Many things are not yet clear in the history of Stonehenge, the famous English archaeological site dating back to the Neolithic and composed of a circle of erect stones. But a mystery seems clarified: the origin of the “blue stones”. Recent analyzes have shown that the small “Newall boulder”, long considered a glacial deposit, comes from Wales and has been modeled by man, confirming that the megalites were transported and processed by Neolithic community. Over the centuries, the interpretations of the utility of this large monument, located in the Salisbury plain, have ranged from a mausoleum built by the wizard Merlin to an astronomical computer, up to a landing site for UFO. Still there is little.
Of these “blue stones”, so called because of their bluish shades, they come from distant outcrops in Wales, over 200 kilometers away. Historically, archaeologists were undecided on the way in which these great rocks arrived in the Salisbury plain: the idea that they were transported by a glacier during a prehistoric advance has been opposed to human transport theory.
The latter theory was mainly based on the characteristics of one of these smaller megalites, the so -called “Newall boulder”. Unlike most blue stone monoliths in Stonehenge, erected or underground, the size and shape of this piece of rock have in fact letting you think of a glacial deposit. We are talking about a fragment with an elongated shape of one hand, and to be precise of 22 × 15 × 10 cm, recovered during the 1924 excavations by Lieutenant Colonel Hawley and removed from the site by RS Newall, from which its name derives.
In the new study The Enigmatic ‘Newall Boulder’ Excavated at Stonehenge in 1924: New Data and Correcting the Recordresearchers from the University of Aberrystwyth have led new mineralogical, petrographic and geochemical analyzes on the stone, to understand its history.
Petrographic and geochemical tests have revealed that the boulder corresponds to group C of Riolite by Craig Rhos-Y-Felin, a location in Wales. Not only that: the “projectile” profile of the boulder of Newall corresponds to the top of the riolite pillars of Craig Rhos-Y-Felin and resembles in shape and size to one of the buried strains of Stonehenge.
Further investigations were made on the field in the Salisbury plain: no glacial deposits have been found, nor erratic boulders (i.e. rocks or boulders deposited by a glacier), nor other signs of glacial movement. The shape of these rocks explain the scientists, is not the result of subglacial erosion, but the result of an intentional model made by man.
This fragment, therefore, was most likely detached from a monolith on one part of the local Neolithic populations, strengthening the thesis according to which all the blue stones on the site are the result not of glacial movements, but of human efforts.
