A tantalizing new theory suggests that Stonehenge was not originally erected in southern England. Instead, recent archaeological work has suggested that the giant blocks of rock were initially placed in the mountains of Wales, before they were dismantled and rebuilt as Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England. The new findings were reported in the journal Antiquity this week.
Scientists have been steadily chipping away at the mysteries surrounding the 5,000-year-old monument. In recent years, geological work has shown that Stonehenge’s bluestones came from a quarry some 200 kilometers (124 miles) away in the Preseli Hills, west Wales. It’s also emerged that some of the settlers who lived near Stonehenge’s current location in southern England most likely came from the hills of west Wales around 3000 BCE.
This curious link between the prehistoric henge and Preseli Hills came to a head when archaeologists took a second look at a large stone circle, known as Waun Mawn, found a short journey from the Welsh quarry in Preseli Hills.
“We suspected that there had to have been an original circle in Preseli where the stones were put up first. And there it was on the hill of Waun Mawn, less than 3 miles from the quarries,” Professor Mike Parker Pearson, lead study author from University College London, told IFLScience.
“As an arc of four standing stones, it had been originally recorded by archaeologists 100 years ago but thereafter was ignored or thought not to be the remains of a circle. Nobody had guessed it might have anything to do with the bluestones and Stonehenge.”
The researchers had also previously suspected that Stonehenge was first built in Wales but they were never certain where the original site was located. Even mythology hints at the idea that Stonehenge originally came from a distant land. The oldest story of Stonehenge’s origins comes from the 12th-century legend of the wizard Merlin taking an army to Ireland to capture a magical stone circle, the Giants’ Dance, and rebuild it as Stonehenge.
For this new study, their work highlights some significant links between Stonehenge and Waun Mawn.[…]
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