The first megalithic circle at Stonehenge was first built in western Wales more than 5,000 years ago, before its stones were dug up and dragged 140 miles (225 kilometers) to its current location in western England, suggests a new search.
The findings also support a wild legend that the mythical wizard Merlin ordered the giants to remove Stonehenge from Ireland and rebuild it in its current location.
The researchers discovered the remains of the original stone circle on the Preseli hills in Wales, near the old quarries where geologists determined that the famous blue stones of Stonehenge were cut. The new study, published Thursday (February 11) in the journal Antique, suggests that the blue stones that formed the first stage of Stonehenge may have symbolized the ancestors or lineages of the Neolithic people who lived near the quarries, which may have been the reason why they took the stones with them when they left for a distant region .
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The research could explain Stonehenge’s mysterious origins and why its early builders made such efforts to transport the huge stones almost halfway across Britain. “I had a hunch,” said Michael Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at University College London who led the team that made the discovery. “Why would anyone say, ‘Are we going to build a circle with stones from a quarry 140 miles away?’”
To solve the mystery, Parker Pearson and his team spent more than five years investigating Neolithic stone monuments around the Preseli hills. In 2017, they determined that four stones at a location called Waun Mawn – “peat moorland” in Welsh – were all that remained of a much larger circle of up to 60 stones that exactly matched the layout of the original 360-foot-wide (110 m) circle of blue stones at Stonehenge. The rest of the rocks at Wuan Mawn were unearthed a long time ago, Parker Pearson told Live Science.
Ancient stones
Stonehenge is most famous for the giant “sarsens” in its main circle, but these large stones were erected centuries after the monument was built. Recent research shows that sarsens are local sandstone stones that were transported just a few kilometers to the Neolithic monument some 4,500 years ago.
But geologists and archaeologists have long known that the many blue stones surrounding Stonehenge, some of which weigh up to 5 tons (4.5 metric tons), were transported in ancient times from quarries on the Preseli hills. Some of the stones turn bluish when they are broken or wet.
The scientific dating of coal and sediment from some of the now empty stone holes suggests that Waun Mawn was built about 5,400 years ago, about 400 years before Stonehenge’s initial stage, the researchers said. One of the stone holes at Waun Mawn also has an unusual five-sided cross section that matches one of the blue stones at Stonehenge and contains fragments of the same type of rock.
Parker Pearson said it seems likely that the Waun Mawn stone circle and a few other nearby stones were dismantled when entire families left the area to live far away in the east, and that up to 80 of the stones were later erected at the current site of Stonehenge.
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Distinct levels of strontium isotopes in the enamel of human teeth found in ancient tombs at Stonehenge show that many of the first people buried there did not grow up near their current location in Wessex. Archaeological evidence suggests that they migrated from further west, possibly from modern Wales, so the original stone circle probably marked the site of a new Neolithic cemetery, he said.
Each of the blue stones may have symbolized a remarkable ancestor or ancestral lineage for the local people, which is why they raised the stones in the new cemetery, he said.
Legend of Merlin
Researchers are not sure why so many Neolithic families suddenly left the Preseli hills to live so far away. Parker Pearson thinks that his community may have wanted to unite for political or social reasons with a distant group of people, so they brought their ancestral stones to consolidate their presence in their new territory.
Calculations of the work involved in transporting the blue stones, probably by sledding, suggest that Waun Mawn’s journey to the current site of Stonehenge could have been completed in one summer.
“You can cover 3 miles [5 km] one day, if you have your way prepared, “he said.” They may have had a feast, food and drink … just like a rolling party that moved from place to place. “
Like Stonehenge, the circle at Waun Mawn was aligned so that some of its stones were aligned with the sunrise on the summer solstice; Similar alignments have been found on other Neolithic monuments across the British Isles, and they may reflect the eternal pattern of movement of the sun in the skies, he said.
The idea that Stonehenge was built first from a circle of stones transported from a great distance seems very similar to a medieval legend that Stonehenge was built under the command of Merlin, the legendary wizard who helped the equally legendary King Arthur.
According to legend, the stone circle was originally located in Africa, and giants have relocated it to Ireland to serve as a magical healing center. Later, legend has it, Merlin had giants transport the stones to their current location on Salisbury Plain and reassemble them as a monument to the British killed while fighting the Saxon invaders.
Parker Pearson said that when the legend was written in the 12th century, the far west of Wales was considered part of Ireland; but the legend was unlikely to describe a 5,000-year-old popular memory of the relocation of Stonehenge – the oldest known oral histories, the Sanskrit Vedas of India, are estimated to be only 3,000 years old. But “I have to admit that the evidence is highly intriguing,” he said. “Maybe – just maybe – there’s a little grain of truth to that.”
Originally published on Live Science.