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National Geographic : 1960 Jun
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HIGH SPEED EKTACHROMESBY NATIONALGEOGRAPHICPHOTOGRAPHERTHOMASJ. ABERCROMBIE© N.G.S. regular oblong columns, but are capped by lintels joined to the uprights by tenons and mortises; and the heavy lintels themselves are joined by a crude tongue-and-groove bond. No one could mistake the workman ship of Stonehenge for that of the Parthenon; yet it has its own massive distinction. Dressing Stones Took Long Years Like everything else about Stonehenge, it took time. Quite probably, the sarsens were hewed by fire. After excavating a likely looking boulder, the cutters would light a brisk fire upon it and. when the stone was hot, drench it with water, then pound it with maul stones. If they were lucky, the boulder would split along the water mark (page 848). 858 But this would still yield only a fairly clumsy block. To dress it, they would simply have to beat it into shape, blow by blow. It might be one man pounding away, hour after hour, with a round sarsen maul in his fist. Or it might be two men swinging be tween them a rope-cradled maul about the size of a football, lifting it in unison and smashing it down on the sandstone. I hope they knew some good Neolithic work-gang chanties, for it must have been a dull chore, with progress measured in dusty millimeters. One archeologist has estimated that it took about fifty masons three years to thump the sarsens into their eventual form. Once hauled to the site and dressed, the stones were simply slid, end first, into slant-
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