I stumbled across this video and was very impressed. A Michigan man named Wally Wallington moves very heavy and large objects by himself, using mainly just rocks and wood and no real tools as a hobby. He even moved a full-sized barn 300 feet, fully intact, alone, using his methods. Now he is building a replica of stonehenge on his property and putting blocks up to 19 tons in place all by himself with no complicated tools at all.
I am posting this because it fell under the category of simple yet amazing things that I hadn’t seen yet and may have relevance to how large, ancient structures like the pyramids and Stonehenge were built.
That doesn’t seem too tricky to me, couldn’t you just excavate the earth under one side of the rock to make it “rock” on a pivot, place the stone under the raised side then use weights/ropes to cause the rock to “rock” to the other side of the stone then fill in the Earth, hey presto right?
One thing confuses me though, are the stones at Stonehenge standing on the ground or are they sunk into it? The method he proposed for how they righted the stones would leave (looking at his demonstration) 5/6 feet of the stone underground once you have filled in all the excavated earth. If Stonehenge is simply resting on the surface then surely Wally’s technique is bogus?
Assuming it starts from flat, add a bunch of weight to one end, then dig the dirt out from the other up to the midway point. Remove weight and it will tip up and allow you to put the first stone/board under that side. Then repeat ad nauseum. To move it in a direction other than up, pivot on a rock as he shows (maybe think about how you would ‘walk’ if you were strapped into a snowboard).
Another way to move large objects that are already upright (think Easter Island statues), is to just use rope and a bunch of people. Wrap rope around the object from a few angles near the top. Pull on one side to get the object on an edge/side just a bit, then pull the opposing ropes in the direction you want it to swivel. You can do this with a bottle and two strings tied around the top. This is the method that the Czech Pavel Pavel used to prove that 16 people and rope could ‘walk’ the Easter Island heads. For a more practical exercise, this is basically how I move refrigerators and fully loaded bookcases all by myself by just pushing one side up and angled in the direction I want it to go.
I can’t find whether or not they are sunk, but the principle is the same. Just raise the block higher and higher until the distance from the fulcrum to the end of the block is exactly equal to the distance from the fulcrum to the ground. Or at least close enough that when it tips to the ground you can then use ropes to pull it (tip it) into position.
I can’t find a cite but I believe the stones are sunk into the ground. The other part of this which has me curious is how does he get the bigger stones on top of the vertical ones.