Study Says Neolithic Humans Hauled Stonehenge's 13,000-Pound Altar Stone 450 Miles
Updated
Updated · Smithsonian Magazine · Jun 9
Study Says Neolithic Humans Hauled Stonehenge's 13,000-Pound Altar Stone 450 Miles
3 articles · Updated · Smithsonian Magazine · Jun 9
Summary
A new Journal of Quaternary Science paper says Stonehenge’s 16-foot altar stone was most likely transported by Neolithic communities, not delivered naturally by glaciers.
Ice-flow modeling found no direct glacial route from northeast Scotland to southern England, and most glaciers from the stone’s source area moved away from Stonehenge.
Some ice may have carried rocks as far as Dogger Bank, about 250 miles from Stonehenge, but that land bridge was submerged roughly 8,000 years ago—around 3,000 years before Stonehenge construction began.
That timing makes a glacier pathway possible only through a long, multi-stage chain of human moves, which researchers say is less plausible than staged transport over land and by boat.
The findings reinforce the idea that Stonehenge’s builders were capable of highly coordinated, long-distance monument building, though why they chose a stone from so far away remains unknown.