Shock as study shows famous Stonehenge Altar Stone came from Scotland, not Wales

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Researchers were astounded to discover that the megalith travelled over 450 miles to its resting place in Wiltshire, England. What does this revelation mean for our understanding of Neolithic peoples?

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00:00We

00:25analysed minute microscopic grains from the Altarstone and in doing so we can determine

00:30the age and chemical characteristics of each of these grains. And for the Altarstone we

00:35can say that we're greater than 95% confident that the Altarstone matches the Orcadian Basin

00:41in terms of provenance. Now in terms of how it got to its position on the Salisbury Plain,

00:47when we first got this Scottish provenance for the Altarstone we thought no way, no way

00:51did people move this rock, this 6 tonne megalith all the way from the North East of Scotland,

00:57at least 700 or so kilometres away. Did they do it using an overland transport route? Well

01:03even today going overland from Scotland to Southern Britain is quite an arduous journey

01:07down the motorway. Back then, no motorways of course, the UK was heavily forested, it

01:12was a temperate rainforest and rivers. These combined would have been formidable barriers

01:19which for us left the option of marine transport as a feasible, really credible option for

01:26this transport south.

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