Where Did Stonehenge's Giant Stones Come From?
Where Did Stonehenge's Giant Stones Come From?
It took 400 years to definitively prove that the Stonehenge stones came from Wiltshire, some 15 miles away. MARIANNE PURDIE/GETTY IMAGES
One of the biggest enigmas about Stonehenge, the massive prehistoric stone circle that was erected in England between 3000 and 1520 B.C.E., is the origin of the massive sarsen stones that are arranged in a post-and-lintel formation [sources: Pearson, Hershberger]. It was believed that the stones came from somewhere in north Wiltshire, a county in southwest England, but they couldn't pin down a precise location.Read More
Then, in 2019, researchers had a stroke of luck when a man who had worked on a restoration project at Stonehenge in 1958 provided them a 42.5-inch (108-centimeter) long, roughly 1-inch (25-millimeter) thick core that had been extracted from one of the sarsens, which he had taken back to the U.S. with him. Scientists were able to do tests on the sample and create a geochemical fingerprint of the sarsens.
Then, after analyzing similar stones from 20 different sites across southern England and comparing the chemistry, they narrowed down the source to West Woods in Wiltshire, today a popular recreational destination for hikers, dog walkers and mountain bikers. [sources: Morris, Morris].
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