Willy: What the hell you need ball bearings for?
Fletch: Awww, come on guys, it's so simple. Maybe you need a refresher course.
Fletch: Hey! It's all ball bearings nowadays. Now you prepare that Fetzer valve with some 3-in-1 oil and some gauze pads. And I'm gonna need 'bout ten quarts of anti-freeze, preferably Prestone. No, no make that Quaker State.
Fletch (1985)Whilst an undergraduate, Andrew Young saw a correlation between standing stone circles in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and a concentration of carved stone balls, which may have been used to help transport the big stones by functioning like ball bearings.
Young discovered that many of the late Neolithic stone balls had a diameter within a millimetre of each other, which he felt indicated they would have been used together in some way rather than individually. By plotting on a map where the carved balls were found, he realised they were all within the vicinity of Neolithic monuments known as recumbent stone circles. These stone circle monuments in Aberdeenshire share an equivalent form to Stonehenge, yet with some much larger stones.
To test his theory Young built a model using small wooden balls which were placed in a grooved pieces of wood moulding, similar to a railway track but with a groove rather than a rail. The balls were spread apart and a mirror image of the track was placed on top supporting a wood platform. He then placed concrete slabs on the tracks, to replicate a heavy weight.
Young said, "I then sat on top of the slabs to add extra weight. The true test was when a colleague used his index finger to move me forward, a mere push and the slabs and I shot forward with great ease. This proved the balls could move large heavy objects and could be a viable explanation of how giant stones were moved, especially in relation to where the stone balls were originally found."
Discovering the Secrets of Stonehenge
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