- 5/25/2025
In Britain, fresh light is cast on the enigma of Stonehenge as dozens of volunteers use ropes and wooden sledges to erect replicas of the massive stones originally raised 4,000 years ago. Their task involves more than brute force, since the question of how the lintels that bridge the uprights were raised and leveled continues to baffle scholars and engineers alike. The meaning of Stonehenge to its builders and the purpose of the astronomical alignments built into its structure also figure in this match between muscles and megaliths.
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00:00It's one of the most mysterious places in the world.
00:22A strange set of stones, arranged like no other, stand silently above the plains of
00:29southern England, Stonehenge.
00:41For centuries, no one knew who built it.
00:47According to medieval legend, it was the work of Merlin, the wizard of King Arthur's court.
00:56Later, credit for the construction went to the Romans, and then to an ancient pagan cult,
01:02the Druids.
01:09Only in recent years have archaeologists finally begun to discover who really built Stonehenge.
01:16And when.
01:20It is now believed that these stones were erected almost 4,500 years ago, long before
01:27King Arthur or the Romans, at the end of the Stone Age.
01:35It was an amazing achievement.
01:45Each of the colossal uprights weighs between 50 and 80,000 pounds.
01:56The stones are harder than granite, but most were carefully shaped and joined together,
02:03as if they were made of wood.
02:06And although the monument stands on sloping ground, a line of the horizontal stones, called
02:13lintels, runs almost perfectly level.
02:18All this was done in an age without machinery, without writing, and without any metal tools.
02:32Even after 15 years of studying the area around Stonehenge, archaeologist Julian Richards
02:38is still impressed by this ancient wonder.
02:42This is the biggest stone at Stonehenge.
02:45It's absolutely enormous.
02:47It towers over 20 feet above me, and there's eight feet of it buried in the ground.
02:52I get really fed up when people come to Stonehenge and say it's smaller than they expected.
02:57I mean, this is a massive stone.
03:00It used to have a pear standing there as well.
03:04That one, unfortunately, only buried four feet in the ground, fell over a couple of
03:07centuries ago.
03:08And these two stones, these two massive uprights, with a great lintel on top, form a trilithon,
03:15one of the biggest and most impressive elements of Stonehenge.
03:23The use of massive blocks weighing up to 40 tons is all the more remarkable, because there
03:29is no natural source for large stones anywhere near Stonehenge.
03:36In the Middle Ages, the mystery inspired reports that the rocks were brought from Africa
03:42by an army of giants.
03:45Today, archaeologists have come up with a less romantic, but still impressive explanation.
03:55Twenty miles north of Stonehenge stands another stone circle, not as elaborate, but much larger.
04:03It's nearly a mile in circumference, and now encloses part of a town.
04:09This is Avebury, an incredibly huge stone circle built before Stonehenge.
04:15But what it's got in common with Stonehenge is some of the rocks that it was made of.
04:19Sarsens, an incredibly hard sandstone cemented together with silica, one of the hardest rocks
04:26that we know of in this part of England.
04:30In Avebury, the valleys are littered with sarsen boulders.
04:34A few on the scale of Stonehenge still lie half buried in the ground.
04:39And obviously, this is where they came to get the stone for Stonehenge, the only place
04:43around here where there's a supply of stones of the right sort of size.
04:48Well, this is just the remnants.
04:50Roger Hopkins is a stonemason from Massachusetts who specializes in moving and shaping granite.
04:57For years, he's been amazed by the Stonehenge builders' mastery of hard stone.
05:02You know, looking at the site with all these stones in the way, it must have been a real
05:07chore to get these on a sled and get them out of these fields.
05:11Well, I mean, they were using it as, I mean, it wasn't quarried.
05:14You didn't have to dig into solid rock to get this out.
05:17It would have just lain around all over the place.
05:20What's the contour, the terrain like between here and there?
05:24It varies quite a lot.
05:25There's a fairly flat river valley and then a very steep hill to get you up onto Salisbury
05:31Plain from where on it just undulates gently until you get all the way to Stonehenge.
05:38If Avebury was the source for the massive sarsens, how did the ancient builders transport
05:43them across 20 miles of rolling hills and erect them in the shape of Stonehenge?
05:53After centuries of mystery and debate, Julian and Roger are determined to find out.
06:02Their plan is to reconstruct the great trilithon of Stonehenge.
06:07But to pull it off, they'll need a little help.
06:15This small army of volunteers will provide the labor in an historic attempt to move and
06:21raise blocks exactly like those in Stonehenge, using Stone Age technology.
06:27We'll have to lift the end when we come to do it.
06:33Along with Julian and Roger, the team will be led by engineer Mark Whitby.
06:38The reality of taking two 40-ton stones and turning them on their ends without using any
06:44machine power whatsoever is quite a daunting task.
06:49I don't think people have really stopped to think about the problem at Stonehenge in
06:52a realistic way.
06:53All the theories are put together by people who haven't actually been faced with the practical
06:57task of doing it.
07:02One of the old theories is that the stones were moved on top of large rollers made of
07:08tree trunks.
07:15And tests performed with concrete blocks, like this one weighing nine tons, have shown
07:21that rollers can work.
07:27But the biggest stones at Stonehenge were more than four times as heavy.
07:34This is a concrete replica of the largest stone at the ancient site.
07:38It's almost 30 feet long and weighs over 40 tons.
07:48Mark is convinced that such a huge weight would crush and flatten even the hardest wooden
07:54rollers.
07:55I've watched people drag a boat up a beach and they had rollers there, but the rollers
07:58didn't rotate.
07:59They actually had grooves in them where the keel of the boat went over the top of them.
08:03And lo and behold, they were putting grease on that groove to make it slide.
08:09It's quite obvious things would rather slide, and if you get it greased, it's easier to
08:13make it slide than it is to make it roll.
08:17So instead of rollers, Mark has constructed a simple track made of two parallel lines
08:23of timbers set into the ground.
08:27The 40-ton megalith sits on a wooden sled.
08:31The bottom of the sled is equipped with a keel, which keeps it centered on the track
08:35and prevents it from going off course.
08:46To make it easier for the stone to slide, Mark has the rails of the track slathered
08:50with grease.
08:54In ancient times, the workers could have used animal fat, known as tallow.
09:01The team will attempt to pull the stone up a slight incline, typical of the terrain surrounding
09:07Stonehenge.
09:08It's going to be very hard work getting it up the slope.
09:12We've got everybody lined up here to pull, and it's going to be, you know, very interesting
09:19to see whether they can do it.
09:20It's not going to be easy.
09:23In true engineering fashion, Mark has done some elaborate calculations.
09:28He's determined that it will take a minimum of 220 people to pull the weight uphill.
09:34Unfortunately, only 130 volunteers showed up.
09:40One, two, three, four!
09:45One, two, three, four!
09:49One, two, three, four!
09:53Despite their efforts, the stone hasn't moved an inch.
09:58It's actually almost touching the edge.
10:02The liberal application of grease appears to have backfired, and the 40-ton stone is
10:08glued to the track.
10:09Take the strain of the rope!
10:11We've got a real sort of static friction, as they'd call it.
10:14It's stuck down with all the grease underneath it, and you've got to break that first of
10:18all before it can move.
10:19Once we've broken that, we'll be off, hopefully.
10:22One, two, three, four!
10:25One, two, three, four!
10:27One, two, three, four!
10:29Mark will try just about anything to get the stone unstuck.
10:34That's what we're... OK.
10:37No, but it's going to be...
10:39When they're pulling...
10:42How many people have we got hanging around the back here?
10:45Why don't we all just get on the ropes up there?
10:48Try this on the back.
10:51Roger Hopkins is on hand to provide practical advice.
10:55He's the only one on the team with any first-hand experience moving large stones.
11:01He recommends breaking the suction by lifting the stone with levers.
11:06Get the wedges in.
11:09I think this will work.
11:11I think this will lift it up.
11:12That'll unstick it, and we should be away.
11:14But it's the job of unsticking it, which we've got to do now.
11:18We need to get it in further.
11:19Drop this one here!
11:21This one here, drop it!
11:23Get them to pass the rope over, and they pick up the outside.
11:26Get them to move more into a straight line.
11:29In order to get things moving, project manager Mike O'Rourke
11:33has to get the pullers and the levers to work together.
11:37One, two, three, four!
11:40One, two, three, four!
11:43One, two, three, four!
11:46One, two, three, four!
11:49One, two, three, four!
11:52One, two, three, four!
11:56Suddenly, the levers do the trick.
12:00Pull! Pull! Pull! Pull!
12:07It's going!
12:09Let's go!
12:11Pull! Pull! Pull!
12:15Pull! Pull! Pull!
12:39Perfect. Absolutely brilliant.
12:41I mean, if anything, quite fast.
12:43I mean, do you think how far that would go in a day, on that basis?
12:48In the end, Mark's system worked better than even he expected.
12:53But is there any evidence that the Stonehenge builders
12:56used a wooden trackway like this one?
13:01The method seems to be workable, but I just wonder,
13:04you know, they would have bothered to build a trackway all the way from
13:08where Marlborough Downs is.
13:1125 miles.
13:1225 miles, yeah.
13:13Well, I think the effort that you put into doing something like this
13:17certainly makes it a lot easier.
13:19I mean, the thing that bothers me is,
13:21having demonstrated that this works,
13:23would we ever be able to find any trace of it in the ground?
13:27I don't think we would.
13:32As a result of weather and soil conditions in this part of England,
13:36combined with centuries of farming,
13:38very few of the tools and materials used in the construction of Stonehenge
13:43have survived.
13:47But we do know that parts of the countryside were once heavily wooded,
13:51providing plenty of timber for the Stonehenge builders.
13:56Jake Keene has spent years investigating Stone Age tools and technology.
14:03He believes that the ancient builders were extremely resourceful
14:07and exploited the forest for much more than timber.
14:19Using only stone and wooden tools,
14:21Jake carefully removes the bark from a common tree of the region,
14:26the small leaf lime.
14:32♪♪♪
14:48He then submerges the strips in a nearby stream
14:52and leaves them there for several weeks.
14:55♪♪♪
15:00After being in the mud for about six weeks,
15:04this is the smelly end product,
15:07which, of course, is the inner bark.
15:10And the layers, the bast layers, have separated off.
15:16The little microorganisms have nibbled away at the gummy material
15:21and this has broken down into
15:24something like 10 or 12 separate ribbon-like layers,
15:28which is what we make the string from.
15:31And we twist these together.
15:34They're very, very strong.
15:36I don't think there's probably any stronger plant fiber
15:39native to this island.
15:43Strong rope was essential for moving heavy stones.
15:47And with fibers like this,
15:49the ancient builders could easily have made rope
15:52capable of pulling the giant blocks of Stonehenge.
15:59But why did they bother to drag the stones
16:01over 20 miles to this shallow valley?
16:07No one knows why it was chosen,
16:09but there's evidence that this site was considered sacred
16:13centuries before Stonehenge was built.
16:18After excavating the area and radiocarbon dating
16:21the pieces of bone and charcoal found here,
16:24archaeologists have retraced a unique sequence of construction.
16:30The first monument was built over 5,000 years ago
16:34and contained no stones at all.
16:37It was a simple earthwork enclosure
16:40consisting of a circular ditch, a bank,
16:43and 56 wooden posts dug into the ground.
16:47Over the next 400 years,
16:49a series of wooden buildings occupied the center of the circle.
16:54Tiny fragments of the foundations remain.
16:59The first stones arrived around 2600 B.C.
17:03when the buildings were replaced
17:05by a double crescent of small pillars called bluestones.
17:10Just 100 years later, the monument took on its final form.
17:1530 giant sarsens, each weighing about 25 tons,
17:20were neatly arranged in a ring about 100 feet across.
17:25Along their tops were placed 30 lintels
17:28forming a true circle 16 feet above the ground.
17:34Within the circle stood the largest stones,
17:37five massive trilithons formed a horseshoe.
17:42The tallest towered 25 feet above the ground.
17:47The builders had never before attempted
17:50to raise stones on such a colossal scale.
17:55How did they manage to do it?
17:59Archaeologists discovered important clues
18:02when they excavated the soil around the largest stone.
18:07They found that it stood in a giant hole
18:10with almost a third of it underground.
18:13One side of the pit was slanted,
18:15indicating that the stone had been lowered into the ground
18:19at a steep angle.
18:23Remnants of deer antler revealed
18:25how the hole was dug out of the hard chalk.
18:31It would certainly have been possible
18:33to have dug a hole with an antler pick like this.
18:36It would take perhaps two people,
18:40three days maybe to dig a hole of this size.
18:44With the 40-ton stone poised over the pit,
18:47can the team replicate the ancient feat
18:51of standing it upright?
18:53Mark Whitby has a plan.
18:55What we've got is one of the 40-ton uprights
18:58and it's been dragged to a position
19:00where it's now ready to be toppled
19:02into the hole that we have in the ground.
19:05The hole's pretty precise
19:06because it's exactly the same as the hole
19:09that they've got at Stonehenge.
19:11The basic concept is we've put six tonnes now
19:14on the back of the stone by dragging it up these ramps.
19:17We've tied it together as a bundle.
19:19We've put it on a little greased chariot here,
19:21rather like we had for the big stone,
19:23and that's running on a very simple bearing down here.
19:26It's not nearly as heavy as the big stone
19:29and we've got it tied back with a rope
19:32which is lassoed right round the back here
19:34and that rope's going to mean
19:35that when it travels a certain distance along the stone
19:38it's going to stop.
19:39However, before it reaches that point,
19:41it will have passed this magic point
19:43at the centre of gravity
19:44and we'll be inducing the force
19:46which will make the whole stone start to turn.
19:49It'll happen slowly to begin with
19:51and then it'll just go.
19:53Instead of moving the stone,
19:55the volunteers will pull a heavy weight
19:58that will tip the block.
20:00This is a good example of modern man
20:03trying to over-engineer ancient techniques.
20:08This is a bit over-elaborate,
20:10but I'm hoping it works.
20:13It'll save us a lot of work in the long run.
20:16Right, this is what we've been waiting for.
20:19There's one very, very important thing.
20:21When that stone starts to stand,
20:24do not rush to the stone.
20:26You must all stay back
20:27until the engineers have checked to see if it's safe.
20:30We can crawl all over it once it's safe,
20:32but you mustn't under any circumstances
20:34come forward of where you are now.
20:36The safety of the workers is foremost in everyone's mind,
20:40but there are also fears for the stone itself.
20:44Three, pull, one, two, three, pull, one, two...
20:50The megalith could tumble out of control
20:53or even break apart from the force of impact.
20:57Yes!
20:58I'm excited in one sense,
21:00and in another sense, I wish I was a long way away.
21:03You know, it's, uh, we'll see, you know.
21:06Something's got to happen.
21:10Mark realizes he's got just one chance to get it right.
21:14It's now or never.
21:17Hold it.
21:36Yeah!
21:47Ah!
21:52Brilliant!
21:56No, let's have a look.
22:02It's literally just dropped just as we planned it to drop.
22:05And the only thing that's slightly different is it's kicked out the back here.
22:08But that's just better than we expected.
22:10That means it's more upright and got less work to do, you know, tomorrow.
22:16Well, this really worked a lot better than we had hoped for.
22:20I think better than we both hoped, you know, better than I hoped.
22:23And I was hoping the most, probably.
22:25I think it was probably one of the most spectacular ways
22:28that one can think of getting a stone this size into a stone hole.
22:32Whether that was possibly a way that they did it,
22:36we shall honestly never know.
22:39I heard comments that it was perhaps an over-engineered approach.
22:44I'm not convinced about that.
22:46I mean, the people who built Stonehenge were very sophisticated
22:50and were obviously capable of thinking out grand schemes like that
22:54and carrying them through.
22:55And I don't see why,
22:57especially after you'd perhaps had a go with some smaller stones,
23:01that somebody wouldn't have come up with an idea like this.
23:04Let's use the weight of some smaller stones to help us move a bigger one.
23:09So I don't find it completely implausible.
23:12We shall never know, is the answer, of course.
23:15I think we can all go home to a nice rest.
23:18Yeah, and a little relief.
23:23Mark chose this method for tipping the stones
23:26because it required the least number of people.
23:30No one really knows how many workers were used in the construction of Stonehenge
23:35because there's so little evidence.
23:41There are no written records from this period.
23:46The houses and farms that once supported the workforce
23:50have by now completely vanished.
23:54All that's left for archaeologists to find and study
23:58are pieces of pottery, stone tools, and bones.
24:04But this meager evidence can give us some idea
24:07of what life was like in Stone Age England 4,500 years ago.
24:14The people were farmers,
24:16moving from place to place in search of fertile soil.
24:20They herded sheep and cattle and hunted for wild deer.
24:29Gradually, as farming techniques improved,
24:32the population grew,
24:34providing the labor force for ambitious construction projects.
24:40Centuries before Stonehenge,
24:42communities started coming together to build large tombs.
24:46One of the most impressive is over 340 feet long
24:50and has an entrance constructed of massive sarsens.
24:54We've got one of the earliest examples here
24:57of the ability to construct with huge stones.
25:00Massive sarsens dragged from the surrounding downs,
25:03some placed upright,
25:05others, like this one here, placed on top of them as capstones,
25:10almost giving an idea of what sarsens were.
25:16Stonehenge was going to be like
25:18when it was built with uprights and horizontal lentils,
25:21but here, these massive stones forming, effectively, boxes,
25:25parts of a chambered tomb.
25:29It's effectively a house of the dead.
25:31Five stone chambers lie on either side of this passage,
25:35and in these were found the remains of 47 individuals
25:39buried over a period of perhaps 25 generations.
25:47What's very interesting is the way that the bodies came into this tomb.
25:51Not all of them as completely fleshed bodies,
25:55but some of them just as collections of bones,
25:58with hints that they might have been buried elsewhere for a while,
26:02they might have been exposed for animals and the elements
26:05to have removed the flesh from the corpses.
26:07Brought in here as a bundle of bones when the tomb was opened up.
26:11And we get hints as well that there was a rearrangement of the bones,
26:15skulls placed in one corner, long bones in another.
26:18The other bits and bobs tidied off to one side.
26:21And one thing I find fascinating is that
26:24there are some bits that aren't all there.
26:27There aren't quite enough heads to go round.
26:38Around the time that Stonehenge was built,
26:41burial practices were changing.
26:46Abandoning the large communal tombs,
26:49important individuals were buried alone
26:52under circular mounds of earth called round barrows.
26:58Over 300 of these tombs still remain within two miles of Stonehenge.
27:07Inside each one is a single body
27:10surrounded by a few prized possessions.
27:16It's obvious society's changing
27:18at the time that the Stonehenge that we know today was built.
27:21I mean, there aren't the communal burials
27:24with lots of people put into one burial mound.
27:27Instead, every hilltop around here
27:29is covered with individual burial mounds, round barrows,
27:32and each one of those is the burial place of somebody rich and powerful.
27:37They had to be to be buried this close to Stonehenge.
27:41And of all these barrows,
27:43the most important, the richest person of the lot
27:47appears to be buried in this one.
27:51Excavated about 180 years ago.
27:54I mean, he's still in there.
27:57The bones were recorded as being of a tall and robust man.
28:01But the excavators at that time weren't interested in the bones themselves.
28:05They left the burial where it was.
28:07What they were interested in was the objects.
28:09And that's what gives us a clue as to just how powerful this person was.
28:13This person was buried with some absolutely incredible gold objects.
28:19A breastplate.
28:22A belt buckle.
28:27Pure gold, finely hammered and etched.
28:31Other graves revealed more treasures.
28:34Gold earrings and buttons.
28:37Bronze daggers and spears.
28:414,000 years ago, these objects adorned the richest and most powerful people.
28:49And these ancient lords and ladies chose one location above all others
28:54as their final resting place.
28:57The hills surrounding Stonehenge.
29:03In the midst of this enormous cemetery,
29:06the circle of stones was like a great cathedral,
29:09standing guard over the graves of its wealthiest patrons.
29:30Back at the construction site, the crew is contemplating its next major task.
29:37The enormous concrete block is standing in the hole
29:41at a steep angle of 70 degrees.
29:44The team now has to pull it just 20 more degrees to vertical.
29:49But this will turn out to be a much greater challenge
29:52than Mark Whitby ever expected.
29:55This would have been a distinct problem,
29:57getting these things perfectly vertical.
30:00We've not solved that one, have we?
30:04I've got the weight of this one.
30:09To maximize the workers' efforts, Mark has erected two huge timber poles
30:15attached by ropes to the top of the stone.
30:22That's fine. They won't slip down there.
30:25This is the bit we've been waiting for. Can you all come over here, please?
30:29The 90 volunteers will pull on another set of ropes
30:32that is tied to the top of the timbers.
30:36With this arrangement, Mark hopes the poles will act like giant levers,
30:41multiplying the force of the pull
30:43and making it much easier to move the stone upright.
30:47One, two, three, pull!
30:55Mark put a lot of thought into his plan,
30:58but apparently not quite enough.
31:04The upright poles are dangerously unstable,
31:07and more time and energy is spent struggling to avoid a catastrophic collapse
31:12than actually moving the stone.
31:15Pull! Hold it!
31:17Mike, get your teams at the front to slack it off,
31:20and these teams put it back.
31:28Pull!
31:31That team's not pulling hard enough.
31:34That team, that team.
31:37Mark is forced to admit that his plan is flawed
31:40and agrees to tie the poles into a giant A-frame,
31:43a much more stable arrangement.
31:46Get it into a bit of an A-frame, and we might be able to make something of it.
31:50But it proves there's some value in that.
31:53We should have an A-frame.
31:56Perfect! Right, now latch it together.
32:00Simple as that.
32:03Why have you decided to use an A-frame, Mark?
32:05Because we should have always had an A-frame, basically.
32:07It's fairly obvious that an A-frame's more stable,
32:10and what we've got is the problem of it all falling over sideways,
32:13and we're having to use too much energy or effort in terms of these people
32:16to hold the thing up on the left and right flanks.
32:19So we can maybe, by making it an A-frame, concentrate our efforts on pulling it forward.
32:22Why didn't you think of that before?
32:24We probably did, but somehow it got lost in the translation.
32:27I know we've had all sorts of ideas, and this is one of these ones we should have stuck with,
32:31but we somehow thought that things might be better than they really would be.
32:37But an entire day has been lost.
32:40Mark and the team will have to wait until tomorrow
32:43to see if the A-frame works.
32:55The original builders of Stonehenge experienced their own share of setbacks.
33:01Along with moving and raising the stones,
33:04every block had to be carefully shaped.
33:08The horizontal lentils were secured to the supporting stones
33:11by unusual mortise and tenon joints.
33:17A large projection on top of each upright
33:21had to fit precisely into a hole on the underside of the lentil.
33:27With only stone tools,
33:29pounding out the holes must have been an excruciatingly slow and tedious job.
33:37I think it's likely that the uprights would have been in place
33:40with the tenons worked on the top of them
33:43before the fine work took place on the lentil.
33:47That would have involved pounding out these massive mortise holes.
33:51I mean, this would have taken weeks to do, I would imagine.
33:54The biggest of them holds about 18 gallons of water.
33:57But clearly they didn't always get it right
34:00because on this side there's the start of a couple of other mortise holes.
34:05So clearly they started here, turned it over and worked them on this side.
34:10And I would have hated to be the person who told the workers that they got it wrong
34:15and they got to turn it over and start all over again.
34:18I don't think you'd have been very popular.
34:20One, two, three, pull! One, two, three, pull!
34:24Let's just leave it.
34:26We let it go?
34:27No, let it go.
34:28Seems a shame to let it go now that it's up there.
34:30I know, it's all right.
34:32After yesterday's disappointments, Mark's own popularity is suffering a bit.
34:38We were close!
34:40I'd like to try putting stones up, not timbers up.
34:42Yeah, stones are a lot easier.
34:44Today he's hoping to redeem himself with a new and improved A-frame.
34:48I reckon that we should really just get another means of getting these poles up
34:51because otherwise we would get totally frustrated.
34:53He uses a model to calculate how many people will be needed to finally get the stone vertical.
34:58I've got the stone to 70 degrees, which as far as I'm concerned is the most difficult bit.
35:02All we've got to do now is just get it through the next 20 degrees to vertical.
35:06And what I'm going to do is going to use this A-frame.
35:08We've made the A-frame so it's strong in this direction.
35:11It's not going to fall over this way, but we've made it so it's an A-frame,
35:14which is a lever, a great big lever, and it's pivoting at the point on the ground here.
35:19We're pulling with all the people we've got on the top of the frame here.
35:24I've attached the ropes which are pulling from the stone to the A-frame
35:30to the point about a quarter of the way up the height, the overall height of the lever.
35:35The effect of that is that when the people pull here,
35:37I can multiply the pulling force that they achieve by a factor of four.
35:42Let's just look at how many people may be required to do the job.
35:47I've got weights on the end of here. This is a 50-gram weight.
35:50That's approximately equivalent to 50 people pulling.
35:53I'm now going to add another 20 to this team.
35:57That's 70.
35:59And then another 5 to that. That's 75 in total.
36:05And I've got my stone to vertical.
36:09But what if there were no A-frame?
36:12OK, let's imagine we were to do the brute force approach.
36:16Let's imagine we were to pull this thing to vertical without the A-frame.
36:23I've got 75 on here.
36:25Let's just add a few people to this. Let's just add 200 more people to this team.
36:29I haven't got 200 people. Let's just add them, though.
36:31Let's imagine we've got them and see if we can do the job with 275.
36:36No, we can't. Let's add another 50.
36:38This is 325 people pulling now.
36:44And still not managing.
36:46Let's add another 10 to that. That's 335 people.
36:51And away it goes.
36:52That's the amount we would have needed to pull and we just haven't got them.
36:57The full-size A-frame is up and ready to go.
37:01But as usual, Roger Hopkins isn't satisfied with the construction.
37:05A proper A-frame should be built with a crossmember at one-third of the way up,
37:10lashed in securely to keep it from racking.
37:13I don't think you're out of the woods yet.
37:17And I think the A-frame probably should be in a lot closer
37:20so that we have a little bit more leverage with it.
37:23And then we would just run the rope right over the top and pull the sucker over.
37:27I think this is a good example of engineering learning some field experience.
37:32Well, I think you're absolutely right.
37:33There's no doubt we did a lot of things wrong yesterday.
37:35We should have planned the A-frame to begin with.
37:37It's absolutely absurd that we haven't.
37:39We still haven't, I agree with you, got the best A-frame in the world.
37:42But we've got something of an A-frame and I believe that's going to work.
37:45Well, I wish you luck.
37:48I just don't think that A-frame's going to hold together the way she's rigged.
37:53Right, let's see if we can shift that stone.
37:56One, two, three, four.
37:59One, two, three, four.
38:02One, two, three, four.
38:05One, two, three, four.
38:07One, two, three, four.
38:10It's moving, it's moving.
38:12Keep going, keep going, keep going, come on.
38:17Come on, let's do it.
38:20One, two, three, four.
38:27Yes, come on.
38:29One, two, three, four.
38:31Stop.
38:33Come on, keep it up.
38:35It's all right, it's safe, go on, they're pulling.
38:39The proper way to have done this right from the beginning
38:42was that when we had the motion, just keep on pulling.
38:45Whenever we've tipped up large stones,
38:47we always try to keep the momentum going
38:50because it's a lot of work any other way.
38:53I get a feeling these Neolithic people
38:56were probably a lot handier with these tools than we are.
39:00I'm sure of that, certainly A-frames.
39:03Yeah.
39:05Remind me to get you the Boy Scouts.
39:08You might want to read it.
39:11Despite Roger's concerns, Mark forges ahead with the operation,
39:16and Roger has nothing to do but retreat to the sidelines.
39:22One, two, three, pull!
39:25One, two, three, pull!
39:27One, two, three, pull!
39:30One, two, three, pull!
39:33One, two...
39:35It's going.
39:38They're coming up.
39:56Brilliant! Come on!
39:59The A-frame, although a bit precarious, makes a difference,
40:04and the monolith inches its way to vertical.
40:13Slow and steady!
40:16Go!
40:35Four thousand years ago,
40:39the Stonehenge builders had to raise and precisely position
40:4340 of these huge blocks.
40:46The whole monument was symmetrically arranged
40:50around a central axis that runs through the entrance
40:54and down the middle of a processional avenue.
40:58It points directly to the spot on the horizon
41:02where the sun first appears on June 21st,
41:06the summer solstice.
41:13Every year on this day, the sun rises above the Heel Stone,
41:18a sarsen boulder that stands near the entrance.
41:26Six months later, on December 21st,
41:29the shortest day of the year,
41:32the sun sets on the opposite side of the circle,
41:36between two uprights of the now-fallen central trilithon.
41:45Some people believe that Stonehenge is also aligned
41:48with the Moon and the stars and could help predict eclipses,
41:52but none of these theories are proven.
41:56It is possible that the circle of stone served
41:59as a kind of crude calendar,
42:02alerting farmers to important events in the annual growing season.
42:10But most likely, Stonehenge was built as a temple,
42:14a special place for the community to gather,
42:17to perform sacred rituals, and to honor their gods.
42:27In the 20th century, a modern cult of druids
42:30adopted the temple as their own
42:33and used it as a stage for elaborate solstice ceremonies.
42:42But in the 1970s and 80s,
42:45their pagan services were gradually overwhelmed
42:48by hippies, drugs, and the international press.
42:57To protect the monument,
42:59British authorities now close Stonehenge on the summer solstice.
43:11Barbed wire and armed guards
43:14keep everyone away from the ancient stones,
43:17including archaeologists.
43:20It's June the 21st, the summer solstice.
43:24It should, I suppose, be a beautiful day
43:26with the sun rising up over the hillstone, but it's raining.
43:29It's actually quite cold and miserable now.
43:32It's a place that I want to be at, at the midsummer.
43:38I feel somebody really ought to be here.
43:41But it's not a very spiritual experience.
43:46I think it could be, and it obviously was to the people who built it.
43:50I mean, forget all the engineering
43:52and forget the calculations and the big stones.
43:55I mean, this is the culmination of all that effort.
43:58This is why people dragged those stones those great distances
44:01and put them up.
44:03They were building a temple,
44:05and they're building a temple that is important
44:08certainly at this time of the year,
44:10possibly at another time of the year in the winter.
44:13Clearly there was a tremendous amount of feeling on those people's part.
44:23The ancient builders needed this motivation
44:26when they faced their final challenge,
44:29raising the 9-ton lintel 23 feet to the top of the uprights.
44:34The traditional idea is that the smaller stone was raised slowly
44:39with large wooden levers and a timber crib.
44:45Roger is eager to show how well this can work.
44:49Then we can maneuver it around.
44:51Lift, lift, lift.
44:59With each lift, thick pieces of timber are slid underneath the stone.
45:06Coming through.
45:10OK? Yeah, that's good.
45:12He's off.
45:14Yes!
45:16Little by little, the pile of timber grows,
45:19and, according to the theory,
45:21will gradually lift the stone to the top of the uprights.
45:29A little more.
45:31Good. Relax, relax, relax.
45:38I think it's clear it would be a perfectly feasible way
45:41of getting the lintel up, which is the nice thing about it.
45:45Bigger timbers would be useful,
45:47and maybe they wouldn't have been quite so regular in size,
45:50which might have been a bit of a problem.
45:52Mark thinks the operation is too slow,
45:55and at a height of 20 feet would become too precarious.
46:01He wanted to raise the lintel up a large ramp made out of earth,
46:05but unfortunately, British safety officers
46:08insisted that he use steel scaffolding instead.
46:15Underneath all the scaffolding stands the 40-tonne stone.
46:19A second identical upright has been raised beside it,
46:22and together, the two stones will form the base of the trilothon.
46:28Is this how you think they did it at the time they built Stonehenge?
46:31Well, Julian, it's quite simple.
46:33If you look over there, you'll see my big pile of earth.
46:36Do you see it? Chalk everywhere.
46:38It's a pile of earth. I've just put some timbers on it.
46:41I'm just dragging the stone up the pile of earth.
46:44So, you know, that's what it is, Julian.
46:46It's, you know... Ancient technology, can't you see?
46:49Well, yeah, no, so perhaps it's the scaffolding that confuses me a bit.
46:52Well, you've got to put your blinkers on at this point, Julian.
46:55I must admit, I find this a 20th-century engineer's approach
47:00to how to get the lintel up.
47:02I mean, personally, I'm happier with a timber crib.
47:05It seems less intrusive into the monument at the time,
47:10and it seems a lot less elaborate than this somehow.
47:14You know, perhaps 4,000 years ago...
47:16Yes, I still think there was a lot of preparation went into things,
47:19but there would have been a willingness to accept
47:21that perhaps that stone would have inched its way up
47:24over a period of a week.
47:26We've tried one method. We can see that.
47:28Let's try another method and see how it goes.
47:30Yeah.
47:34Ready?
47:35Since the A-frame works so well in raising the stone to vertical,
47:39Mark will use it again to drag the lintel up the ramp.
47:51One, two, three, pull!
47:54One, two, three, pull!
47:57One, two...
47:59To allow the volunteers to rest between pulls,
48:02the top of the ramp is equipped with a log
48:05that's supposed to act as a brake,
48:07preventing the lintel from sliding backwards.
48:11No!
48:12No, don't you!
48:13Look, if they can't, you've got to pull the scaffold over.
48:16But after a couple of big pulls,
48:18it's clear that the brake is not working.
48:21Take it!
48:22OK, hold it! Hold it there!
48:24Right, you've got to release these back down.
48:26This isn't working here at all.
48:29Yeah, look, just let these ropes ride off, OK?
48:32As soon as the volunteers stop pulling,
48:35the lintel descends to the bottom of the ramp.
48:40Ready?
48:41Right.
48:42Watch out!
48:47It turns out that the riggers have wound the rope
48:50the wrong way around the log.
48:54Right!
48:55Thankfully, the problem is easily fixed.
48:59One, two...
49:00And when the volunteers renew their efforts,
49:03the lintel starts to make its way up the ramp.
49:13One, two, three, pull!
49:16No!
49:22Like the ancient stones,
49:24the bottom of the lintel is equipped
49:26with two large mortise holes,
49:28which must fit exactly over the projections, or tenons,
49:31on top of the uprights.
49:36To ensure that the stones are properly aligned,
49:39the final phase of the operation
49:41must be performed slowly and precisely.
49:44Nice and easy, nice and easy.
50:05The volunteers are thrilled,
50:07but Mark is in no mood to celebrate.
50:11It needs about three inches this way.
50:13As he feared, the mortises and tenons are not lined up.
50:19Why don't we just rock this end?
50:21I'm sure we're almost there.
50:22The lintel must somehow be repositioned.
50:27It's going!
50:28Luckily, Roger brought along his levers.
50:32Keep that up, you know, slowly but surely, we'll make it.
50:37It's going, it's going, it's going.
50:40Yes, yes, yes, yes!
50:44It takes some time,
50:46but finally the lintel slides down into position.
50:58The trilithon is complete.
51:11I think these Stone Age men were pretty ingenious.
51:15You learn an awful lot of respect for them
51:17as a result of being handed two 40-tonne stones
51:20and one 9-tonne stone,
51:21and asked to sort of stand them on their ends
51:23and put the 9-tonne on top.
51:25And I think I probably got nearer to thinking
51:27like he might have thought at the time
51:29than anybody has for a long time.
51:31And that's very nice, a very nice feeling that gives you
51:34to enter into the sort of soul of somebody
51:37as a result of seeing what they've built.
51:41They were pushing the envelope of their technology.
51:46They were taking things that they had seen work
51:49and applying them to a massive job
51:52that was advancing their technology
51:55and by doing so probably advancing their status
51:58in their community.
52:04We haven't got the final answer.
52:06You know, we can't say this is how it was done.
52:09But what we've demonstrated is how it could be done
52:12and we've tried to be as real to the time
52:15that Stonehenge was built as possible.
52:20In archaeology, you can answer some questions about Stonehenge
52:23when it was built,
52:25something about the society that built it,
52:27and this has answered some of the questions about the task,
52:30the engineering, how you motivate people,
52:32how you organise people,
52:34but there's always going to be a mystique about Stonehenge.
52:40NOVA PBS ONLINE ADVENTURE
52:48Now, log on to another lost empire, Ancient Egypt.
52:52At NOVA's website,
52:54navigate the tunnels, tombs and temples of the pharaohs
52:57and follow a real-time excavation at Giza.
53:00Experience Pyramids, the inside story
53:03on NOVA PBS Online Adventure.
53:09NOVA PBS
53:25To order NOVA's Secrets of Lost Empires
53:28mini-series on videocassette,
53:30call 1-800-255-9424.
53:34This five-hour set is $69.95 plus shipping and handling.
53:38Individual programs are also available for $19.95 each.
53:44Next time on NOVA,
53:46a modern-day team struggles to reconstruct the legacy of
53:50the Inca on Secrets of Lost Empires.
54:08NOVA is a production of WGBH Boston.
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