Devil's Arrows: Ancient builders hauled 55k-lb stones 11 miles for UK stone row

bbookofjoe 4 days ago 42 commentsRead Article on sciencedaily.com

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cjs_ac•1 day ago

Also, 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

graemep•1 day ago

and at least one stone came from Scotland: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c207lqdn755o

pseudohadamard•about 6 hours ago

And 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.

dmichulke•1 day ago

25-tonne stones for 18km in case you wondered

SECProto•1 day ago

Or 3928 stone stones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)

walthamstow•1 day ago

Stones are the Fahrenheit of weight. Useful for the human body but fuck all else.

lostlogin•about 22 hours ago

Are 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•about 22 hours ago

I initially read the title as 55,000 one pound stones. I was thinking, huh that does seem like a lot of work. (>▽<)

nickt•1 day ago

Or about 3 double-decker buses for the length of 171 footy pitches.

gnufx•1 day ago

That'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-onl...

frereubu•1 day ago

It's a shame it's not about area then at least we could agree on Wales as a unit.

tantalor•1 day ago

It'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

blater•1 day ago

to clarify for those of a nautical bent - that's about half a blue whale for about 4/5ths of a dozen nautical miles

robertlagrant•1 day ago

For anyone confused, British people would generally use tonnes (or tons, but maybe not know the difference exactly) and miles.

chrisweekly•about 23 hours ago

Ken 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.

tomcam•about 11 hours ago

I’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.

ChrisRR•1 day ago

Imperial is confusing at the best of times, but couldn't they have said 24.5 tons instead of 55,000 lbs?

Xmd5a•1 day ago

Sir ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ton

> he long ton,[1] also known as the imperial ton, displacement ton,[1][2] or British ton,[3] is a measurement unit equal to 2,240 pounds

guenthert•1 day ago

They could have said 3300 stones stones ...

euroderf•1 day ago

That rocks.

masfuerte•1 day ago

That's the way they like it. American road signs have mad shit like "No trucks over 15,000 lbs".

hamdingers•about 24 hours ago

This is an is-ought inference. Americans have not been given an option and use the units they're provided with, which is a frustrating mix of everything depending on context.

Nobody seems to like it this way.

walthamstow•1 day ago

Surely they don't actually like drill bits measured in fractions of an inch, do they?

edoceo•1 day ago

Yes, 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•1 day ago

The 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.

cucumber3732842•1 day ago

A lot of the older "no vehicles over X" signage is denominated in tons.

thechao•1 day ago

That's because we measure weight in tonnage.

close04•1 day ago

In 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/weig...

[1] https://freesvg.org/img/B13a.png

spikels•1 day ago

Strange they don't mention how many stones. Image shows two. There are three today and four, maybe five, originally.

hashim•1 day ago

The word for this structure is apparently a 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.

qingcharles•about 21 hours ago

Asterix taught me the word menhir.

JKFSOM•about 23 hours ago

Meanwhile, in Egypt...

ButlerianJihad•1 day ago

This must be the origin of the saying, “People who start stone rows shouldn’t build glass houses”.

vogelke•1 day ago

Lovely.

surfingdino•1 day ago

Must have been a contractor. The permies would wait for the procurement process to pick someone to move those stones for them. /s

dgan•1 day ago

Need 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•about 24 hours ago

Quite easy. They were moved like this:

https://youtu.be/YpNuh-J5IgE