Preview

The Creation Of The Stonehenge Sarsen Stone

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
564 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Creation Of The Stonehenge Sarsen Stone
There are many theories on how the Stonehenge monument was created. Folklore depicts a story of wizardry, following the Arthurian legend. The old story states that the massive stones were magically transported from Ireland to England, where giants worked to assemble them. Regardless of the theory, Stonehenge is a Neolithic structure that stands in England to this day. It is estimated that it was 1500 years in the making. However, the questions remains how a civilization without modern technology, or even the wheel, produced such a mighty monument. The fist monument built in approximately 3000 BC was dug with simple antler tools the dust and chalk piled up to make inner and outer bank. In 2500 BC began the construction of central stone settings. Huge Sarsen stones were raised to form this unique structure. The Stonehenge is made up of 2 types of stone. The larger of the stone is Sarsen stone, a form of sandstone. On average theses stones weigh 25 tons. The second stone is the smaller of the 2, called bluestones. They do have a blueish tone when broken or wet, and weigh 2-5 tons. …show more content…
Sarsen and flint hammer stones were used to roughly flake and chip the stone away. The smaller stone were used to smooth the surfaces. The Stonehenge was originally built in a circular formation, there were 2 entrance to the circle one wide one small. On the north east side as well as the inner side of the circle were finely carved and dressed. In order for the stones to stand upright they handcrafted lintels which fit horizontally between the stones. The lintels were pieced together using tongue and groove joints, typically seen in wood working. This speaks to the Neolithic

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    chapter 8-16 Summaries

    • 3900 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Stone tools are often made by removing material from a core until a desired shape is obtained. The flakes removed from the core can also be used as tools in their own right. Long parallel-sided blades, however, dominate in some parts of the world. Because blades are removed from a core systematically a large number of tools can be produced while very little raw material is wasted.…

    • 3900 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The colossal stone heads are 14 large stone structures, with heights varying between 5 to 12 feet, weighing between 5 to 50 tons, and sculpted from basalt. The first stone structure was founded at Tres Zapotes in the nineteenth century and sparked an archeological investigation leaded by Matthew Sterling in 1938. All of the structures depict men with general facial features that were common during the time among the Olmecs. These heads were transported over long distances, requiring a great deal of human labor to transport them, although the method by which the Olmecs did so still remains a…

    • 1574 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Stonehenge took over a millennium to build where the pyramids took twenty years. The Egyptians brought stone from hundreds of kilometres away and the stone was not large in comparison to Stonehenge. Egypt had more manpower for the task of building these megalithic structures, as the people were concentrated in a closer area. Whereas in Britain, the population was largely scattered and labor to help build Stonehenge was less concentrated. Stonehenge was used only for religious ceremony, whereas the pyramids were used for ceremonies and burials for numerous amounts of important Egyptian people. Stonehenge was an above ground structure whereas the pyramids had an underground burial…

    • 1402 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Megaliths: Structures & complexes of very large stones constructed for ceremonial & religious purposes in Neolithic times.…

    • 2649 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Dr. Donald Redford, a professor of Mediterranean ancient studies, believes that these Pyramids were constructed by copper chiseling tools to cut limestone. Finer quality limestone composed the outer layer of the pyramids, giving them a white sheen that could be seen from miles away. The capstone was usually made of granite, basalt, or another very hard stone and could be plated with gold, silver or electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, and would also be highly reflective in the bright sun.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    This helped save the workers save a lot of time. However, the Parthenon was meant to be bigger than any other building, so the architects did have to expand the existing foundation in order to fit their plans. They also had to figure out how they were going to get all that marble from Mt. Pentelicon to the construction site. This was one of the most difficult tasks as the marble blocks were extremely heavy. The men only had access to simple tools such as pulleys, levers, and ropes. This led to many accidents as sometimes the ropes would break and huge marbles would slide down the mountain causing a lot of injuries in their wake. It is said that one of the stones that was meant for the Parthenon’s columns is still at the bottom of a nearby ravine. Once the workers got the marble to the bottom of the mountain, they then had to transport it to the construction site. They used specially made carts drawn by up to sixty oxen. Then they had to move the marbles up the hill to get to the Acropolis. The workers used another sets of ropes, pulleys, and sleds to get these marbles up the hill. It took almost two days to move a single stone from the quarry to the Acropolis and cost 300 drachmas which was equivalent to a year’s salary for an average…

    • 2086 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The pyramids took a little more than twenty years to build. It was very hard to built pyramids. First, they had to prepare the place it was going to be built. Then, they had to take blocks of stone transport them and then place them. Each block was about two to eighteen tons. After that they had to put a casing to smooth the surface. But sadly over the years the casing has disappeared over the years. One really knows how the blocks were put there but there were theories.…

    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    They used copper chisels, dolerite hammers, and wooden wedges to cut stone. To move the stones, they used wooden rollers, rafts, and sleds. It was simple to cut these stones, as most of them had a natural cleavage that split easily in a straight line when struck with the aforementioned tools. The blocks were trimmed before they were put into place by teams of workers. Stonemasons smoothed and neatened the outer limestone surfaces once the structure was complete and the earthen ramp was removed.…

    • 725 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Brooklyn Museum Visit

    • 422 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This statue is made from Granite which is a type of stone found from earth, so it is believed that the artist used some sort of chisel and hammer to create this art piece, since modern machinery was not available at the time.…

    • 422 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Furthermore, this kind of sheep-like acceptance of scientific interpretation is something Barbara Bender contests as a major factor in how Stonehenge is individually viewed. According to her reckonings, a prominent Stonehenge scholar could come out with an announcement describing the long awaited meaning of Stonehenge as a temple to the indigenous Great Bustard. The bird, the historian argues, would likely have been around in Neolithic times and in times of scarcity would have sustained Neolithic people as an easy food source. Thus, they built Stonehenge to be in the circular shape of a bird egg or nest and evidence of feasting pits around Stonehenge show they were giving thanks to the Great Bustards’ sacrifice. Rooted in the factual feasting…

    • 316 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This article argues that Stonehenge was a cremation burial site from its beginning and continued to be so throughout the third millennium Cal BC with an estimate of a hundred and fifty individuals buried at Stonehenge. It also goes further, saying how the 56 Aubrey Holes belong to the primary stage of Stonehenge construction and also the chance that they contained Welsh bluestones. The cremation burials were appointed to have taken place around the twenty-seventh to twenty-sixth centuries cal BC, (i.e. to the end of Stonehenge's timber phase and the beginning of its bluestone and sarsen phase) as appointed by researchers. A number of the unburnt human bones excavated by William Hawley, who worked at Stonehenge between 1919 and 1926, have been kept…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stone Tools

    • 721 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Chipped stone tools are made from cryptocrystalline materials such as chert or flint, radiolarite, chalcedony, basalt, quartzite and obsidian via a process known as lithic reduction. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a nucleus (core) of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator. If the goal of the reduction strategy is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once it has become too small to use. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper reduces the core to a rough unifacial or bifacial preform, which is further reduced using soft hammer flaking techniques or by pressure flaking the edges. More complex forms of reduction include the production of highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers, knives, sickles and microliths. In general terms, chipped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in all pre-metal-using societies because they are easily manufactured, the tool stone is usually plentiful, and they are easy to transport and sharpen.…

    • 721 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This sarcophagus was made from marble which was probably shipped to Rome from turkey. In order to carve marble it involved a slow, careful chipping away procedure. The materials used to complete such task was a hammer and a chisel. After the chipping was done, it would have a rough surface. In order to smooth out the rough surface one would use another stone called abrasion to transform the art into a smooth piece.[3]…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Aliens Built the Pyramids

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Archeologists suggest that the large stones used in building the pyramids were transported by rolling them over logs or a wet, slippery, clay surface. These methods may have been effective in moving the blocks close to the building site, but do not explain how the massive bricks, weighing as much as a Ford F250 truck, were lifted on top of each other.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There is another theory from Herodotus, which states that machines formed of short wooden planks were used to raise the stones. “After laying the stones for the base, they raised the remaining stones to their places by means of machines formed of short wooden planks. The first machine raised them from the ground to the top of the first step. On this there was another machine, which received the stone upon its arrival, and conveyed it to the second step, whence a…

    • 398 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays