Before I started the main subject in this video, I've discussed the ridiculous claims that Stonehenge was a 20th century project - a hoax and a fraud - because quite simply, Stonehenge is not a modern 20th century construction. It isn’t some conspiracy fraud and the YouTube videos and websites that say it is are all feeding you disinformation.
After discussing this, I get to the subject of the new discovery, and that is the work by Richard Bevins et al, who have analysed the geology of the Stonehenge Altar Stone, long thought to have been brought to the Stonehenge landscape by boat from a quarry in Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire.
The theory went that the ancient people collected the famous bluestones from Wales and transported them by boat down the Bristol Channel and then made a short journey over land to the site of Stonehenge, which was already a henge monument before any stones were on-site.
On this journey to the Salisbury plain, the workers are thought to have stopped off at Milford Haven to collect the altar stone, long thought to the source of this famous rock. This southwestern Welsh source was a key piece of evidence in support of the boat transportation theory because the bluestones came from further north and so it is almost as if you could see the path the workers took by mapping the source locations of the rocks.
So, what have the geologists discovered? Well, the altar stone is a greenish sandstone of late Silurian-Devonian age. It is known to geologists as ‘Old Red Sandstone.'
Analysing the Old Red Sandstone in Pembrokeshire in Southwestern Wales and the Altar Stone at Stonehenge has shown that the two rock types do not match. They are mineralogically different, with different percentages of its calcite, kaolinite and barite cement. The zircons show different morphologies and the uranium-lead age dates have contrasting populations.
So what are the implications of the new findings? Well maybe the bluestones as well as the Altar Stone were not transported by boat after all, but were brought over the land. Or, what I think is that they could all be glacial erratics. Watch the video to learn more and thanks for being here.
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