Famed British Geologist Was Spectacularly Wrong About Stonehenge

Live Science ^ | July 6, 2018 | Laura Geggel, Senior Writer

[SunkenCiv]

In 1923, famed British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas published a seminal study on Stonehenge, claiming to have found the precise spots where prehistoric people had quarried the stones.

There was just one problem with his analysis: It was wrong. And it has taken geologists about 80 years to get it right, a new study finds.

To debunk Thomas' work, Bevins and Ixer donned their Sherlock Holmes hats and examined Thomas' maps and rock samples. Thomas (1876-1935) was a geologist for the British Geological Survey who spent just one day in December 1906 surveying Mynydd Preseli...

During his Preseli Hills visit, Thomas collected several samples of distinctively spotted dolerite, a type of bluish gray stone of the same kind used in Stonehenge's smaller bluestones, at an outcrop called Carn Meini. About 10 years later, the Society of Antiquaries of London had a package containing debris from Stonehenge's bluestones (named for their bluish tinge when wet or broken) sent to Thomas and asked him to determine the stones' provenance.

Upon opening the parcel from the society, Thomas immediately recognized these Stonehenge samples as being identical stones of Carn Meini, the researchers wrote in the study. Thomas also identified another spot on the southern slope of the Preseli Hills, called Cerrig Marchogion, as a spotted dolerite outcrop.

Thomas was so widely respected that nobody questioned his work for decades. Moreover, it led to the idea that, after getting the bluestones from Carn Meini, the prehistoric people then traveled southward, downhill, to Milford Haven, where they apparently picked up Stonehenge's purplish-green altar stone (made of sandstone) and then possibly boated the stones though Bristol Channel as one leg of the trip back to Salisbury Plain, Ixer said.

[libertylover]

The picture at the bottom is typical government workers: 2 working, 6 watching.

(Actually, to me it looks like training on how to extract a stuck vehicle.)

[PAR35]

But Salisbury Plain really is flat.

I would describe it more as gently rolling. I expected 'flat' when I got there, and it really wasn't.

I suppose it depends if one is coming from a perspective of western Colorado or Eastern Colorado. But while it was much flatter than north Georgia, I still wouldn't call it flat.