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<< News >> Could carved stone balls have been used as ball bearings at Stonehenge?

Submitted by coldrum on Friday, 17 December 2010  Page Views: 11412

StonehengeCountry: England County: Wiltshire Type: Henge

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A revolutionary new idea on the movement of big monument stones like those at Stonehenge has been put forward by an archaeology student at the University of Exeter.Whilst an undergraduate, Andrew Young saw a correlation between standing stone circles in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and a concentration of carved stone balls, which may have been used to help transport the big stones by functioning like ball bearings.

Young discovered that many of the late Neolithic stone balls had a diameter within a millimetre of each other, which he felt indicated they would have been used together in some way rather than individually. By plotting on a map where the carved balls were found, he realised they were all within the vicinity of Neolithic monuments known as recumbent stone circles. These stone circle monuments in Aberdeenshire share an equivalent form to Stonehenge, yet with some much larger stones.

To test his theory Young built a model using small wooden balls which were placed in a grooved pieces of wood moulding, similar to a railway track but with a groove rather than a rail. The balls were spread apart and a mirror image of the track was placed on top supporting a wood platform. He then placed concrete slabs on the tracks, to replicate a heavy weight.

Young said, "I then sat on top of the slabs to add extra weight. The true test was when a colleague used his index finger to move me forward, a mere push and the slabs and I shot forward with great ease. This proved the balls could move large heavy objects and could be a viable explanation of how giant stones were moved, especially in relation to where the stone balls were originally found."

A further experiment on a much larger scale was arranged with the financial assistance of Gemini Productions and WGBH, Boston for NOVA, an American documentary TV programme. They were focusing on Stonehenge and wanted to see if a team of archaeology students directed by Professor Bruce Bradley, a lead archaeologist at the University of Exeter could build and test a life size model using wood that might reflect how massive stones could have been moved across the landscape. Previous experiments, which others have carried out to move large stones had not been particularly effective. The building of a hardened surface to roll logs on and the trench experiments only moved the stone with great effort and if they had been moved in this way the hardened surface or trench would show up in the archaeological record, however these have not been found.

In the large scale experiment, green wood was used for cost purposes. Neolithic people would have had access to much better materials, such as cured oak, which is extremely tough and was in abundance due to the great forests at the time. They also had the technical ability to cut long timber planks, known through archaeological evidence of planks used as a way of creating tracks for people to walk on through bogs. The experiment used hand shaped granite spheres as well as wooden spheres.

Professor Bradley said, 'Our experiment had to go for the much cheaper option of green wood, which is relatively soft, however, we successfully moved extremely heavy weights at a pace. The demonstration indicated that big stones could have been moved using this ball bearing system with roughly ten oxen and may have been able to transport stones up to ten miles per day. This method also has no lasting impact on the landscape, as the tracks with the ball bearings are moved along leap froging each other as the tracks get moved up the line."

He added, "It demonstrates that the concept works. It does not prove that Neolithic people used this method, but it was and is possible. This is a radical new departure, because previous ideas were not particularly effective in transporting large stones and left unanswered questions about the archaeological record they would have left behind."

The next stage in the project is to collaborate with the engineering experts at the University who can calculate the loads which could be transported using various combinations of variables such as hard wood and |U-shaped grooves. This will provide the mathematical evidence to see how much force would be needed to get the stone moving and to keep it moving. This will enable the project team to gain an even greater understanding of how stones may have been transported across huge distances and even up hills. The ultimate goal is for a full scale experiment in Aberdeenshire using more authentic materials, stone balls and a team of Oxen.

Source: Science Daily and see below for the programme's trailer

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"Could carved stone balls have been used as ball bearings at Stonehenge?" | Login/Create an Account | 7 News and Comments
  
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Re: NOVA Secrets of Stonehenge trailer for TV programme by TimothyF on Sunday, 09 October 2016
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As so many neolithic carved stone balls are beautifully decorated I doubt their use as ball bearings. To say that something 'could have been so used' is very far from proving that they were.

Dry sand makes for a very slippery surface; as does water; as does fat; as does ice; as do log cylinders. All better candidates
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Re: Could carved stone balls have been used as ball bearings at Stonehenge? by Anonymous on Saturday, 18 December 2010
I found this article of interest but not very satisfying. It suggests that the 'small rounded stones' found at many ancient sites in Ireland and further afield were 'ball bearings'. This would not be the case for the stones found in Sligo, probably the oldest stones of this type. I would have a very different perspective. I offer the following:

Ancient Irish Sacred Stones

It is not unusual to find manufactured items, hand-made objects, artefacts in ancient sites. The items manufactured by the people who built the ancient sites in Western Europe are many and varied and show, in miniature and in full size, a selection of their tools and other items of ornament. These include axe-heads, hammer or mace-heads, arrow-heads, cutters, scrapers, needles and beads. Those that are full-sized are usually polished and not for general use but are objects of ritual.
The others seem to have been for bodily decorations, for clothing enhancement, but also may have been symbols of office for those craft and gifted people in the community that made them, the magicians or Druids in the tribe. Druid derives from the Irish ‘Driocht’, meaning magic but in early times the Druids were the wise people, the shamans and healers of their community.
One particular type of item, has not been explained is called, by local archaeologists, a baetyl, meaning, for them, ‘a small stone’. It is clear that they are not just river-rolled stones but manufactured items perfectly rounded or spherical and, in Sligo, in the North-West of Ireland, about three centimetres in diameter. They were purpose made and finished with great accuracy and precision and not some roughed-out item or freak of nature. How could we ever know, at this remove, five thousand years later, what that purpose was?
The very general description of ‘rounded stones’ tells us nothing about its use or purpose. ‘Hard science’ has nothing to offer so far. The small stones found in Sligo, mainly at Carrowmore, are about three centimetres in diameter. As we move east through Carrowkeel, Carnbane or ‘Sli na gCaillig’ the Hill of the Wise Women, and on to the Boyne valley, the stones get larger and more oval in shape. The design development of these objects, as we move from west to east, from Sligo to Scotland, and at other sites where they have been found, changed so much that, in many cases they are not obviously associated with the small baetyls of Sligo.
The Newgrange edition is about the size and shape of a rugby ball. It has been suggested by some archaeologists that these were the stones used to grind out the ‘basins’ found at Dún Aongas, The Stronghold of the One Son, Newgrange, and The Place of Light, Knowth, but the polished symmetry of the items do not give much credence to this idea. Work tools would not have this precision of finish. The work of grinding out such basins would give the grinding stones a variation dependant on the stones being ground, the stones being used as grind-stones and the idiosyncrasy or eccentricity of the worker. Very little has been published or made readily available about these stones even though they are found at many sites in Ireland and abroad. This makes further research difficult unless direct access can be obtained to the hoard of baetyls in storage.
However, the dictionary meaning of the word bae•tyl, a noun of great antiquity, is given as ‘a meteorite or stone held sacred or believed to be of divine origin’. The word derives from the Latin: baetulus, and Greek: baítȳlos, the word for a meteoritic stone. Meteorites are usually of high iron content and, maybe for this reason, the ‘Irish’ stones have not been recognised as meteoritic, as far as I can tell, by archaeologist in Ireland, either local or national.
It is very unlikely that the ancient Irish, perfectly rounded stones are meteors that have reached the ground. Their composition virtually precludes this. However there is an old Irish sa

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    Re: Could carved stone balls have been used as ball bearings at Stonehenge? by Anonymous on Wednesday, 06 April 2011
    Hi,
    I am living near ballymote and found several small clay balls
    under my floor boards, (the house is very old)
    Recently whilst doing the garden i came across a small stone ball measuring 15mm with an error of about .4 mm from being perfectly spherical.
    It looks like a quatrz stone.
    What is similar to the clay( they may be stone) balls is they have a dot on them, the claysballs are larger at 16.3 mm with a small run out also.
    Its interesting to think that these stone balls might represent mirror images of the planets, further close veiwing might reveal this?
    As to how they managed to make such a ball of such accuracy baffles me, the clay ones are different colours also.
    [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Could carved stone balls have been used as ball bearings at Stonehenge? by Runemage on Wednesday, 06 April 2011
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      Hi there, that sounds really interesting, could you put some photos up on flickr or webshots or another free photosharing site so we could have a peek, please?
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Re: Could carved stone balls have been used as ball bearings at Stonehenge? by MikeGreen on Saturday, 18 December 2010
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Very interesting - I also have similar experience as rosbriagha above -
Extra point is that the article mentions how other methods are not very efficient, but sometimes this is because of lack of experience - often the experiments on TV have asked engineers who immediately plonk for Oak for sledges and sliders, whereas holly or blackthorn are far better. Holly in particular seems to self polish and is the first choice of fishermen for timbers to move their boats on Beer Beach.
Another programme I watched about moving a Viking longship across Orkney (I think) had no one chanting to get everyone to push, pull and tug in unison - A very important part of moving a heavy object. Once again this is employed by the Beer Fishermen.
Anyway I like the ball bearing idea and think it fits in (in Scotland in particular) with their other love of carving the platonic solids (circa 2,000BCE)
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Re: Could carved stone balls have been used as ball bearings at Stonehenge? by rosbriagha on Saturday, 18 December 2010
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Having made 3 stone circles, I found that a system that had planks, then round lengths as rollers, then more planks on top, with the stone placed on the planks and levered onto the rollers, worked a treat. Apparently they move houses thios way in the states...The bottom planks and rollers can be moved along as the stone moves. We moved several stones this way, with 2-3 people pushing 2-3 ton weights.
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NOVA Secrets of Stonehenge trailer for TV programme by Andy B on Friday, 17 December 2010
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