Researchers say they've found the surprising source of a key piece of Stonehenge

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Researchers say they've found the surprising source of a key piece of Stonehenge
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Researchers may have solved a Stonehenge mystery — and raised another. They say its central Altar Stone somehow got to England from Scotland, hundreds of miles farther away than originally thought.

Researchers say they’ve tracked down the origins of Stonehenge’s so-called “Altar Stone,” the monolith at the center of one of the world’s most mysterious monuments.

The six-ton Altar Stone itself — which today lies broken on the ground, partially covered by two other stones that are believed to have collapsed onto it — was long thought to have come from South Wales, but That was surprising, in no small part because Orcadian Basin is in northeast Scotland — over 450 miles away from the site of Stonehenge.“When we first got the first kind of batch of data, I looked at it and I said, ‘There’s no way that this can be so distinctly Scottish,’” Clarke adds. “So we did more analysis … and time and time again, it was just so distinctly not from southern Britain, and it pointed towards it coming from this Orcadian Basin. It's just remarkable.

He and the other researchers think the most likely explanation is that it was brought to England by boat, especially since there is already evidence of a Neolithic marine trading network of things like tools and cattle. If so, he says it would point to a “rather advanced and skilled society.”

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