WILTSHIRE (UK) – Finally a long-enduring mystery about the famed Stonehenge has been solved by scientists. They have been able to shed light on the place of origin of many of the megaliths that constitute the monument in Wiltshire, England. It was possible because of a core sample kept in the US.
Using geochemical testing, scientists found that 50 of Stonehenge’s 52 pale-grey sandstone megaliths, known locally as sarsens, originate from a site 15 miles (25 km) away at West Woods on the edge of Marlborough Downs.
The megaliths were erected at Stonehenge around 2500 BC. The largest is 30 feet (9.1 meters) tall while the heaviest weighs about 30 tonnes.
“The sarsen stones make up the iconic outer circle and central trilithon (two vertical stones supporting a horizontal stone) horseshoe. They are enormous,” said University of Brighton geomorphologist David Nash, who led the study which was published in the journal Science Advances.
“How they were moved to the site is still really the subject of speculation,” Nash added. “Given the size of the stones, they must have either been dragged or moved on rollers to Stonehenge. We don’t know the exact route but at least we now have a starting point and an endpoint.”
The smaller megaliths, which were known as bluestones previously, have been traced to Pembrokeshire in Wales 150 miles (250 km) away. However, the origin of the sarsens remained a mystery.
A sarsen core sample, which was taken during conservation work in the late 1950s when metal rods were inserted to preserve a cracked megalith, gave crucial information. The sample was later presented as a souvenir to to a man named Robert Phillips who worked for the firm involved in the conservation work and was on-site during drilling.
He took it with him when he emigrated to the US in 1977, where he lived in New York, Illinois, California and finally Florida, Nash said. In 2018, Phillips decided to return the sample to Britain for research. He died this year.
Scientists studied fragments of the sample to establish the geochemical fingerprint of the sarsen from which it was taken. That fingerprint matched sandstone at West Woods and all but two of the Stonehenge sarsens.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field