As reported at the website of University College London:
Excavation of two quarries in Wales by a UCL-led team of archaeologists and geologists has confirmed they are sources of Stonehenge’s ‘bluestones’– and shed light on how they were quarried and transported...A search is underway for the original Stonehenge.
The very large standing stones at Stonehenge are of ‘sarsen’, a local sandstone, but the smaller ones, known as ‘bluestones’, come from the Preseli hills in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Geologists have known since the 1920s that the bluestones were brought to Stonehenge from somewhere in the Preseli Hills, but only now has there been collaboration with archaeologists to locate and excavate the actual quarries from which they came...
The special formation of the rock, which forms natural pillars at these outcrops, allowed the prehistoric quarry-workers to detach each megalith (standing stone) with a minimum of effort. “They only had to insert wooden wedges into the cracks between the pillars and then let the Welsh rain do the rest by swelling the wood to ease each pillar off the rock face” said Dr Josh Pollard (University of Southampton). “The quarry-workers then lowered the thin pillars onto platforms of earth and stone, a sort of ‘loading bay’ from where the huge stones could be dragged away along trackways leading out of each quarry.”..
“We have dates of around 3400 BC for Craig Rhos-y-felin and 3200 BC for Carn Goedog, which is intriguing because the bluestones didn’t get put up at Stonehenge until around 2900 BC” said Professor Parker Pearson. “It could have taken those Neolithic stone-draggers nearly 500 years to get them to Stonehenge, but that’s pretty improbable in my view. It’s more likely that the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then dismantled and dragged off to Wiltshire."
Abstract of the research publication in Antiquity.
It's interesting how things are being revealed about Stonehenge more and more. the Nat Geo special was pretty great. Did you see that?
ReplyDeleteI think this is the one I saw -
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WV6mc8QdXk
Hmmmm, the certainty....
ReplyDeleteYou'd be AMAZED at how small an area the Preseli Hills are. From one extreme, petering out, end to the other I measured it at only 15 km (6 miles) and 6 km wide. It boggles the mind that in all these decades they have fumbled around and not found this till the last 5 years.
It does nothing for the level of respect I (don't) have for arkies. I am not sure they could find the toilet paper roll next to the toilet. If it came up and bit them in the arse.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-25004282
From the BBC in 2013 this is said of another site, Carn Goedog 3 km (2 miles) away: "I've been studying the bluestones for over 30 years now, and I'm no closer to finding an answer which convinces me either way. But the one thing which I am increasingly sure of is that each piece of the puzzle we find brings us another step closer to the truth.
"We've located two of the sources [the other being , and there's another five or possibly six to go."
He added: "By the time we have identified those then I'm certain we'll have an answer either way. Whether that happens in my career, or even my lifetime, who knows?"
Shades of Moses in the Wilderness for 40 years. "...and I'm no closer to finding an answer." Shall we sing, "GO Down, Moses" together?
An object lesson in how academics drag something out to make an entire careeer out of finding the toilet paper roll.
I mean, LOOK AT THAT OUTCROP. See the part of it beyond the worked part? What do you SEE?
HOW IN GOD'S NAME can they have missed that in an area that doesn't even fill a rectangle 16 kms long and 6 kms wide? You could walk every ACRE of it in 2-3 weeks - IF NOT ONE WEEK. And if you saw those blue stones in that small hillside (knowing that the Blue Stones at Stonehenge came from SOMEWHERE in those hills) how could you NOT put 2 and 2 together?
Maybe Moses was milking it in those 40 years, too.
“We have dates of around 3400 BC for Craig Rhos-y-felin and 3200 BC for Carn Goedog, which is intriguing because the bluestones didn’t get put up at Stonehenge until around 2900 BC”...
Which tells you some of the younger arkies involved will have (faux) work for the next 40 years, trying to figure out how it took 500 years to get them to Stonehenge.
And in the end, somewhere around the year 2075, they will determine that the 3400 age AND the 2900 age are both wrong, and that there isn't a 500-year difference after all.
[I lost my post when I went to email it before final posting, so am re-posting this...]
ReplyDeleteThis is monumentally THE dumbest thing I've ever seen in archaeology. And THAT takes some real doing.
The Preseli Hills are contained within an area about 15 km x 6 km. 6 miles x 3.5 miles. And they don't fill the rectangle at all. You could walk every ACRE of those hills in a week to two weeks. Somehow in that small area, they never ran across this outcrop until 2011? They KNEW the Blue Stones came from this TINY area. Yet somehow they missed this outcrop?
Look at the photo above. Look just past the arkie-worked area. See those stones all the way to the end of the small gorge?
HOW could they MISS this all this time?
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-25004282
From the BBC in 2013:
"I've been studying the bluestones for over 30 years now, and I'm no closer to finding an answer which convinces me either way. But the one thing which I am increasingly sure of is that each piece of the puzzle we find brings us another step closer to the truth.
"We've located two of the sources, and there's another five or possibly six to go."
He added: "By the time we have identified those then I'm certain we'll have an answer either way. Whether that happens in my career, or even my lifetime, who knows?"
Basically the guy is saying that he couldn't find the paper roll next to the toilet he's sitting on, if it came up and bit him right on his foot-dragging, exposed arse.
THIRTY YEARS? We are talking Moses in the Wilderness numbers here. You couldn't POSSIBLY miss that outcrop! It's the toilet paper roll!
These people are on the dole, milking this for all it's worth. "OH! We will need more funding and more decades! This is a HUGE project!"
Either that or they are the dumbest people in the world. Gobsmackingly and pathetically sheit.
When I first looked at the picture My first thought was: Wow convenient they're already standing. but then realized they had to lower them for whatever means of transport they had. And that's a lot of dragging over the hilly regions between the quarry and Stonehenge. As to the idea of assembling them nearby and then taking them down again for transport----WHY?????
ReplyDelete