Stonehenge Stone Movement: New Study Reveals the Cause

New scientific research strengthens with concrete data the idea that the famous stones of the⁣ Neolithic monument Stonehenge-and, in particular, the so-called “bluestones” and the Altar Stone-were not deposited at the site by natural action of glaciers during the ⁣last ice Age, but were intentionally transported by ⁢people around 5,000 years ago.

For decades, archaeologists and geologists have ⁣debated two main explanations for how the heavy Neolithic stones ended up on⁤ Salisbury Plain in southern ⁣ England: one hypothesis held that these megaliths were carried by glaciers during glacial periods, arriving ⁤in the region almost “casually”; the other suggested that prehistoric⁣ human communities deliberately moved them ⁢over great distances, despite the enormous difficulty of doing so with rudimentary technologies.

The new ⁤study used an approach called ‍”mineral fingerprinting,” in which microscopic grains of minerals, such as zircon and apatite, present in the sediments of rivers around Stonehenge were analyzed. These minerals function as geological records: they preserve the signature⁣ of their origin because they form millions or billions of years ago and carry ⁣data about⁢ were they were generated.

Stonehenge Stones

The analysis of hundreds of these grains indicated that there is no mineralogical evidence that glaciers have