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The story behind Stonehenge continues to be further elaborated.
The bluestones of Stonehenge (smaller inner arc of stones) were originally part of a monument in Wales, at Waun Mawn (now a dilapidated monument).
Waun Mawn is near the quarry that was identified as the source of Stonehenge's bluestones.
The larger Stonehenge stones, further from the center were quarried nearby Stonehenge's location and added to Stonehenge hundreds of years later.
Science magazine news story here.
NY Times story here.
The Waun Mawn monument was in existence for hundreds of years prior to Stoenhenge and partly dismantled at the time of its establishment.
The bluestones of Stonehenge (smaller inner arc of stones) were originally part of a monument in Wales, at Waun Mawn (now a dilapidated monument).
Waun Mawn is near the quarry that was identified as the source of Stonehenge's bluestones.
The larger Stonehenge stones, further from the center were quarried nearby Stonehenge's location and added to Stonehenge hundreds of years later.
Science magazine news story here.
NY Times story here.
The Waun Mawn monument was in existence for hundreds of years prior to Stoenhenge and partly dismantled at the time of its establishment.
The team was able to determine when the sediment inside the socket holes was last exposed to light. The study suggested that Waun Mawn is the oldest-known stone circle in Britain, dating from about 3,400 B.C., and that the circle was dismantled shortly before the construction of Stonehenge in 3,000 B.C.
Researchers say the dismantling of Waun Mawn and the rise of Stonehenge could have been part of a larger migration from the Preseli Hills to the Salisbury Plain. Human and animal remains found at Stonehenge have chemical signatures suggesting their early years were spent on the Welsh coast. “We’ve got regular contact between the two regions,” Pollard says.
Back in the Preseli Hills region, radiocarbon dates and pollen evidence suggest that millennia of farming and human occupation ended around the time the Waun Mawn circle was dismantled. “Evidence for human activity drops around 3400 B.C.E.,” Parker Pearson says, though researchers aren’t sure why the people left.
The researchers say the migrants from Wales might have relocated the stones as a way to stay symbolically connected to their past—or to draw on their ancestors’ authority to claim a new region. “They’re bringing ancestral symbols as an act of unification,” Parker Pearson says.