped at customs because of asbestos contamination. That's why there's that gap on the southwest side. Not a lot of people know that.
- airin_stories 1mo ago[dead]
- hashim 1mo agoThe word for this structure is apparently a menhir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir. The article calls it the tallest in the UK but its Wikipedia page calls it the second-tallest. This is the actual tallest, interestingly also in Yorkshire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudston_Monolith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudston_Monolith.
- qingcharles 1mo agoAsterix taught me the word menhir.
- dgan 1mo agoNeed 7 more paragraphes telling us that the stones, weren't in fact, chosen from the nearest location, but were chosen from a distant location. Without ever telling *how" they were moved of course, that would give out too much
- dogscatstrees 1mo agoQuite easy. They were moved like this: https://youtu.be/YpNuh-J5IgE https://youtu.be/YpNuh-J5IgE
- TZubiri 1mo agoHorses
- spikels 1mo agoStrange they don't mention how many stones. Image shows two. There are three today and four, maybe five, originally.
- surfingdino 1mo agoMust have been a contractor. The permies would wait for the procurement process to pick someone to move those stones for them. /s
- TZubiri 1mo agoLol. First time I ever heard permie as a slur for the second best worker categorization
- airin_stories 1mo ago[dead]
- chrisweekly 1mo agoKen Follett (of "Pillars of the Earth" fame) wrote a terrific semi-historical* novel called "Circle of Days" that portrays a vivid picture of the people and circumstances that could've led to the creation of Stonehenge. *"semi" qualifier bc there's so little known for sure -- but it's at least plausible, and his extensive research doesn't contradict things that can be verified.
- JKFSOM 1mo agoMeanwhile, in Egypt...
- tomcam 1mo agoI’m beginning to conclude that about 47% of all ancient activities in England consisted solely of either moving comically huge rocks around, or attempting to convince the remaining 53% to do their fair share.