It's been determined that there's a stone missing from Long Meg (Cumbria). The pit for the stone allowed a dating of the stone going missing back in the stone age. The stones of Long Meg are old red sandstone, presumably from local bedrock, rather than from the ocardian basin but that's just an assumption unless tested. It's still appears possible the Stonehenge altar stone may have been erected at Long Meg for a period of time.

there obviously for moving something, and there whittled 'because that is just what people do on long night's before tely'

It kind of reminds me of “ Dannevirke” in southern denmark

When doing bushcraft courses we would always have a running joke that when people didn’t know the intent of an ancient artefact then the default answer was “it was ceremonial”. It always seems like a bit of a cop out answer to me.

Those would be useless as bearings for moving 30 ton blocks. I think they are more likely to be decorative votive objects similar to the Welsh art of crafting Love spoon tokens which was a way for young men to impress women.

I think they would have moved that stone in winter as the ground would be hard and they could use the forest trees to act as lever points 30 0r 40 people could move a 5 ton block with relative ease.

Have you considered Obelix & Asterix

Many hands make light work. The Shirehorse has an enormous capacity for pulling weight. In 1924 at a British exhibition, a pair of horses was estimated to have pulled a starting load equal to 50 tonnes.

Stonehenge....where the cats meow!

If 🇬🇧 government keeps firing missiles at Russia I don’t think the UK will exist, to worry about anything else is ludicrous. as Bismarck stated, to attack Russia is like committing suicide to avoid death. You are almost there 😮

Erratics! Erratics! Erratics! Erratics! All other theories are nonsense. The ancients did not waste resources on moving stones up and down the damn country, in fact, they didn't waste energy on anything that wasn't critical to their survival and well being. These theories prop up academic careers and create novel, eye catching titles that all but guarantee publication in one of theso called 'Prestigious journals' because novelty garners funding these day apparently! This is a problem in virtually all branches of science, and archeology (if archeology can be called a science at all) is no exception. Dragging a stone 600 miles for no good reason? Get real!!!

Could the same aleins that built the pyramids built stonehenge 😉

Stone henge is boring, just a pile of overrated rocks.

💜

4:45 Laurentia! There's a rabbit hole. It's an ancient landmass which tectonic forces have moved around, merging it with others and splitting it away again for last billion years or so. It was the core of a supercontinent once. In all the changes, parts of its edges have broken off and ended up elsewhere, so that while it now forms the core of North America, the Scottish Highlands were also once part of it. Y'know, between all this Laurentian stuff, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if the altar stone turned out to have come across the Atlantic. Very seaworthy things, reed boats. 😈 Oh I really like the idea of land transport engaging with people along the route, perhaps taking decades. Still, with ships carrying lifesaving _drogue stones,_ I think there's a good argument for sea transport too.

Was Doggerland above water at this time? Xs.

If you're ever in France please do a video about Carnac and their stones.

Thanks for the recommendation on the bike. I might check it out. Also, I enjoy your vlogs, so please keep up the good work.

When the ice sheets moved south, how far did it get. Possibly it moved closer to Stone Henge?

Most of the lead mine workings seen are from later Victorian workings.

it's a portal, paul

That was fascinating, thank you. Triggered some thoughts as well. When we have the Olympics the torch travels through the various countries and is celebrated enroute! Maybe the stones for these monoliths were used in the same way a celebration and a testing place for the stone masons. Then my thoughts went to the people who use Stonehenge today, the druids! Were/ are they the descendents of the original culture who turned practicality into a religion over time. Then my thoughts went to the Welsh eisteddfods and that wherever an diversified is held they have the crowning of the bard and a small stone circle is set up. I wonder if there is an older link between these things than we understand today.

Wonderful presentation. Extremely interesting and informative, thank you.

Inane tone of voice

It could have been transported by the glaciers that covered most of the British Isles and only moved a few kilometers to Stonehenge.

If Neo are not a rival, why waste money buying them. Better to buy them if they go bust if we accept Vikingd prediction.

I see a few comments along this line, but the glacial erratic explanation is the most sound. I certainly would not rule out a fantastic origin of the stone per se, but it seems like it would be on the larger side of known erratics and would have stood out in a landscape where it had been deposited only a few thousand years before (as opposed to today, where many erratics are buried under 10,000 years of soil).

Why are you giving distances in yards and miles? Britain has been metric for many decades. If you prefer to keep the ancient units of measurements for nostalgic reasons, why are you talking about a six tonne block when you could simply say it weighs 944.8383 stone? :)

I have the feeling, that these kind of papers do not touch the human factor at all. My theory is the following: About 10 Guys in local sports club, were drinking and complaining about their wifes. The incessant nagging and and so on. Then one of them had an Idea, we make a road trip, have a good time and tell the wife that we need to bring a magic stone to the high sacred place. ANd it would take about 2 years, to do it. Everybody was really excited. Word got out, and more and more men wanted to join. Then the wifes found out, and decided that their husbands needed wifely support, to keep them straight and narrow, and the wifes also deserved a blessing for the holy deed. So they would join them. At that point it dawned to the men, that now they had to actually do it. And thats how the stone went south.

You use those to knit gloves. Probably leather working in this case.

I know how they moved tons of stone back in the day like Stonehenge and for the pyramids, I try to explain but nobody seems to get it?

😊 Your unsolicited advice,absolutely made me chuckle. As a Canadian, that is one of the first things that you learn when playing or hiking in the woods in autumn and winter. You squat, or fold your scarf as a seat, or….. find a log to rest on. 😅 I thoroughly enjoy your videos, and the way you present them. You may only consider yourself a storyteller, but (speaking from Celtic heritage), the storytellers and singers, are the most revered and appreciated. Keep it the good work, and videos. Cheers!😊

The idea that Neolithic people from Northern Scotland (not even the Orkneys) would have carried a nondescript undecorated rock for 700 km is astronomically absurd. The logic that led to point 2 of that article is wrong. One does not guess glaciers movements and from that infer that out-of-place rocks were carried by humans. Instead, one uses out-of-place rocks to infer glacier and iceberg movements in the past. Thus the Altar Stone is evidence that glaciers or icebergs *did* at some time flow or floated all the way from Northern Scotland to Southwest England. Glaciers may have flow northwards from North Scotland in some "mild" glacial eras. But they would not flow that way when the ocean north of Scotland was covered with miles of ice. Indeed, geologists already seem to accept as a fact that, at some point, glaciers and icebergs flowed down the Irish Sea to the latitude of Southern England. So the only question is whether some of that ice would have then turned East and reached Wiltshire and beyond. Any scars of such ice movement could well have been erased as the limestone bedrock weathered away, leaving the erratics scattered all over the region. Point 2 of the paper follows in good part from the Archaeologists dogma that megalith stones were quarried and transported to their present place by Neolithic people. But there seems to be no evidence of such quarrying, and it is hard to justify. An alternative that seems to make much more sense is that the Neolithic people just collected suitable erratics that had been deposited in the area by glaciers, carrying them for a few miles at most. Any stone that was longer than wider would have been erected as a monument, alone or with other similar blocks. And then the Neolithicans often pillaged stones from older monuments to build bigger ones. Brian John already debunked the claim that the apparent source of the Stonehenge bluestones in Wales was a quarry, noting that the rocks there naturally break down into pillars with roughly rectangular section. If glaciers flowed west from the South Irish sea, they could easily have carried those stones from that location to Wiltshire and beyond. Also, the location now claimed to be the "quarry" of the sarsen stones may in fact be part of an original deposit of such boulders that extended down to Stonehenge; that "quarry" being just those sarsens that were too far to from the henge to be used.

Paul, if you haven't already have a read of "Scenes from Prehistoric life" by Francis Pryor. There is a chapter on Stonehenge and others on transport, farming etc in Bronze age. 100% recommend.

If they had options to what route to take. They must’ve have known the landscape of Britain like the back of their hand.

It never made sense to carry such huge stones that greater distance.unless they’re leaders was in bred (mentally unstable) and no one dared to question him 😂

Alterative theory: The was a large trading network all along the sea coasts of western Europe at that time, including around Scotland and Orkney. The stone was ship ballast, and the builders of Stonehenge, needing a fancy piece of rock for the altar, visited a trading post on the River Avon and bought it off a ship captain. He could easily replace the ballast with other rocks. This explains otherwise unlikely events - firstly knowing enough about the geology of Britain to identify a specific type of rock to use and secondly, deliberately transporting a 6 tonne chunk of rock that distance.

I dont think you have to fiddle with the camera constantly. It's disorienting.

One of the most puzzling questions, for me anyways, is why? Why that particular stone? Did they perceive it to have special properties? Was it maybe a gift from some tribe? Seems a hell of a lot of hardship for a particular type of stone.

Perhaps they tried to move half a dozen, say, blocks by sea and this was the only one which survived so they had to use local stone for everything else? Or this was a stone they managed to take from Orkney and it was so amazing that it got there they celebrated it? I do actually tend to think that the by land, slowly theory is the likely one but the above did occur to me while watching.

MILES!! - we are in England!

That stone could have been moved 4 ice ages back - it’s a question that needs raising and answering

Seriously people it is right in front of all of you. The hill forts were built right at the time of domestication of animals. Breeding stock and the herd in general were currency in every form. There was no coins and thieves were after animals. Every hill fort is a night time holding enclosure for livestock. No water is required as you lead them down to water at dawn after the risk of raids is over. This is so evident and apparent just glancing at the distribution. I have argued this multiple times in multiple forums and it is frustrating people cannot see it. Of course they were repurposed over time for so many reasons, including as truly poor defensive positions against the Romans. They were never designed to keep people out, they were designed to be impossible to move animals out of anything but the one entrance.

The narrative is standing firm about the date of its origin but this surely has to challenge that? Stone circles have to be older than the current date range ?

It wasn't so long ago that stonehenge was though to be so huge that only giants could build it, then that only galciers could move the stones, now that sea transport would have been 'impossible'. we consistently underestimate several things about 'stone age people': 1) their skills and intelligence 2) the importance of these projects to them in terms of meaning and purpose (and therefore the costs and risks they were prepared to bear) and 3) the extent of their travels and perhaps most importantly 4) the TIME they had available to complete them. Several of your other comments point out that people who have no practical experience of boating have ... no practical experience of boats. They 'voyage' could have been done very slowly and carefully in stages over a number of years.

Coming that distance is *very* difficult to believe - Even by boat. Is there evidence that they had boats of such construction that could float such a weight? A tree canoe or reed mat isn't going to cut the mustard. And there's no way they moved it overland, not because moving such a stone is physically impossible, but It's a completely nonsensical thing to do. There is no spiritual, religious or any other reason to haul a stone from that far away - The rock is not special. I do not personally believe the claim. Some so-called scientists really need to stop and examine their hypothesis under a lens of common sense before they publish their opinions I fully accept and give that we cannot know for sure their thoughts, wants or intentions, but they're humans, too - Just like us, and they had the same basic psychology as we do. They didn't haul it all the way from Scotland.

Wouldn’t the ‘sea route’ option actually been land back then?

Very good article. I understand the significance of determining where the stones come from to try to understand our ancestors but I have to say there is a bigger question in my mind which is WHY? Apologies if this sounds a bit conspiracy theory but i look at stonehenge and think why bring stone from such vast distances if it did not serve a purpose? You've pointed out that the outer circle is made of locally sourced material so why not build the entire structure from that? Why bother to transport other rocks hundreds of kilometers? That would be pointless. A giant stone circle would have been good enough to impress anyone back then. So WHY do it? If the outer circle is comprised of Sarsen sandstone which has a great deal of quartz in it and then the inner circles made from Welsh Blue Dolerite (A different type of quartz and minerals) and finally an alter made from a red sandstone containing quartz and iron then surely it was deliberately built for a reason to serve a function? I'm no scientist but all those rock structures are in modern day technology. It looks as though it was intentionally built to serve a function we do not understand.

A meteor hit of sufficient magnitude may have transported the stone (and perhaps many more). Interesting to see if geologists have put much work into this possibility. It seems bizarre that relatively primitive people would have even known that this type of stone existed, and if they did why put so much effort into transporting? I think a natural transportation method is far more probable.

Hi you guys! We have soo enjoyed this video! All the info and the wonderful countryside you take us to! Stunningly beautiful! We love coming along for adventures new! Thank You!😊