It has always been known that the bluestones which form Stonehenge’s inner ring came from western Wales, and were transported to Wiltshire using primitive Stone Age technology.
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Last year, scientists conclusively showed that the bluestones were from two particular mountainsides in the Preseli hills, called Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin, by matching the stone’s geological “DNA footprint” with stones at Stonehenge.
Stonehenge – which now resides in Wiltshire – was quarried in Craig Rhos-y-felin and Carn Goedog in Wales around 3400 BC and 3200 BC.
“It’s intriguing”, Parker Pearson says, “and while it could’ve taken those Neolithic stone-draggers almost 500 years to get them to Stonehenge, that’s pretty improbable”.
The world’s leading expert on Stonehenge, Professor Mike Parker Pearson, said he thinks it’s more likely that the bluestones were part of a different, smaller monument in Wales for 500 years before being transported to Stonehenge to be included as the centrepiece of what was already a significant monument site in Wiltshire.
If they can find the Wales monument, archaeologists may be able to ” to solve the mystery of why Stonehenge was built and why some of its stones were brought so far”, Parker Pearson said.
If research over the next year reveals a local monument near the quarry where the bluestones were initially used, this could suggest that the builders of Stonehenge migrated from Wales. “Normally we don’t get to make that many fantastic discoveries, but this is one”, he added.
“The only logical direction for the bluestones to go was to the north then either by sea around St David’s Head or eastwards overland through the valleys along the route that is now the A40” said Professor Parker Pearson.
Prof Kate Welham, of Bournemouth University, said the ruins of a dismantled monument were likely to lie between the two megalith quarries.
‘We’ve been conducting geophysical surveys, trial excavations and aerial photographic analysis throughout the area and we think we have the most likely spot, ‘ she said. The results are very promising.
“While we knew the locations where the rocks originated, the really exciting thing was to find actual quarries”, Pearson told National Geographic. The archaeologists estimate that each of the 80 monoliths weighed less than two tons and that people or oxen could have dragged them on wooden sledges sliding on rail-like timbers.
He recalled the moment he looked up the near-vertical rock-face and realised that this was one of the quarries.
The site is now thought to have been a unification monument created to bring people of Britain together and has long since been known to have had religious significance.
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The findings from this latest study could also help us understand why Stonehenge was built. You can see chisel marks where they drove in wooden wedges at the recesses on the outcrop…
