We find out new things every day. 80% of Indiana employers are affected by drug-related issues, dinosaurs may have cohabitated with their ancestors, and Stonehenge wasn’t originally built in England.
- The Stonehenge is believed to be older than all the pyramids
- The monument contains a total of 83 stones
- The first mention of the monument was in 1130 A.D.
- In 1880, Charles Darwin came to the conclusion that worms were responsible for the monument sinking into the ground
- 56 pits known as Aubrey holes are located inside the monument, and their purpose still remains unknown
A new study performed by researchers at the University of Central London has recently proven that the ever-famous Stonehenge monument may have actually been initially erected in Wales. Or at least part of it.
It was already a known fact that the bluestones pertaining to the monument came from quarries in Wales, but recent research pointed to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, in the Preseli hills as the original source of the stones.
This means that the stones must have been transported around 140 miles in order to reach their current location.
The Welsh quarries turned out to be the best place for the extraction of standing stones, as the quarrymen would stick pieces of wood in the form of wedges in the cracks between the pillars, and wait for the rain to do the rest of the work, by swelling the wood and separating the pillar from the rest of the rock.
The monument dates back 4500 years, while the stones from which it’s made are about 5000 years old. This means a period of 500 years in which the stones were used for something else before being taken the 140 miles to their current resting place.
The scientists behind the discovery suspect that the stones were used as part of a different monument, or even multiple different monuments, there, in Wales. That, or the stones took 500 years to get from their original extraction point to where they are now. But that is highly unlikely.
The researchers are now conducting a series of test excavations and aerial photographs in order to attempt to find the monument or monuments which originally contained the rocks now forming Stonehenge.
This might mean more answers regarding the way the massive stones were transported, as currently it is believed that they were dragged by crews of oxen the long way around.
Image source: Wikimedia
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