Sascha is a U.K.-based trainee staff writer at Live Science. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Southampton in England and a master’s degree in science communication from Imperial College London. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and the health website Zoe. Besides writing, she enjoys playing tennis, bread-making and browsing second-hand shops for hidden gems.
The largest stone in Stonehenge's inner circle, known as the Altar Stone, may have come from farther afield than its neighboring monoliths — possibly even from northern England or Scotland, according to a new study that questions a 100-year-old idea about the stone's origins.
"It seems as though he wanted all the non-sarsen stones to come from a limited geographic area and this basic assertion has not been challenged for 100 years," Richard Bevins, an honorary professor of geology and Earth sciences at Aberystwyth University in Scotland who led the new research, told Live Science in an email.
Early excavators of Stonehenge called the bluestones"foreign stones," because they are exotic to the Wiltshire landscape. Their long-haul transport over 140 miles from western Wales to Stonehenge is one of the farthest known distances from a source to a prehistoric monument construction site anywhere in the world, according to the study.
To shed light on the stone's origin, the researchers compared its geochemistry and mineralogy with 58 sandstone outcrops stretching from southern Wales to western England. But the search"failed to make a match," Bevins said, and the researchers concluded that they might be looking in the wrong place.
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