“They have been for too long neglected.”As Robert Phillips neared his 90th birthday, the former diamond cutter decided to return a priceless piece of history to the United Kingdom: a 91-centimeter-long cylinder of rock from the heart of Stonehenge. For centuries, most researchers have assumed the stones came from the closest major boulder field, some 25 to 30 kilometers north of the site in a region called the Marlborough Downs.Robert Ixer, a geologist at the University College London Institute of Archaeology, agrees that more sites should be sampled.
Knowing the stones’ origin could reveal future excavation sites in the region, shedding light on the ancient stoneworkers who constructed these mysterious monuments.Nash’s team then pulverized half of the Phillips core and ran it through a gantlet of chemical analyses that return a much higher resolution signature than x-ray spectrometry can provide.Nash and University of Brighton geologist Jake Ciborowski used a portable x-ray spectrometer—which Nash says “looks a bit like a ray gun from an old sci-fi movie”—to take nondestructive surface readings of all 52 sarsens’ chemical compositions. Phillips took the drilled-out core as a souvenir; it hung in his U.K. office for years before he took it with him when he retired to Florida.Michael Price is a science journalist in San Diego, California.When the Phillips core re-emerged in 2018, David Nash, an archaeologist and geographer at the University of Brighton, and colleagues knew they finally had the missing piece they needed to pinpoint the sarsens’ origins. Researchers have discovered the origins of Stonehenge's massive, mysterious sarsen stones Joshua Bote, USA TODAY 13 hrs ago. “It’s the sarsens’ time, really,” he says. Oregon state police arrive in Portland in push to stop riots. Beginning around 3000 B.C.E., Stonehenge was built up over hundreds of years as a ceremonial spot by people hailing from what today is Wales.
The team hopes to use the same geochemical technique for other sarsen structures all over Britain.New Study Traces the African Carder Bee in Western AustraliaResearchers Develop Wearable Monitors That Can Be Drawn on the SkinDefining Happiness in Positive Psychology Origins of Stonehenge. Scientists Trace Lineage of the COVID Virus in BatsThe discovery raises more questions too. ", inquired the team. Microsoft Flight Simulator to Return After 13 YearsPreviously, Stonehenge was linked with bluestones from Wales, which lies 160 miles west. In a recent study, scientists have finally discovered where the rocks came from and its connection to other stones in West Rocks, Marlborough nearby.Sign up to get the latest science news delivered weekly right to your inbox!Rare, "Ghostly" Sun Particles Found Under A Mountain in ItalySpaceX, NASA On the Lookout Before Endeavor SplashdownLove Shellfish? Available Full Episodes. For more than four centuries, archaeologists and geologists have sought to determine the geographical origins of the stones used to build Stonehenge thousands of years ago. 41 min | TV-PG | Premiered 01/10/2018. In 1958, Phillips was part of a crew contracted to re-erect three massive blocks that had toppled more than 100 years earlier at Stonehenge.
When the workers lifted one of them, Stone 58, they realized it was cracked. So they cut a hole through it and pinned it with a metal bolt to reinforce it. There were 20 possible sources of the sedimentary rocks with a similar compositional signature, with West Woods, Wiltshire (southern Marlborough) being the direct match.For centuries, experts could not explain the origins of Stonehenge. The geochemical approach involved examining stone samples from the 50s. "That showed us that most of the stones have a common chemistry, which led us to identify that we're looking for one main source here," said Nash. 29, 2020 , 2:00 PM. Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Stonehenge discovery: Origins of large sarsen stones finally traced. Stonehenge has been whispering its secrets to us after thousands of years and innumerable sunrises and sunsets, and it is finally telling us where its megaliths came from. Discovering the origins of the gigantic sarsens solve centuries of mysteries and … You May Also Like. Now, archaeologists working with the so-called Phillips core have all but conclusively shown that the famed monument’s largest building blocks came from a forest about 25 kilometers away, confirming a long-standing hypothesis.“This really does fill in that gap with a lot more confidence,” says Richard Madgwick, an archaeologist at Cardiff University who studies Stonehenge. "To analyze the sarsens, Professor David Nash from the University of Brighton and his team from four universities looked into the chemical composition of the stones. Pinning down the source of the large blocks known as sarsens that form the bulk of … The origins of the huge Stonehenge “sarsen” stones have been revealed with the help of a sample returned from the US.
Archaeologists directly match Stonehenge to a site 16 miles away. By Michael Price Jul. Critically, 50 of the 52 sarsens—including the Phillips core’s parent—had a practically identical chemical makeup, suggesting the stones all came from a single site. New Study Suggests Oysters Might Contain Bacteria, Plastics and Baby FormulaNash said, "It has been really exciting to harness 21st-century science to understand the Neolithic past, and finally answer a question that archaeologists have been debating for centuries."