Devil's Arrows: Ancient builders hauled 55k-lb stones 11 miles for UK stone row

(sciencedaily.com)

25 points | by bookofjoe 3 days ago

5 comments

cjs_ac 1 hour ago
Also, Stonehenge was built (partially) from parts of other stone circles, from as far away as Wales: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56029203
dmichulke 1 hour ago
25-tonne stones for 18km in case you wondered
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- SECProto 26 minutes ago
  Or 3928 stone stones
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)
- robertlagrant 1 hour ago
  For anyone confused, British people would generally use tonnes (or tons, but maybe not know the difference exactly) and miles.
- nickt 38 minutes ago
  Or about 3 double-decker buses for the length of 171 footy pitches.
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  - gnufx 12 minutes ago
    That's not dimensionally correct! Double-decker bus is a unit of length, and footy pitch is too prosaic to be an approved unit: https://www.theregister.com/bootnotes/2026/05/31/the-reg-onl...
ChrisRR 1 hour ago
Imperial is confusing at the best of times, but couldn't they have said 24.5 tons instead of 55,000 lbs?
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- guenthert 1 hour ago
  They could have said 3300 stones stones ...
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  - euroderf 39 minutes ago
    That rocks.
- masfuerte 1 hour ago
  That's the way they like it. American road signs have mad shit like "No trucks over 15,000 lbs".
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  - walthamstow 32 minutes ago
    Surely they don't actually like drill bits measured in fractions of an inch, do they?
  - thechao 52 minutes ago
    That's because we measure weight in tonnage.
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    - close04 5 minutes ago
      In the EU and UK the weight of the vehicle is on the signs too [0], or the weight per axle [1].
      [0] https://hgvlgvtraining.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/weig...
      [1] https://freesvg.org/img/B13a.png
hashim 8 minutes ago
The word for this sort of structure is apparently a menhir: ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir. The article calls it the tallest in the UK but its Wikipedia page calls it the second-tallest. This is the actual tallest, interestingly also in Yorkshire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudston_Monolith.
ButlerianJihad 1 hour ago
This must be the origin of the saying, “People who start stone rows shouldn’t build glass houses”.
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- vogelke 27 minutes ago
  Lovely.