The Building of Stonehenge

What visuals would would stream into your consciousness? When someone uttered the words stone Hinge, spinal tap, Yeah, of course you big spinal tap fan form Back in the day, I wouldn't say I was a big spinal tap fan that just like everybody else, you know, that's permeated the fabric of the culture that I experienced. So for me, Stonehenge, yeah,

definitely spinal tap. But also you know this sort of mysterious groupings of rocks in the hinter land and with spinal tape referring to a particular scene right where they're there's dancing, there's dancing, there's a stage scene. But there also is some um, some stone Hinge philosophy flying out with some of the members of the band who are talking about the reason for its existence. And that is kind of the big question, um that we're gonna get

into in this pair of episodes. What is Stonehenge like? Why is it there? How is it built? These are all these these mysteries that that's sort of a swirl around it, and it's easy to sort of stand outside of the discussion of those mysteries and just sort of pick up contact information and contact ideas about it. And I feel like that's what I've done mostly throughout my life is I've never really been that interested in Stonehenge, so I've only just sort of picked up little bits

here and there. I've certainly never been there, and I've just heard things about UFOs, about aliens and it never really bought into that. But that's just kind of the coloring that the subject has taken on. For me. It's just sort of an abstract, uh collage of UFOs and ancient aliens and pagan priests like sacrificing goats and go down. I don't know why goats are so involved in it for me, but but yeah, just sort of a general vision of that kind of stuff without me ever really

thinking all that much. Well, what we're gonna try to do today is we're gonna talk about so the nuts and bolts of Stonehenge because we can't really understand the meaning of it or with all these theories about why it exists in the first place, without actually looking at the building of it, which is in itself fascinating. So again, think about this megalith structure and this mysterious pile of rocks, and mostly people kind of came up with, as you say,

these sort of theories of it. Could be aliens, it could be uh, you know, a celestial observatory. But in order to really get to the meat of it, you have to sit there and say, how in the world was this erected in the first place. It's insane. And before we get into this sort of bird's eye view of the complete structure, what it would have looked like, and it's heyday. I wanted to mention that Stonehenge finally has its own visitor center. Oh really cold? That long?

That long? I mean it has something like a million visitors a year. No visitor center. Well it's which means no bathrooms, I'm assuming. Yeah, and I'm thinking, Pheinge, that's what I'm thinking. You can just squat behind the behind the stones, Yeah, Papa squat hinge. Alright, So the basics, where is it? Obviously it's in the United Kingdom, it is. It is in the plains of Salisbury, England, and we'll get more to why it actually is probably at that

specific location. But it's a nice sort of like grassy looking area if you look at all the photos, and of course it's circled by highways because some people will complain the monument just hasn't had enough respect over the centuries for people to understand that perhaps it's it means much more to us than we realize about these sort of life and death rituals and what it means to be humans. But instead here you have this little byway

cutting through around it. Yeah, for the longest it was just kind of a big stones It really went until the seventeenth century or so people started really getting a little more serious about trying to figure out what it meant, what it meant, how it was built, and and really giving it the importance that it's due. Yeah, alright, so let's give a little view of it. In its final form. Stonehenge had a path leading to a circular ditch, creating

a bank of earth. This is the hinge part, by the way, So if you hear that word hinge, it's referring to this sort of circular structure that's made. And if you pass the heelstone, and you would have noticed a ring of fifty six pits just within the ditch and in the circumference of it. And these are like post hole ditches, like a little round ditches right exactly, but they're empty. At this point we'll get to why that is. Two stone pillars would have flanked the entrance

and a sarsen circle. These sarsen stones composed of these huge upright stones about eighteen feet high and seven feet thick. They were set in an outer ring about a hundred feet across. Now today only seventeen of these megalists are standing, and you have a few ten and a half foot lintels spanning the tops of these. At one point they had um I believe they were called triathons. Five of these triathons at the center. There are only three of

them right now. Now. Within this was a horseshoe of bluestones around a pillar known as at that time an altarstone, because it was thought that this perhaps is where a sacrifice would have happened, where would have been cut exactly, And then a banked path would have led from Stonehenge to the river Avon. Yes, and that's important to note too, that it is adjacent to a river, and that's going to be more and more important as we we get on.

But in the same way that highways enable humans to visit it today, proximity to a river would have been important in Newly at the times. Yeah, because it was thought that around a tenth of the population would have actually traveled here to Stonehenge for various reasons that we'll get into later. So this wasn't just a sort of as we think of it as a drive by tourist attraction. This was that this was a destination. This is where you went. Yeah, this was sort of like the first

Las Vegas, rising from the landscape. You know, so out in the middle of nowhere. If you build it, people will come. That's another movie, but you know what I'm saying. But no, the comparison to Las Vegas is very apt because we're talking about on a very simple level, man made structures that are rising above the landscape and it's really today that's nothing, but it's but it's interesting to think back to a to a neolithic world and imagine

the power of that. I mean, really you have to you have to think of like the monoliths and in in a two thousand and one to kind of get the same sort of power. Yeah, and let's talk about what it might have been like five thousand years ago during this Neolithic age. We're talking about before wheeled vehicles, before the use of metals and tools were widespread. Um,

but you did have the stone axe here. This is this is in full force and people use it to clear forces and and shape the timbers of their homes. We're talking about small settlement that are scattered and people who are keeping livestock and they move with their herds and they raise barley and wheat. So um. One picture that comes out of this is that this is these are people who have a lot of resources in terms of food, and so we know that one of their

basic needs are being met. So it would make sense that they begin to really focus on other things beyond, like perhaps what Stonehenge means to them, and you know, is it this burial ground and so on and so forth. Because as well go forward, you'll see that Stonehenge was a mega project. Certainly for these people, this was a megaproject. And you have to have space in one's life to do that. You have to have certain needs, have to be net. You know, it's like taking on an enormous

hobby in your life. If you're gonna, say, build a ship in a bottle, you probably want to wait till the house is a little calm, you know, till they at least some of the kids are old enough to not break it or demand all of your spare energy. Yeah, this would be like the Neolithic people's me time or their yoga time. They probably would have uh devoted it to this. And I wanted to read this great quote and I were talking about this earlier. It's um it's

from Colin Richards. He's a professor of World prehistory history archaeology at the University of Manchester, and he says Stonehenge is an expenditure of labor on a grand scale. It's easy for us to forget that these people were creating something which had never been created before. It's a bit

like their own Space program. Yeah, and that inevitably brings me back to our conversations with Neil de grasse Tyson, who spoke about the actual Space program and its existence as a megaproject on scale with something like Stonehenge was something like the Pyramids. It's something like uh, the Great Wall of China, and you have to act yourself. What

motivates people to do that sort of thing. Well, yeah, and that's a great point that you make, because if you're talking about the space program, then you were talking about generations of people who are trying to move this agenda forward. If you were talking about the Neolithic period in Stonehenge, then you are talking about five thousand years Okay, Um, we're talking about a fifteen hundred year period in when

Stonehenge was built in three phases. And moreover, you were talking about these uh pine posts initially being erected at that site ten thousand, five hundred years ago, so that long ago people had an idea of what this site might mean to them and what it could become. Yes, and we'll get more into the meaning as we we progress, but again, we really need to to lay the groundwork about the construction of it and the physical characteristics of

it to truly appreciate it. Yeah, and and just to give everybody context to this is not the only hinge hanging around in in the UK. There are about a thousand other stone circles that can be found um, and a lot of timber circles too. In fact, you have some timber circles which may have reached fifteen ft high, and so these sort of monuments could have been a burial ground for the dead, or it could have been families prominent families in those areas, just raising this, uh,

the these monuments to themselves essentially. But Stonehenge is different in this way because again it's drawing people from all over the area as opposed to just being this localized phenomenon. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back more on Stone. All Right, we are back, and we're going to talk about this ultimate remodeling project undred years in the making. And if anybody is interested in looking at this in detail, you can check out the

English Heritage Stonehenge site. And these are actually the people who are responsible for bringing the visitor center or visitor center to fruition. But they have some really great information about what this construction might have looked like, what would have been built first. Yeah, this is a this is really key and it's so certainly something that I feel like you don't pick up on when you're just sort of doing the sort of usual pop culture absorption of Stonehenge. Infoe.

You just think, oh well, at some point, some dudes, odd, hey, let's erect some stones, let's build this shape for whatever purpose. And they just did it, not realizing that what you're seeing is um is a design that that evolves over time, the construction that takes ages to complete. Yeah, and again we're talking about the sort of technology that they have

available to them at that time. We're talking about antlers to dig ditches with, and um, these hammerstones that they would have held in their hands to try to actually shape the stones and to cut down timber and so on and so forth. Because yeah, they got the stones there, and then you still had to to to work on them to give them in to just the desired a correct shape, and then to make sure they're fitting in with the other stones. Oh yeah, we'll talk about that

in a second. To this tongue and groove. It's amazing to look at and say, oh, I cannot believe that this was constructed during that time period. And you start to think about the depth and breadth of that effort over over so many, you know, thousands of years, it's pretty amazing. So okay, T Dred years ago, you get this timber post put up that to say X marks the spot. Now, if you look at about three thousand BC, you'll see that that hinge that's when that was beginning

to be built. Again, we're talking about the antler. They're scraping this away, and that earth was piled up to make this inner and outer bank, and then within the ditch that's where this ring of fifty six timber or stone post would have been. Now, I thought that those stone posts held the original bluestones that were later moved

to the middle. Yes, And that was really opening to me as well, the idea that you had this sort of temporary design that was there for a while, and then all the stones were moved in, and then that's where we get those holes. They weren't as one might think, bathrooms, you know, that's right. I mean that's the other thing is that if you take this information and just take it at face value, of course, you would come up with a million different theories as to why they were

doing what they were doing. And it really is the accumulation of history as well as our own current technology that kind of gives us a better idea of how it was constructed and why it was constructed. Um, but you know, about five hundred years later, after this hinge was made, the stars and stones, those huge stones were brought in and then the bluestones were moved inside. And then later you have parallel banks that were constructed as a kind of road from Stonehenge to the River Avon.

And this wasn't apparent really unto I think it was about two thousand and ten when researchers Mark Pearson and his team were taking some surveys and they could tell um by the equipment that they were using, that there

was actually this road that was dug out underneath the landscape. Yeah, it's really interesting, um hearing him talk, because as he pointed out, like there was a huge boom of a Stonehenge interest in the seventeenth century, so people got pretty interested in the site up early on, and they were they were digging it up, they were they were looking everything. So so the side itself was be thoroughly examined. Uh, you know by the time I got to the twentieth century.

But it's in it's in exploring the realms surrounding Stonehenge, looking and this in this case at the space between Stonehenge and the river. And as we'll discuss later looking at some other sites uh within a close proximity to Stonehenge, that ends up giving us a lot more understanding about

what Stone Hinge was about. Yeah. And the other thing is that you know, now we have the technology to look at the stars and stones and say, okay, well, not only are they a type of sandstone and they're harder than granite, but hey, they're found scattered all over southern England. And most archaeologists believe that these stones were brought from Marble Downs about twenty miles away. And then if you think about this, it's kind of nuts. On average,

these Starson's way about forty five tons each. I think the heel stone is like fifty tons. Yeah, these things were enormous. Yeah. And then you have the blue stones. What kind of our puny in comparison, because we're talking about two and five tons each, that's it. They weigh about um. But those came from the Pricelli Hills in southwest Wales a hundred and fifty five miles away. That's worth noting that these blue stones. Just see a picture of them and you may think yourself, well that doesn't

that doesn't really look blue. Well, that They're called bluestones because when they're they're nice and wet, they have kind of a blue sheen to them. May be cut into them, there's kind of an appearance of blue. But yeah, they're

not like smurf blue by any means. Unfortunately. Uh, Now, there was this idea that these bluestones could have been brought to the Salisbury Plains area by the movement of glaciers, but at this point most archaeologists think that they are actually transported by human effort, and uh, it's not known exactly how this was. Probably they were carried via water networks or and or hauled over land. And there's a couple of ideas about how they could have been hauled

over land, especially it's forty five ton ones. Yeah, one of the theories that's explored in the Nova Special Secrets of Stone Hinge. But you can find online and watch it's it's it's really good. One of the ideas that they explore in that video is the idea that you have you have all these little almost a palm sized stone spheres, okay, and you find them, so a lot of them are just rough and unpolished, you know, and

then others seem to have some monochuma design. Yeah, but they're all about the same size like like like almost with a degree of precision that is suspicious. And so one of the theories as that is that these were used as ball bearings so that you could you could move a platform across tracks with those bearings, those ball bearings underneath them. Uh, and is a way to move the stone across across the ground. What I love about this is that this was the idea that spring out

of Andrew Young's brain. He was doing graduate work at the University of Exeter and he was obsessed with these these stone carved balls and he actually started to take up the practice himself and do it over and over again, and he had that moment of like, why why are the ones that are found the same diameter? We're talking to the millimeter And that's why he had his aha moment of well, you need uniformity in design when you're trying to make something work, if you're trying to make

make it useful. And that actually was something that panned out for him because he and I believe it was Pearson's team. I mean, it might be wrong about that um, but they actually re enacted this and they got some of the larger stones and the smaller stones to work on this track platform with these sort of ball bearings carrying the stones across or sliding the stones across. Yeah, they had a few missteps along the way, like possibly the type of wood they were using, but for the

most part they proved true. Yeah. And now there's a possibility that people may have laid a path of tree trunks and rolled the stones over them, um, or even just had wooden tracks slathered with with grease as a means to try to move them across it. It's hard to say maybe all of these scenarios are true, that the span of time in which this was built would give possibility to to any one of these theories. Yeah,

you keep coming back to this. Uh. That's one of the big problems about about stone hinges that you ultimately have to try and put yourself in the mindset of of of neolithic man and trying to understand not only how a neolithic human would approach a physics problem a design uh challenge, but how they would they approach the cosmos itself, how they approach their entire view of the world. And we'll see more of that in the second episode

that explores the meaning of Stone Hinge. But but even in just the purely practical physical challenge of construction, you have people just having to think, well, how would they how would they view this, how would how would unwield humans analyze this problem and attempt to solve it? Yeah, what were their resources? What were their abilities at that time? And what is the dents that that supports some of these theories. And that's what is so nice about that

Nova documentary, The Secrets of Stonehenges. It really does build a case, uh for not only how it was built, but why it was built. Um. But first let's get to that shaping the stones. We talked about those hammerstones. We're talking about more than fifty hammerstones that have been

found at the Stonehenge site. And again when we talk about these hammerstones, we're talking about these um stones that fit in the palm of the hand, and they have evidence of chipping away at other stones, like lots of chips that came off of the stones as they were they were doing the fine work on it. Yeah, that

repeated striking. There's a lot of pitting in there. So they would have been used not only to sculpture the stones, but also to create this sort of tongue and groove joint system, which is amazing to me when you see these these up close pictures of the joints going together. Now, obviously describing something like this can be a bit of a challenge in a podcast, but essentially you want to imagine first of all those vertical stones, okay, and then

you're gonna put those lintels on top. You're going to to cap those stones who create this elevated um a ring of stones, right, Okay, So this is that kind of um iconic trilothon sculpture that you see with the two uprights and then the one capping the very top, right, So you have the little pieces that that form the lentil. Okay, think of if you have to ever have like a kid's rail railroad tracking where you have the different curve pieces and you stick them together and it forms a

circle for the little train to go around. All right, So each of those little bits of track come together and and and in this case, they're gonna come together on the top of the vertical stone. Okay. So yeah, this is so if you're looking at this bird's eye perspective, imagine this circle of these lentils that are topping the upright stones, and they're all tongued and grooved, so they've got that kind of like snaky, sinewy line going through that.

It's perfectly together. I mean, we're talking about level within inches here. And then those actual bright stones that are supporting the lentils, those have stone cap like these little stone balls. Yeh, like bumps kind of I think in terms of legos and the way that legos interact, there's like a bump and then the bump goes into a hole. Yes, and it's easy to miss that. You look at stone engine if you just you you don't, if you don't

absorb any of the extual info about it. You think, oh, look, there are two rocks, and then somebody, some caveman or something just stuck another rock balanced on top. No, it's fitted right, and then someone just bumped into it, and that's why the other ones foll Well, No, you're right, it's it's a it's got this little rock sort of sculpture on top, rounded, and then you have the lentil which is hollowed out to fit perfectly over it. Again,

they're using hammer stones to do this it's insane. Now, if that seems crazy, you also have to look at one of the other, perhaps less obvious questions. You have this giant stone, all right, and you want to and it's just laying on the ground, or it just laying on some some you know, greased piece of wood, or on some some some logs or whatever you've got. You've you've managed to transport it all the way to the site. How are you going to get that thing up and

make it vertical? It's it's you're talking tons and tons of rock here. It's not a simple matter of just oh, just roll some more some more logs under it and it will eventually stand up. Yeah, I mean you have

to use counterweight essentially. And people would dig a large hole with a sloping side, and then the back of a hole would be lined with a row of wooden steaks, right, and then the stone was then moved into position and hauled upright using plant fiber ropes and probably a wooden a frame, and then weights may have been used to help tip the stones upright. So again you've got the counterweight idea. And that whole would have been packed with a bunch of rubble to to keep all of that

secure in there. It's just a little bit crazy to think about this. Yeah, and then you still have to raise the lintil portion of it. You've got to get get those stones up, the horizontal ones that are a top the vertical ones, and that's a whole different situations. Can they believe probably involved using timber platforms yep to raise the horizontal lintels into place first of all, and then just kind of make sure they're all hooked in

there in that tongue in groove system. Yeah, and then you gotta do some fine tuning on top of that, just to make sure that everything's lining up. And then then you're set for centuries for thousands of years. That's right. Quite a barn raising actually, Alright. So there you have it. Stonehenge is built. And you know, through through all of

this though, I'm imagining people working on this. I'm imagining uh Neolithic men and women uh just you know, pounding with their stone tools to shape these things, or or painstakingly erecting this this stone. And I'm just imagining one of these dudes just poking his head up and say, why are we doing this again? What? Why are we devoting all of our free time to constructing this, this

thing that I may not live to see completed. Well, I think that's the thing that's so intriguing about it, because you wish, you just wish that you could go back in time and hear some of the stories and the mythology and and and just the reasons for for why they were doing us, because I imagine that it's some very rich storytelling and keeping this uh, this monument, not only just erecting it, but adding to it over year period. That's a very strong and compelling story that

was told. And So in the next episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind, we will get into the wise, we'll get into the theories regarding and really the strong theory that we have now regarding why they did this to begin with plot spoiler Aliens. Yeah, there you go. Sorry, that's it. That's like it's a one second episode. The next one Aliens. Al Right, Well, hey, in the meantime, if you want to reach out to us, let us know about your experiences with Stonehenge, be they in person experiences.

Have you visited Stonehenge and if so, what were your thoughts about it? How did it do the site have a really profound impact on you or is it just kind of stone Let us know. We'd love to hear from. You can find us all the usual places. Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com is the mothership. That's where all of our stuff is. You want to find our blogs, go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You want to find our videos, go to stuff blow your

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