Stonehenge rocks Pembrokeshire link confirmed

Stonehenge rocks Pembrokeshire link confirmed

Experts say they have confirmed for the first time the precise origin of some of the rocks at Stonehenge.


Photo caption" Archaeologists hope the find will enable them to discover how the stones were transported to Stonehenge

For nine months Dr Bevins, keeper of geology at National Museum Wales, and Dr Rob Ixer of Leicester University collected and identified samples from rock outcrops in Pembrokeshire to try to find the origins of rhyolite debitage rocks that can be found at Stonehenge.

By detailing the mineral content and the textural relationships within the rock, a process known as petrography, they found that 99% of the samples could be matched to rocks found in this particular set of outcrops.

Rhyolitic rocks at Rhos-y-felin, between Ffynnon-groes (Crosswell) and Brynberian, differ from all others in south Wales, they said, which helps locate almost all of Stonehenge's rhyolites to within hundreds of square metres.

With the location identified, archaeologists will now be able to dig to try and uncover how the stones from Pembrokeshire reached Stonehenge.

"Many have asked the question over the years, how the stones got from Pembrokeshire to Stonehenge," said Dr Bevins. "Was it human transport? Was it due to ice transport?

"Thanks to geological research, we now have a specific source for the rhyolite stones from which to work and an opportunity for archaeologists to answer the question that has been widely debated.

They've positively identified Pont Saeson in Pembrokeshire as the source of the bluestones used in Stonehenge, 240 miles away in Wiltshire.

ok so the location is 240 miles away, while this is interesting, I am sure nothing much will come of it as always.

In the end the answer will be "done by people/ slaves (with or without help of animals), and some ropes and pulleys."

I for one am not going to believe that, well at least not until someone does it and documents it.
I mean what else are they going to say? they had heavy machinery at that time? they'd be laughed out of archeology.

Originally posted by kaleshchand

In the end the answer will be "done by people/ slaves (with or without help of animals), and some ropes and pulleys."

Agreed, that will be the result ... as always. And as always, that isn't the case ...

The stones show "magnetic" properties ... when they were transported, those magnetic properties made them lighter and easier to handle. The magnetic poles of the earth, have changed ... since then.

No more mysteries folks ... move along.

If I were alive then, and I had to drag those stones 240 miles.....wow. There must have been an incredible reason to place those stones in that specific location. I wouldn't want to drag one of the small stones that far with a pickup.

reply to post by Jim Scott


That reason would be a priest telling you it has to be done, and your personal motivation would be a stone ax aimed at you if you will not comply.

While I do no subscribe to the notion that anything other than human brains and muscle lay behind Stonehenge, I am still utterly amazed at how many people (% of population) must have worked on the project as opposed to growing crops/raising cattle and other trades society would have needed to survive.

Something drove them to do this, and while that something may have been lost to this mists of time it still had to be blooming important to lay aside the important things like food and concentrate on building both the Stone and Wooden henges.

I tend to flip between the wild and the practical for my theories on Stonehenge. However, as a more practical idea, how about it was constructed on the orders of an early Pendragon? We all know the tribes fought amongst themselves with regularity. All it would take would be for one tribe to be in the ascendency - all others would be subjugated or at the very least compliant so they were not targetted. As to the why's? Im thinking mainstream on this one - the seasons for agriculture / planting of crops. You have a 'king' in a position of power at just the right time that agriculture was being spread around the isles - almost like saying "come on people, let's have a bit of organisation here and get it right".

Obviously, this is just conjecture but to me it makes some sense.

Could the rocks have been transported there by a glacier ? And the Druids seeing a big heap of rocks lying there decided to make something out of them ? Usually the simplest answer is the right one ? Just a thought !

reply to post by rick004


This same study did look at the possibility of glacial ice moving the stones there but I don't think it was conclusive. They do mention the possibility of ice transport, which is a strong possibility, as transporting these stones over ice and snow makes a great deal of sense.

If you look at the timeline of environmental change when Stonehenge was first thought to have been laid out (3100 BC), there was a shift in the weather to a cold extreme, the "Piora oscillation" (3250 BC) meant an advance of glaciers in Europe, a retreat of forests, tree rings in ancient Britain and Ireland were very narrow showing a mini-ice age occurred. This cold snap could also be what motivated the construction of Stonehenge, if you think about it. Farmers didn't need it to know when to plant, but if your world get's turned upside down, with a permanent snow and ice cover even in the summer months, you might try to track the stars and solstices to see just what was going on.

3000 BC: Notes and References provides a good overview of the environment at around the time Stonehenge was being erected. If the world of the ancient Britons had indeed become a frozen one, moving the stones 240 miles doesn't seem as daunting - ice would be an ideal surface for moving these.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


I read somewhere also that there possibly a wooden roof over Stonehenge , if fires were built inside the rocks would create a thermal mass , a lot better than grass huts ! Thanks for the info !

I think the idea that Stonehenge was built as a calendar rather lame to be honest, they could of done the same and made the same measurements by putting wooden poles in the ground. The stones must of had special significance to transport them all the way from Wales

The accepted anthropology for the time is of small tribal areas, so the idea one tribe could just march across all the other tribes land, grab stones that weigh several tons and just drag them back unhindered seems a bit of a stretch, not to mention the man power needed to do this, you not only have to have men dragging this huge weight but also a complete support system to provide food and build camps for them (all on other tribes land) it is a massive undertaking. Every rock and boulder in the way would have to be dug out, every tree in the way cut down below ground level

I doubt it was because of a mini ice age, people would of been more concerned about gathering food which would of been in very limited supply.

personally I think there was another global civilisation some 10,000 years ago, and this civilisation built stone henge, I even remember reading a report somewhere that they found petrified wood from pole that were used as guide posts for stone henge and when they carbon dated them they were approx 10,000 years old too.

reply to post by PrinceDreamer

I think there was another global civilisation some 10,000 years ago, and this civilisation built stone henge, I even remember reading a report somewhere that they found petrified wood from pole that were used as guide posts for stone henge and when they carbon dated them they were approx 10,000 years old too

I believe you are going to have to find that report for us to believe that and also you may wish to consider why this 'global civilization' which you believe made stonehenge left no trace of itself there on the Salisbury plains or anywhere else.....yet there is evidence of neolthic man in the area

reply to post by Hanslune


Here is one link to it, you can easily search google for more information, just put "carbon dating poles Stonehenge" you will get lots of results

blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk...

My thoughts don't just relate to Stonehenge, but to other monuments around the world, such as the pyramids at Gaza, which only align correctly circa 10,000 years ago, the stone cut from around the sphinx shows water damage, this could of only happened 10,000 years ago, there is evidence of a sunken temple off the coast of Japan that could of only been above water 10,000 years ago.

There are lots of other anomalies too, but it would take me a long time to write it all out and link it all, perhaps a project for another day its 12:40 am here

Originally posted by PrinceDreamer
reply to post by Hanslune

 

Here is one link to it, you can easily search google for more information, just put "carbon dating poles Stonehenge" you will get lots of results

blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk...

Well lets not take this off topic, yes the report you are referring to is for a site NEAR stonehenge and yes the dates are valid AFAWK, someone drove in wooden states in the lower ground near stonehenge, the date doesn't come from the site itself.

The first post hole would have been constructed around 8275 BC, the second one (next to the first) was erected about 7035 BC – some 1,240 years later! By then the first post would have rotted away and the first post hole completely lost.

So English Heritage are asking people to accept that a group of hunter-gatherers went to the Stonehenge site in 8275 BC and placed a “totem pole” in a valley away from the high ground (where Stonehenge sits today), which at that time in history was surrounded by a tall pine forest.

Here is a small aerial image of the site - I believe the posts were found where the parking lot now is, across the highway from SH

There are some guide holes in that area, but it is not as far as you think it is around 50 yards away and they are not the only poles/guide posts, in fact there are 53 from all around Stonehenge, these were considered guide posts used in the construction of Stonehenge, only when the carbon dating came back making them at least twice the currently accepted age did they try to change their use to totem poles.

it seems illogical to me that someone would build a wooden monument 10,000 years ago, and then someone else would come to the same site and follow it 5,000 years later and follow the same guide, the wooden posts would have long vanished after 100 years never mind 5,000

On this site there is an animation of the construction stages, notice how it starts with the wooden poles, then 5,000 years later they add some stone, does that seem logical to you?

www.megalithia.com...

The how, i think,is not important here..the why is!!

To celebrate the solstice?
Human sacrifice to the gods?
A calendar?
A landingstrip?

A neolithic monument built with rocks dragged from 240 miles away.
Why all the trouble, surely Wiltshire has enough rocks to save the trouble? or is there something special in, or about the rocks themselves.

reply to post by rick004

I read somewhere also that there possibly a wooden roof over Stonehenge , if fires were built inside the rocks would create a thermal mass , a lot better than grass huts ! Thanks for the info !

These same cultures also built numerous cromlechs (chamber tombs) that would have been considerably more warmer for that purpose, AFAIK no roof was over stonehenge and would have interfered with how it worked.

reply to post by PrinceDreamer

I think the idea that Stonehenge was built as a calendar rather lame to be honest, they could of done the same and made the same measurements by putting wooden poles in the ground. The stones must of had special significance to transport them all the way from Wales.

Stonehenge did start out as a 'woodhenge', just poles in the ground but continued to be expanded and built upon. I'm sure the bluestones had some significance, but keep in mind, these tribes were prolific builders and erectors of Menhirs and Dolmens and Cromlechs across the landscape. Perhaps they had used up all the large stones dropped by glaciers over time, and now had to quarry their supplies from a remoter location.

I doubt it was because of a mini ice age, people would of been more concerned about gathering food which would of been in very limited supply.

If they were experiencing years of strange weather and constant snow cover, or watched their forests die out and animal behavior radically change, their normal activities of hunting and gathering may have been impacted, and motivated a desire for greater astronomical knowledge or study of the seasons. The Piora Oscillation had actually reached it's maximum 150 years prior to the erection of Stonehenge, so they were on the downside of the cold spell, and obviously survived it - and maybe the lingering memory of it prompted them to try and track the movement of the sun and moon. Then again we could just be over-thinking their motivations for creating Stonehenge - the solstices are a natural observable phenomena, something to commemorate with a permanent structure to satisfy the practical and religious desires.

They have also found a number of tombs adjacent to Stonehenge, so the religious does seem to be the prevailing reason for it's existence. Maybe they felt a proper burial could only be done on the exact solstice. Like throwing virgins into a volcano, perhaps they were appeasing the weather by sacrificing someone on the solstices. We may never know, it's all conjecture.

At least we know precisely where the stones came from, how far they had to trek, perhaps a terrain model will be made and a path of least resistance plotted giving an idea how they got them to the site - with snow cover and iced over river and without - to better determine how much work force was actually required to drag these there. Heck, a ramp made of compacted snow with log timbers as runners may have been sufficient to drag the lintels up to the top of their uprights, in the same fashion the Egyptians used at the Hypostyle Hall.

Thought everyone knew how.

The devil carried them on his back from the Preseli Mountains, South Wales. I have a memory, from way back, that as proof of this, there is a single stone near/in the river Severn somewhere. So the story goes anyway.

Not sure that the connection of Wales and Salisbury hasn't been known for a long time,but maybe that was just conjecture.

www.southwestwales.info...

And the BBC has had a go with some interesting comments at the end of the article, (Mr T Darvill was a tutor of mine at Bournemouth Uni, and has spent a good portion of his time with Stonehenge.)

www.bbc.co.uk...

Stonehenge is probably the departure point for flying saucer flights to other places, the gaps in the stones being the "departure Gates" and the stones in the middle being the "booking in desks" or maybe not..

reply to post by dowot


Thanks for the article link, interesting commentary regarding the idea that glacial ice may have brought several of the bluestones at least a portion of the way to the site. But based on Mr. Darvill's description of the quarry location, it does sound like they went right to the source;

Earlier this year he (Mr .Darvill) and his colleague Geoff Wainwright led a field expedition to the site, which he describes as "a veritable Aladdin's Cave of made-to-measure pillars for aspiring circle builders".

Wish they had better pictures of the quarry.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Thanks BM.

Stonehenge has interested me since the 60's, visited it many times and amazed at the panorama of the whole site and the associated sites. Mounds, processional ways and the Cursus.

One thing puzzles me a bit, the site, now, is so open and vast, I thought that most of the surroundings were wooded, so in order for the full benefit of the site, it must have been cleared, so the monument stood out. That must have taken some effort by early man.

Woodhenge, nearby, has some interesting similarities and theories about it.