h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'The Presceli Mountains of North Pembrokeshire, Wales, provide a prime candidate'.

It's known beyond doubt that this is where the (blue)stones came from. Also the green sandstone Altar Stone came from the shores of Milford Haven.

Also, don't forget what I saids about the existence of such rocks being known to the Beaker People of Wessex due to the trade route running from Ireland to Wessex.

A2523188 - Stonehenge

Noted.

Will update later

Ref the distance of 240 miles from Preseli to SH, I think it may be worth saying s'thing like:

The most likely route runs from Milford Haven along the S. coast of Wales and up the Bristol Channel to Avonmouth; then up the Rivers Avon and Frome to near Frome in Somerset;, before traveklling overland to near Warminster. The stones would then have been transported by the River Wylye and the Salisury Avon to the end of the SH Avenue near West Amesbury. The total distance is about 240 miles (385 km). Intriguingly, no lost stone has ever been found in a river bed on this route, even though one would have thought that the occasional accident would have occurred.


BTW under Phase III you mention that the bluestones incorporated during Phase II were dug up and re-arranged; but you don't mention bluestones at all in Phase II. You just say 'horseshoe'. Perhaps this should be clarified.

Under 'What is Stonehenge', you don't really mention at all its role in in ceremonies concerning the cult of the dead (see my Entry on Durrington Walls at A7379265).

Traveller in Time out of phase
"There is still a knot in the phases. The suggestion is these phases are the phases in which StoneHenge was build. Any data we have about the building is what we have found and deduced by the archeological finds. (if there were a new reports it would not have been prehistoric)

>Red deer antler picks and ox bone scrapers found discarded in the earthwork were the tools used. Current dating methods on these have narrowed its probable date of construction to between 3100 and 2920 BC.

These two sentences are about the finding of tools and dating of these objects, just in the recent past (less then 10 years), not 5106 years ago.

I will try to formulate something more fitting:
The first phase consisted of the circular ditch and inner bank, set in a wooded landscape. They used red deer antler picks and ox bone scrapers to dig.

Where the precise dating sentence should go one paragraph up, just above the Phase 1 subheader.

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Same area of entry, the three Phases:

What I meant with bare in a previous post is:

>There are two 'portal stones' (doorway stones) standing one on each side of the entranceway.

This sentence is (probably) good english, it does not make much sense as stand alone paragraph. What did they do with it? They just notice those stones appeared there?
Can you make it a story of what they did in each phase?
Or will this be a list of parts belonging to each phase?

Can you try to discribe the shape of the entire structure in well, I though I had been there and walked between the stones, only after reading the entry I am lost as to what is where and if it is a ditch or a stone.

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I agree with 'BigAl' in pointing to the external sie for opening and fee. Though still;

>'Cecil Chubb' gifted it to the nation in 1918, with a condition that the entrance fee would never be more than one shilling (5p).

As in: it costs 5p to enter the site.

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Also there is a contradict in:
>It is not possible to make advance bookings to visit Stonehenge.

And only two lines later

>Specialist tour guides can be arranged by contacting the following:

Suggesting you have to make advance bookings to get a guided tour. "

Is there anyone else who would like to take this entry on?

I can't commit myself to this much work.

This week I have appointments on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday concerning my father and my life is stressful enough.

I am getting no pleasure from this entry and feel like I'm being swiped at from all sides.

Someone else can do it, I'm throwing in the

In the hope that Annie/GB returns:

I promised in an earlier post to find a reference for the moving of sarsen stones on rails.

This was shown as part of a BBC TV series called 'Secrets of Lost Empires', and the specific episode called 'How Stonehenge was Built' was screened in 1997. The prog involved the respected archaeologist Julian Richards and an engineer called Mark Whitby who, for the firsrt time in 4000 years, attempted to recreate the largest of the SH trilthons, where each upright weighs 40 tons. For this, they used only the technology available at the time: stone and wood tools and human effort.
Prior to this, Whitby had conducted experiments on moving stones on trree trunk rollers and found that it just didn't work; the tree trunks didn't rotate, and the weight of the stones crushed the roller. (Experiments on moving boats on such rollers showed trhat the keel just cut a groove into the trunk, which had to be continually greased). It was easier to pull the stone on the greased edge of a plank than on rollers as sliding friction is less than rolling friction.

To be honest, if Annie/GB isn't going to complete this Entry, then (as I said before) I tyhink it wouyld be more fruitful to persuade Watermusic top complete her Entry on 'Building Stonehenge'. i.e. keep a bbrief overview of how it was built in this Entry, but the main substance would be in WM's Entry.

it looks like we all need to lay off for a while. The henge isn't going anywhere. Perhaps we would be better to concentrate on getting
A7379265 into the edited guide and come back to this in a month.

Thanks, Annie, for all the work you've done. Nobody is swiping at you, we're just trying to get the entry to read well and be reasonably explanatory.

But putting together a collaborative entry should be much more than just tacking together all the bits contributed by people. You have to have an overall vision for the entry, and use other people's contributions to flesh out your framework.

I'd love to take this on, but there may be other people who would also like to do it. If there is, stake your claim here!

Well, as Ihave said before, I had been considering it for some time but hadn't done anything due to the enormity of the task. It would have to wait for a substantial school holiday, such as Easter.

Is this better as a less geologically intense "What it's made of section"?

>>If megalith-building is your thing, then somewhere there has to be a place that yields the perfect rock for it. There are two main types of rock used at Stonehenge, the Bluestones and the Sarsens.

The Bluestones are made of dolerite, also known as diabase, (of which the "bluestones" are one type) which is an intrusive igneous rock. In this case the source is the the Presceli Mountains of North Pembrokeshire, Wales, specifically Carn Menyn. It's exceptionally hard (harder than granite) and forms very regular cleavage planes, which means that it comes out of the ground pretty much as pre-formed pillars. It also looks very fine: blue-grey, glossy and sparkling when freshly quarried.

The Sarsens are made of a hard sandstone (a sedimentary rock) from the Marlborough Downs (about 18-20 miles to the north of Stonehenge) and again forms pillar-like structures naturally due to the bedding and cleavage. The term Sarsen is possibly a contraction of 'Sarsden-stones' - a term for the broken masses of sandstone found on the Downs.>>

If it's ok can someone insert it into the text as I don't know how.

looks to me.

I think that, if anyone other than Annie inserts this into the text, they have to take possession of the Entry.

I can't quite remember how to do it either but it's s'thing like, whilst in the Entry, inset 'testpage' before the A number of the Entry.

Then you would copy it anf paste it into a new Entry.

I'm hoping Annie comes back

The person who takes it over should enter
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/test2523188

then copy & paste into their own entry unless you're going to delete everything already written and do a complete rewrite of course.

You can take precedence over me Gnomon ('coz I don't want to commit myself to anything of this magnitude right now)

I was watching a programme last night that said some scientists had done radio-carbon dating on Stonehenge and found it to date from just before the Bronze Age. I was going to find out more, but then I got fed up with the narrator and turned it off.

Well, the early Bronze Age started about 1600BC in Britain and by this time Phase IIIa was already being built (sarsen stones).

Stonehenge 1 (bank and ditch, heel stone, Aubrey's) were all being put in place around 2200BC (secondary neolithic).

"But putting together a collaborative entry should be much more than just tacking together all the bits contributed by people. You have to have an overall vision for the entry, and use other people's contributions to flesh out your framework. "

Having worked in the office with the Guide Team (when there was such a thing) I know how much hard work these are - the old italics had very different styles with collaborative entries - Sam for instance, did just post up all the comments in BLOCKQUOTES with some linking text, while Jimster took pride in doing them the way Gnomon mentions. The overall opinion from the Towers is that when collating a collaborative entry, we can only work from what's been posted to the entry. It's just unfortunate in a way that extra information was posted to the entry in PR, which made this entry much harder work that initially anticpated when checking through the threads below the entry. And I'm extremely thankful that the Collaborative entries I've put together when I was helping h2g2 out over the summer didn't have to go through PR!

Well done to Annie though.

Thanks and good luck to Gnomon with this.

My new version is at A8567850. It is coming along nicely, but there is still a lot of work to be done before it is ready for Peer Review. I believe I have credited everyone from the original entry on the new one. If anybody feels they've been left out, let me know.

The new version is now in Peer Review. Conversation F48874?thread=2160021.