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Past theories held that a long-debated stone, known as the "Newall boulder," had been moved by glacial ice long before humans ever arrived to construct the iconic monument.However, new evidence strengthens the case that Neolithic people transported the site's mysterious bluestones, rather than the massive glaciers that covered parts of Earth during the last Ice Age.Originally discovered during excavations in 1924 by Lt-Col William Hawley, the famous stone was later removed by his assistant, R.S. Newall. The new findings, published in a study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, relied on petrographic, geochemical, and imaging analyses to identify the...

A geology team has contradicted claims that bluestones were dug by Bronze Age man from a west Wales quarry and carried 240 miles to build Stonehenge. In a new twist, Open University geologists say the stones were in fact moved to Salisbury Plain by glaciers. Last year archaeologists said the stones came from the Preseli Hills. Recent research in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology suggests the stones were ripped from the ground and moved by glaciers during the Ice Age. Geologists from the Open University first claimed in 1991 that the bluestones at one of Britain's best-known historic landmarks had...

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Antiquity, indicates that two quarries in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, in southwest Wales, are the source of Stonehenge’s bluestones. Carbon dating revealed such stones were dug out at least 500 years before Stonehenge was built — suggesting they were first used in a local monument that was later dismantled and dragged off to England. The very large standing stones at Stonehenge are sarsen, a local sandstone. The smaller ones, known as bluestones, consist of volcanic and igneous rocks, the most common of which are called dolerite and rhyolite. Geologists...