A British enthusiast has put forth his theory on the transportation of the infamous stones of Stonehenge.
Carpet fitter Steven Tasker has suggested a rocking platform could be the answer to one of modern man’s greatest mysteries. Using wood, ball bearings and simple physics, Tasker built a prototype of the machine in 2004 as he indulged a similar interest in the transportation of Egyptian statues.
“We’ve lifted a third of a tonne with it and theoretically it could move any weight,” Tasker told the BBC.
Tasker explained how he tested the model with his grandson.
“I tied rockers below a plank of wood to try and work out how they could have been used,” he said.
“By using pivot points, I could counterbalance a 60 kilogram roll of carpet on top and by using the rockers, walk it across the road.
“Pictures of statues are of them being dragged on sleds. But all statues have flat backs, so this machine would be an easy way to transport them, whatever the weight. A small team of men could do it.”
The idea fell by the wayside until a trip to Manchester Museum in 2018 caused him to dust off the old prototype and consider a different use for it.
Taking inspiration from an old Bible passage which supposedly described a similar machine, Tasker considered his machine’s place in the Stonehenge creation story.
The similar mysteries of seemingly impossible transportation tasks in both Egypt (the pyramids, statues, etc) and Britain (Stonehenge) lead Tasker to believe the machine was created in the former and recreated by Egyptian nomads in the latter.
The theory has caused multiple experts to weigh in. Mike Parker Pearson from the University College London’s Institute of Archaeology suggested Tasker was using modern intuition to solve ancient issues.
“One of the huge misunderstandings [about Stonehenge] is how could you do something with a minimum of effort and maximum efficiency?” Pearson told the BBC. “That is a very 21st century idea. There are no limits to 21st century human ingenuity.
“It’s a failure to understand megalith builders, past and present, used vast amounts of [human] labour.
“One of my researchers has actually calculated the amount of person power it would take to move the stones from Wales to Stonehenge,” he said. “It’s not as much as you might think.”
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