Inside the search for the origin of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone | EUROtoday

“It was one of those kind of serendipitous occasions – a Eureka moment,” says Professor Richard Bevins.

Picking over a set of 15 pattern stones from Stonehenge handed on to him by a former colleague, the geologist was requested to make a fast remark on the supply of rock believed to have been introduced from west Wales some 5,000 years in the past.

“I said I can tell you what they are in terms of rock type, but this rock type – I’ve never seen in west Wales, never seen it at all,” Prof Bevins remembers. “So I wrote it up [his report]but before it was published, I had a Eureka moment and thought ‘there’s an outcrop that I have got material from but that I’ve never looked at before’.

“It led to the excavation of a Neolithic quarry [Craig Rhos-y-Felin] and the discovery of the exact location where the stone samples came. A perfect match. It was a special moment.”

That main discovery in 2011 was the primary time a particular supply for any of the stones on the world-famous monument had been discovered, reinvigorating the long-running debate on how the stones had been transported all the way in which from Pembrokeshire to Wiltshire.

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Now, at present, 14 years on, Prof Bevins believes he might be on the verge of his subsequent ground-breaking discover; the supply of the monument’s Altar Stone.

Having declared final yr that the six-tonne megalith was not one of many bluestones hauled from Pembrokeshire, he and his group ventured to the archipelago of Orkney after figuring out it got here from sandstone deposits within the Orcadian Basin, an space encompassing the isles of Orkney and Shetland and a coastal strip on the northeast Scottish mainland.

Detailed research of the stones in Orkney, nevertheless, got here up with no match, and now Prof Bevins is gazing a mapped space 125 miles by 93 miles, decided to find the precise location the place the stone was quarried, earlier than being transported greater than 500 miles to the West Country.

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“It’d be fantastic to find the exact source,” Prof Bevins says. “It’s been a rollercoaster to get this far, having found it doesn’t come from Wales but now from northeast Scotland. It’d certainly be the icing on the cake for all the work we’ve put in.”

Finding the supply would open excavation works for archaeologists on the supply website, who would then be capable of hint the folks behind the development of Stonehenge and discover out all the things, from their society to their instruments to what they ate and drank.

It would additionally, Prof Bevins says, add extra substance to the theories behind how the large stones had been moved the tons of of miles, with present ideas, as a result of hilly panorama in Scotland, that they had been moved by sea.

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The discovery of the placement may additionally strengthen a concept that the constructing of Stonehenge was an act of unification throughout the UK towards a international risk, with supplies coming from all corners of the British Isles.

But, for now, Prof Bevins says he must work together with his small group to pinpoint areas throughout the large area.

“If we just went up there and went randomly walking across the whole area, we’ll probably retire and be a long time underground before anything were found, so we’ll be picking out some target areas within that region,” says Prof Bevins.

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But it takes time, and working within the discipline is pricey and time-consuming.

And after funding completed on ruling out Orkney final yr, Prof Bevins and his group must construct a brand new case for cash to pay for the following a part of their mission. Part of their case would be the public’s thirst for info on one of many UK’s most well-known monuments, which had a document 1.4 million guests in 2024.

“People like to know about other people, they like to know about their history, they like to know why Stonehenge was built, what do the pyramids mean? It’s that fascination with people and cultures,” says Prof Bevins.

“When we publish a paper [on Stonehenge]you can almost clock it going around the world across time zones. News, television channels, online. It really is quite astonishing. We’re hoping to achieve the same results again soon.”