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.
The prehistoric monument Stonehenge, near Amesbury in southern England, has long fascinated researchers and visitors.
“The Altar Stone was the last odd one out,” says Anthony Clarke, a Ph.D. student at Australia’s Curtin University and the lead author ofClarke, who studies geochronology , has always been fascinated by Stonehenge in particular — he grew up on a farm in southwest Wales, where some of its stones are from.
“When you take this profile — this fingerprint, in a way — of the rock, we can forensically compare it to potential source areas all over the U.K.,” he says. “And when we did that … it was strikingly similar to Orcadian Basin sedimentary rocks.”That was surprising, in no small part because Orcadian Basin is in northeast Scotland — over 450 miles away from the site of Stonehenge.
It’s not clear why the stone was taken so far away, or how long the process took. But there are a few theories as to how it made the journey. “Such routing demonstrates a high level of societal organization with intra-Britain transport during the Neolithic period,” reads the team's study.
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