Harris's experiment used sawn wooden logs only as a static trackway for the sled, to prevent damage to the grass in Gordon Square, and not as rollers. They found that unless the rollers were exactly the same diameter, any larger rollers would be crushed into the ground and jam, while any skewed or misaligned rollers would quickly make the whole arrangement unstable, he added. In previous experiments, researchers have tried to move large stones with rollers, but "with absolutely terrible consequences," Harris said. Whatever technique was used to move the megalithic stones, Harris thinks it's unlikely the builders laid cylindrical wooden rollers in front of the stone blocks as they moved forward - an idea that has been commonly proposed. "Although that's very far away from Stonehenge, at least we have some very convincing evidence that these kinds of sleds were used during prehistory, which is a lot better than we have for many other suggested techniques," Harris said. shows that the technology was known in prehistoric times. Similar sleds are still in use today in India and Indonesia to build large stone monuments, Harris said, and the recent discovery of a Y-shaped wooden sled at a megalithic site in Japan that dates back to around 2000 B.C. Given the hilly terrain that the Stonehenge builders had to cover, he estimated that a group of around 20 people would have been able to transport a single 2-ton bluestone by sled from Wales. Harris, who also conducts tours of Stonehenge for a company called Tours from Antiquity, said a scaled-up version of the wishbone- or Y-shaped wooden sled that was used in the recent experiment may have also been used to drag the larger sarsen stones, but over a much shorter distance than the smaller bluestones. The giant "sarsen" stones, which make up the main ring of Stonehenge, weigh up to 32 tons and are made from a local sandstone that is thought to have been dragged from the Marlborough Downs, 20 miles (32 km) to the north. In 2014, researchers identified the site where the 2-ton dolerite bluestones from Stonehenge were quarried, in the Preseli Hills of western Wales, about 140 miles (225 km) northwest of their eventual destination at Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, England. Most have left little trace on the landscape and were discovered with the aid of modern archaeological techniques such as aerial surveys that use geomagnetic instruments and ground-penetrating radar. In recent years, questions about the techniques and labor that were required to build Stonehenge have deepened with the revelation that the famous stone circle is just one part of a vast complex of Neolithic monumental circles made from stones and wooden posts, processional "avenues" and burial mounds. They pulled the apparatus at a rate of around 10 feet (3 meters) every 5 seconds, which works out to a continuous hauling speed of about 1 mile per hour (1.6 km/h). The students said that they found the task much easier than they had expected: Just 10 people were needed to haul the sled and block over the short trackway. The experiment took place in Gordon Square, which is located next to the University College London (UCL) Institute of Archaeology. In an archaeological experiment that combined the public demonstration with feats of strength, dozens of students joined an effort to haul a sycamore-wood sled carrying a 1-ton stone block over a wooden trackway. Using only rope, wood and stone tools, in front of a cheering crowd in a park in central London last month, they put their theories - and their muscles - to the test.
Now, a group of university students in the United Kingdom has come to grips, literally, with how the Neolithic people of Britain might have transported the huge stones over such distances. In the Middle Ages, a legend arose that Stonehenge was built by giants on the orders of the wizard Merlin, as a tomb for British nobles who were slain by the invading Saxons. The massive megaliths at Stonehenge have fascinated scholars and tourists for centuries, but one of the most enduring mysteries about the site is how the ancient builders of the monument moved the giant stones into place - some more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from where they were quarried.
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