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The once-majestic, now fallen stone that represents perhaps the strangest component of Stonehenge traveled a very long way to take pride of place in the mysterious ancient megalith.
"These findings are truly remarkable – they overturn what had been thought for the past century," says geologist Richard Bevins of Aberystwyth University in the UK. Many of the stones that make up Stonehenge are igneous bluestone, others sarsen sandstone. The inner ring of bluestones has been traced to a quarry in Wales,. But the Altar Stone at the center is a purplish-green slab of sandstone whose provenance was not as easy to trace., also known as Stone 80, is very odd. It's sunken flush into the ground, with two other stones laying perpendicularly atop.
Isotopic dating of these grains allowed the researchers to construct an age profile for the stone. For example, some of the zircons had formed between 4 and 2.5 billion years ago, with younger grains dating to 1.6 to 1 billion years ago. The apatite and rutile, by contrast, formed between 470 and 458 million years ago.
"Given its Scottish origins, the findings raise fascinating questions, considering the technological constraints of the Neolithic era, as to how such a massive stone was transported over vast distances around 2600 BCE."
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