Stonehenge! Again!

From the Gizmodo link:

Geologists Robert Ixer of the University of Leicester and Richard Bevins of the National Museum of Wales spent nine months using petrography (the study of mineral content and textural relationships within rocks) and managed to trace one of the original stones back to a rocky outcropping near Pembrokeshire, Wales called Craig Rhos-y-Felin. [160 miles from the Stonehenge site].

From the Independent link:
The discovery has re-invigorated one of academia's longest running debates - whether the smaller standing stones of Stonehenge  were quarried and brought all the way there from Pembrokeshire by prehistoric humans or whether they had already been plucked out of ancient rock outcrops and carried all or part of the way to Wiltshire by glaciers hundreds of thousands of years earlier.
Archaeologists tend to subscribe to the 'human transport' theory,  while some geomorphologists favour the glacial one. The debate is solely about  Stonehenge's early/smaller standing stones (often known collectively as 'bluestones') - not about the larger ones (most of the so-called 'sarsens') which were incorporated into the monument several centuries later.

From Wired:
The more well-known and iconic stones, the huge sarsens, were incorporated into the monument several centuries later. They came from somewhere in the Marlborough Downs, 20 miles north of Stonehenge.

Sources -> http://gizmodo.com/5877177/origins-of-stonehenges-stones-found-and-holy-crap-did-they-travel-far
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/stone-henge-rocks-origins
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/scientists-discover-source-of-rock-used-in-stonehenges-first-circle-6278894.html

Earlier Stonehenge link ->  http://www.dannyfinnegan.com/2011/11/newly-discovered-pits-add-mystery-to.html

Stonehenge Inner stones' source have been located

From Wired UK:

A team of geologists from Britain have pinpointed the exact quarry that Stonehenge’s innermost circle of rocks came from. It’s the first time that a precise source has been found for any of the stones at the prehistoric monument. Robert Ixer of the University of Leicester and Richard Bevins of the National Museum of Wales painstakingly identified samples from various rock outcrops in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

For nine months the pair used petrography — the study of mineral content and textural relationships within rocks — to find the origins of Stonehenge’s rhyolite debitage stones. These spotted dolerites or bluestones form the inner circle and inner horseshoe of the site. They found the culprit on a 65-metre-long outcropping called Craig Rhos-y-Felin, near Pont Saeson in north Pembrokeshire. It lies approximately 160 miles from the Stonehenge site.

Having said all that, how the F*** did these people get these rocks from point A to point B over 5,000 years ago using a method that we haven't been able to definitively figure out 5,000 years later.

Source -> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/stone-henge-rocks-origins/

Earlier Stonehenge link -> http://www.dannyfinnegan.com/2011/11/newly-discovered-pits-add-mystery-to.html

Newly discovered pits add mystery to Stonehenge

In keeping with the randomness of this page, let's talk about Stonehenge.

Recently, 2 pits were discovered believed to be connected to the famous rock structure.

Excerpt from the MSNBC article below:

These exciting finds indicate that even though Stonehenge was ultimately the most important monument in the landscape, it may at times not have been the only, or most important ritual focus, and the area of Stonehenge may have become significant as a sacred site at a much earlier date," Vince Gaffney, an archaeology professor at the University of Birmingham, said in a news release issued over the weekend.


The pits, which measure about 16 feet (5 meters wide) and at least 3 feet (1 meter) deep, have been covered over for centuries and can't easily be spotted on the ground. But they showed up in a survey that was conducted using non-invasive mapping techniques such as ground-penetrating radar and magnetometry. The survey is part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, which was initiated last year with backing from the University of Birmingham's IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Center and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Vienna.


The placement of the pits is intriguing: They were found on the eastern and western sides of the Cursus, a racetrack-style enclosure north of Stonehenge itself that spans 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) from east to west and is up to 100 yards (meters) wide. From the perspective of an observer standing at the Heel Stone, a massive upright stone just outside Stonehenge's main circle, the sun would rise just above the eastern pit on the day of the summer solstice, which is the longest day of the year. The same observer would see the sun set that evening in line with the western pit.
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I love stuff like this! Science! Archeology! Anthropology! History!

click the source link below for the whole article!

Accurate portrayal of Stonehenge in the movies -> http://youtu.be/Ri791tauGmU


Source -> http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/28/9074269-pits-add-to-stonehenge-mystery