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Geologists Find Where Some Stonehenge Rocks Came From, Debunking Old Research (cnn.com) 128

Posted by BeauHD from the rock-solid-evidence dept.
Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from CNN: A team of 12 geologists and archaeologists from across the United Kingdom unveiled research this month that traces some of the prehistoric monument's smaller stones to two quarries in western Wales. The team also found evidence of prehistoric tools, stone wedges and digging activity in those quarries, tracing them to around 3000 BC, the era when Stonehenge's first stage was constructed. It's rock-solid evidence that humans were involved in moving these "bluestones" to where they sit today, a full 150 miles away, the researchers say. "It finally puts to rest long-standing arguments over whether the bluestones were moved by human agency or by glacial action," University of Southampton Archeology Professor Joshua Pollard said in an email. Slashdot reader schwit1 adds: "This leaves the question of how..."
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Geologists Find Where Some Stonehenge Rocks Came From, Debunking Old Research More

Geologists Find Where Some Stonehenge Rocks Came From, Debunking Old Research

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  • Don't bother (Score:5, Funny)

    by youngone ( 975102 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @10:18PM (#58191860)
    TL;DR It was aliens

  • There is no way that anything useful ever came out of Wales.

    • And the reason for this insulting abuse of a whole nation would be...?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I dunno. The equal sign ("=") was invented by the Welsh mathematician, Robert Recorde, from Tenby, Pembrokeshire.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dissy ( 172727 )

        I dunno. The equal sign ("=") was invented by the Welsh mathematician,

        But the equal sign has always been quite uppity, always butting in on both assignment and comparison.. Far too well to do.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          That's more of a second career. Equals sign as assignment didn't feature in the very earliest computer languages. Typically they had syntax along the lines of "set x to 0" or "transfer 0 to X" or some kind of symbol carrying that sense, like this: "0 -> x" (note reverse of now conventional order).

          But one language made an odd decision. In FORTRAN you'd say "n = 0" to mean "assign 0 to integer variable n", and instead used the text ".EQ." to represent the equality predicate. And it turned out FORTRAN wa

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dissy ( 172727 )

            Fortran eh? That's a good nugget to tuck away.

            My own entry into the computer world was the Apple 2 line.
            Assembly had "LDA X" in its many addressing modes, and basic had "LET X = Y"

            But basic was a relative latecomer even at the end of the 70s so always assumed it wasn't the first language to do that.

    • Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Funny)

      by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @11:47PM (#58192088)

      I can think of a few uses for Catherine Zeta-Jones.

    • The M4?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by J053 ( 673094 )

      Tom Jones. Maybe not useful, but entertaining. (He's actually a pretty good blues singer - with a great voice).

  • Have we learned nothing from the Lord of the Rings: Wizards. That's how the stones were moved.

  • It's obvious how they were moved (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's obvious how they were moved.
    They were moved by a truck and a crane after being dynamited out of the quarry.
    We can still do this today, when everything is going downhill in civilization.

  • Best option for shipping bluestones (Score:4, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @11:08PM (#58191998)

    ... whether the bluestones were moved by human agency ...

    Amazon Primeval -- No-Rush Shipping

  • Ummm ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "This leaves the question of how..."

    Haven't we established that 3000 BC people had figured out rolling large rocks on logs? Had quite possibly figured out the pulley? And just maybe had barges or wagons?

    You don't quarry stone unless you already know how to get it where you need it, and humans in 3000 BC had far more 'technology' than we like to remember.

    Why are we always so disbelieving that by the time 3000 BC humans had solved a lot of problems and gained a fair bit of knowledge about the world around t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      Haven't we established that 3000 BC people had figured out rolling large rocks on logs?

      150 miles over the hills of Wales and across the Severn into England?

      • Re:Ummm ... (Score:5, Informative)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @01:13AM (#58192362)

        150 miles over the hills of Wales and across the Severn into England?

        Only if they were stupid.

        The Preseli Quarry is only 5 miles from the coast of the Irish Sea (all downhill). From there, they could be moved by barge up the Bristol Channel. Then across 40 miles of flat ground to the Salisbury Plain.

        Disclaimer: I use miles instead of kilometers because Britain wasn't metric yet in 3000 BC.

        • Re:Ummm ... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Xest ( 935314 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @04:24AM (#58192664)

          Britain still isn't metric now in terms of distances. All our roads, vehicles, etc. still measure everything in miles.

        • The Preseli Quarry is only 5 miles from the coast of the Irish Sea (all downhill). From there, they could be moved by barge up the Bristol Channel. Then across 40 miles of flat ground to the Salisbury Plain.

          Disclaimer: I use miles instead of kilometers because Britain wasn't metric yet in 3000 BC.

          If you are going to assume the use of barges, ship it around to Christchurch, [wikipedia.org] and up River Avon. [wikipedia.org] It's a much longer distance, but the route almost completely eliminates moving the stones over land.

          Disclaimer: I know almost nothing about UK geography, I just looked at a map.

          • It helps to RTFA.

            "Because the rocks are from the north side of Preseli Hills, the researchers think it's more likely the massive stones were dragged over land from Wales to England, rather than transported on river tributaries located near the south side."

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by sml156 ( 1035136 )
        The earth was flat 3000 tears ago.

  • This is new? (Score:2, Informative)

    by redmid17 ( 1217076 )
    I've been reading this is the established hypothesis for, IDK, prolly 10 years or more now. There's sure as hell a lot o f"documentaries" and documentaries o NGC/BBC/etal that have been saying that as long as I can remember.

    And I am not alone: https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and... [rca.ac.uk]

    • Re:This is new? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @12:50AM (#58192308)

      From the first line of the article: Scientists have long known the stones came from the Preseli Hills, but the new research helps disprove claims about the original rock locations made in 1923 by famous British geologist H.H. Thomas. The correct quarries, called Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin, are on the north side of the hills -- opposite their long-suspected location, the new findings indicate.

      So it seems that yes, we have know for almost 100 years that the rocks came from quarries in western Wales. This has just changed the precise location of those quarries within the Preseli Hills.

  • Ho hum (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Thursday February 28, 2019 @04:38AM (#58192684) Homepage Journal

    The new parts aren't quoted or are understated.

    1. We already knew about the quarries, what we didn't have were the actual tools used. We now have them, including wooden items.

    2. We already knew about how they could have moved the stones, they're smaller and lighter than sarsens, we didn't know the route. We now know some were transported overland.

    3. We didn't know if the stones were quarried specifically for Stonehenge or for a circle in Wales that was dismantled and recycled. We now know it was the former.

    The real mystery is why people make a mystery of the known, when the unknown is potentially more interesting.

    • Re:Ho hum (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ledow ( 319597 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @05:04AM (#58192726) Homepage

      No, the real mystery is why people travel thousands of miles to look at a couple of stones from a great distance, and at great expense.

      I literally know someone from the US who come to the UK as part of an organised tour of the EU. They got off at Heathrow. Got on a coach. Travelled to Stonehenge. Looked at Stonehenge. Got back on the coach. Went back to Heathrow. Got on another plane to somewhere else.

      And they were *pleased* about that - they kept saying how they'd seen the UK.

      Stonehenge is no doubt an interesting archaeological dig. But it is far from an interesting visitor attraction, especially when you can't get within any reasonable distance of it any more. Given away by the fact that it was there for thousands of years and everyone forgot about it.

      By the way, you can drive to just about any part of the UK and find stone-circles. Not as impressive, I'll grant you, but everything you can see of Stonehenge you can see from the long fast road that passes by it at 60mph (particularly pretty at sunset, I'd like to add).

      And that should be the tourism tagline: "Best viewed at 60mph on the way to somewhere else".

      • Re:Ho hum (Score:4, Insightful)

        by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @05:53AM (#58192816)

        Dr Johnson had some words about tourist attractions : "Worth seeing, but not worth going to see."

      • Re:Ho hum (Score:5, Informative)

        by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Thursday February 28, 2019 @06:07AM (#58192852) Homepage Journal

        You're thinking in isolation. And most tourists do, granted. Fools.

        I never just look at Stonehenge. Which, by the way, has more than two stones. I look at Avebury, Silbury Hill, West Kennet Barrow, Woodhenge, The Sanctuary, the King's Barrows, the Ridgeway, a good view of the Great Cursus.

        And, no, you can't get at Nine Maiden's what you get at Stonehenge, different construction style for a start and very different philosophy.

        Sure, there are those who see a pile of stones. I can't educate those who are blind to reason, so I don't care about them. I care about the people who are intrigued by acoustically engineered surfaces, the advanced construction techniques, the landscape in which everything happened.

        And it was an incredibly busy landscape rich with symbolism we barely grasp. Stonehenge isn't an isolated thing but a single component of a vast web of functional monuments.

        The circle down the road won't compare.

        • That's fair, but I think the GP was referring to how most tourists take in the circles, and for that stonehenge isnt really worth it. And even just for getting an appreciation of the cultural landscape of the time there are other, less tourist-packed locales. Stonehenge can be impressive and still not worth the aggravation if you have limited time and would prefer more quiet and ability to get closer to the stones.

      • I get what you're saying - and good grief, if you come to the UK (into Deathrow, of all places), there are better things to see than the 'henge.

        However, for anyone in the South East heading to Cornwall for a holiday - you'll be going past (at probably less than 60mph), and if you haven't seen it in a while (or ever), then it's worth a stop. Probably not worth a special trip, and not really worth a long queue to get into (other than you might get some of those crazy 'druid' people coming by with herbs and wh

      • By the way, you can drive to just about any part of the UK and find stone-circles. Not as impressive, I'll grant you.

        Agreed, just as an example on my last trip to the UK we were driving near Keswick and took a detour, paid a visit to the stone circle at Castlerigg. You can go right up to the stones, right into the circle, despite being well visited it's often quiet (for a whole 20 minutes or so we were the only ones there, incredibly peaceful to sit and take it all in), and it's absolutely beautiful on the hill where the stones are. And there's tons (I guess literally actually) of circles of similar appeal. Stonehenge has

    • The real mystery is why people invested a hell of a lot of time and effort to build that thing in the first place.

  • I thought they were hewn into the living rock?

  • Previous iterations of the stonehenge were made from straw. But that one was blown away, so then they made the next one out of wood. That one also blew away.
  • Space aliens obviously. Or more mundanely, by a lot of motivated people hauling a bunch of rocks a really long way on logs or a sled of some kind.

  • Can be done without machinery (Score:3)

    by Roodvlees ( 2742853 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @06:35AM (#58192888)
    One guy can move big blocks of stone by hand.
    This construction worker figured it out:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    Just use the hardness of stone in your favor.
    He places the rock on 2 small stones, balances it on one, then rotates and lets it down on the other. And there's rolling logs, etc.

    • I looked but I don't see the video where he did that with a couple dozen stones over 150 miles through forests and swamps and over hills and streams. Could you point us to that video?

      • Are you serious?
        He's proving that it's possible.
        Of course he didn't do it himself.
        The people involved could have taken hundreds of years to get it done.

        • He's proving that it's possible.

          I don't see how you extrapolate that from your link. He's proving that you can move large stones very small distances on very flat, hard surfaces. Nothing more. If they had built a 150 mile long flat road and paved it we'd probably have found at least a little bit of it. FFS we've found hundreds of henges, some even made of wood, but zero paved roads from that time period.

          You're arguing something that doesn't have any evidence to back it up, and has some huge logical problems. (Hills and swamps, for starter

          • He's proving that it's possible to move stones without machine power.
            It doesn't require a massive flat surface, just one big enough for both the supporting stones to maneuver on.
            There's plenty of other techniques that will have been used.
            Like transporting on ships/floats, rolling on logs and who knows what other techniques.
            Most importantly, he showed how the stones can be stood up straight.
            I'm not saying we know how they did it exactly, we'll never know, that's impossible.
            Just that us not knowing how
  • Maybe an anthropologist can explain why 'moving stones' around was such a demonstration of faith for the ancients. Stonehenge, Carnac, later Pyramids, Moai, possibly the earliest demonstration of group 'engineering', but why? Or maybe these are their only achievements that haven't been erased by time.

    • Re:Sisyphus (Score:4, Insightful)

      by azcoyote ( 1101073 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @10:38AM (#58193536)
      It's basically the same reason that people still compete for the world's tallest building and for breaking Guinness's silly world records--because we can. I always cringe at documentaries that try to come up with silly explanations, including space aliens, because it's amazing that we still don't understand ourselves. Humans have always been symbolic creatures--not mere practical creatures--and so we do things because we feel them to be meaningful, not simply because we think they might be useful.
      • Entirely agreed - but I still look for an evolutionary or psychological (male-only?) inspiration. Was it like a peacock's tail, some tribes could assertively afford 'display'? Or, some tribes imposed the slavery needed to do it? Or some guru claimed it was necessary for salvation? And did the women then have quieter, kinder, things, but shells, beads, leather, braids just did not survive?

    • Achievements or punishments?

      • Re:Sisyphus (Score:4, Interesting)

        by GerryHattrick ( 1037764 ) on Thursday February 28, 2019 @01:05PM (#58194324)
        Interesting hypothesis. Achievements on behalf of your tribe, or atonement for punishments inflicted by your Gods? Note that Stonehenge embankments are profiled to defend against the INSIDE - what did they fear would emerge from within?

  • The next question isn't "how?", it's "why?" Presumably, there were lots of other places much closer where the stones could have been quarried.

  • A napkin with a crude diagram, annotated with the text 18"

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