Stonehenge bluestones came from Wales and transported long distances

Archaeologists today confirmed they had found the actual prehistoric quarries in the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire from which the monument’s Bluetones came.

The other indentation, which appears to have been the origin of Stonehenge’s second type of igneous rock, known as rhyolite, was encountered in Craig Rhos-y-felin, and according to carbon-dating measurements it has been created in 3400 BC. “The quarry-workers then lowered the thin pillars onto platforms of earth and stone, a sort of “loading bay” from where the huge stones could be dragged away along trackways leading out of each quarry”.

Prof Mike Parker Pearson, director of the project and professor of British later prehistory at University College London (UCL), said the finds were “amazing”.

“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”. It’s more likely that the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then dismantled and dragged off to 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.

So archaeologists have said that, given it’s unlikely to have taken 500 years to transport them from Wales to Wiltshire, they can only conclude that the stones were quarried to be part of a monument in Wales, or were taken to Stonehenge and lay around for 500 years before being used. He added that “Normally we don’t get to make that many fantastic discoveries in our lives, but this is one”.

Dolerite and rhyolite, both volcanic rocks, are most common among Stonehenge’s bluestones.

The surprising revelations regarding the origins of Stonehenge have been detailed in the latest edition of the British journal Antiquity, published on Monday, December 7.

Professor Colin Richards (University of Manchester), an expert in Neolithic quarries, said: “The two outcrops are really impressive – they may well have had special significance for prehistoric people. But this is one.” he said. The results are very promising. Each of the 80 monoliths of Stonehenge is estimated to weight less than two tons, and these monoliths were most likely transported by people themselves or using oxen with the help of wooden sledges sliding on rail-like timbers.

Parker Pearson explained that similar events in early societies often brought together different groups of people from far away, citing early inhabitants of Madagascar as an example.

“It’s the Ikea of Neolithic monument building”.

Megaliths like this one, found at a quarry in Wales, would have been detached by quarry-workers thousands of years ago with a minimum of effort. You wet the wedge, it swells and the stone pops off the rock’.