Stonehenge is a real mystery. Who built it? Why? How?
Now there are some new questions: Why did the altar stone, a six-ton cap of a Neolithic monument, come from a site in Scotland some 450 miles away? And how did it get from the mine to the Salisbury Plain site?
A team of scientists came up with this concept. nature report This means that the stone originated in Scotland, not Wales as previously thought.
Altar stone
The implication is that the altar stone has special significance as all other rock elements of the circular stone formation come from Wales or nearby. Construction of the project began around 5,000 years ago. area It is thought that hunters and gatherers lived there.
This suggests that it was a deliberate decision for the architects to select stone types to suit a variety of elements across a wide geographical area.
“They have been carefully selected from various parts of the UK,” he says. Anthony Clarke“It’s a fascinating question: why different stones come from different places?” said lead author of the study and a graduate student at Curtin University in Australia.
Read more: How Hunter-Gatherers Used the Land Around Stonehenge
Transporting the altar stones to Stonehenge
Scientists used geological methods equivalent to genome sequencing to determine the origin of the giant stone. They analyzed hundreds of minerals contained in the altar stone. The stone was carved from sandstone, so it is made of many minerals.
Information about that particular mineral assemblage and how some of it collapsed shows a clear match between the Altar Stone and rocks from the Orcadia Basin to the northeast.
“I can say with 95 per cent confidence that it came from Scotland,” Clarke said.
So how did they get to southern England? There is no archaeological evidence of how the rocks were transported, but given the conditions at the time, it seems likely that they were transported by sea. At the time, the island was a temperate rainforest. The land was likely muddy and covered with thick forest.
Clarke says that it seems impossible to drag the stone that far under those conditions. It would be more reasonable to transport it by ship. Of course, if that were the case, the sailors would need navigational skills, perhaps skills based on mathematics and astronomy.
Read more: Finding Monuments Beyond Stonehenge
Stonehenge research
Clarke has his own emotional connection to Stonehenge. He grew up in Maynard Preseli, Wales, where some of the stones of Stonehenge come from. He first visited Stonehenge when he was one year old. After analysing samples of the altar stone in Australia, he returned to England to complete his research.
“It’s like we’ve come full circle in the stone circle,” Clark said in a statement. He called it “a tremendous honor and a wonderful experience” to work on a project that has indirectly connected most of his life.
Now researchers know where the altar stones came from and have some ideas about how they ended up at Stonehenge, but they still don’t have an answer to the question “why.”
“That’s what makes Stonehenge so amazing and mysterious,” Clarke said.
Read more: Five Great Stone Age Structures of Europe Still Extant Today
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Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul worked as a science journalist for more than 20 years, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global science career issues. He started his career in newspapers but transitioned to science magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
