Latest news with #AltarStone
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A Fingerprint at Stonehenge Changes Everything We Know
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." A chemical fingerprint taken of Stonehenge's Altar Stone reveals that it isn't from Wales, as was previously understood. Instead, researchers believe that the stone came from the Orcadian Basin in Scotland—roughly 466 miles away from the Stonehenge site. While upending previous research, the find also raises questions about how trade networks may have helped transport the stone to the site. Stonehenge offers mysteries aplenty. Just when we think we've solved one, we have to re-solve questions we thought were already answered. Such is the case with the origin story of the Altar Stone—one of the roughly 80-plus stones still on site in southern England. The stones of Stonehenge feature a variety of compositions and originate from a number of potential source locations. Scholars previously believed that they knew most of what there was to be known about the Altar Stone—the largest of the non-sarsen stones on site, which is now partially buried beneath two fallen stones. But researchers led by a team from Curtin University may have just upended that history, writing that a stone long believed to originate from Wales actually hails from Scotland. By studying the age and chemistry of mineral grains within fragments of the six-ton Alter Stone—a thick sandstone block measuring 16 feet by 3 feet in the center of the iconic Wiltshire circle—the team crafted a chemical fingerprint of the stone. That chemical composition matched that of rocks from northeast Scotland, and clearly differentiated it from Welsh bedrock. 'Our analysis found specific mineral grains in the Altar Stone are mostly between 1,000 to 2,000 million years old, while other minerals are around 450 million years old,' Anthony Clarke, lead author and Ph.D. student from the Timescales of Mineral Systems Group at Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said in a statement. 'This provides a distinct chemical fingerprint suggesting the stone came from rocks in the Orcadian Basin, Scotland, at least 750 kilometers [466 miles] away from Stonehenge.' According to English Heritage, the Altar Stone is a large slab of greenish Old Red Sandstone. Recent geological research had pinpointed the source of the stone to the Brecon Beacons area of southeast Wales. But the new study, which was published today in the journal Nature, discounts that reigning theory. Richard Bevins, study co-author and professor at Aberystwyth University, said in a statement that with the chemical fingerprint tracing the iconic rock to Scotland, the hunt for its exact point of origin starts now. Clarke said that the Scottish origins of the stone raise fascinating question regarding how such a massive stone was transported so far during the Neolithic era of roughly 2,600 BC. It must have required, the authors claim, an unexpectedly advanced transport method and complex societal organization. 'Our discovery of the Altar Stone's origins highlights a significant level of societal coordination during the Neolithic period and helps paint a fascinating picture of prehistoric Britain,' Chris Kirkland, study co-author and Curtin professor, said in a statement. 'Transporting such massive cargo overland from Scotland to southern England would have been extremely challenging, indicating a likely marine shipping route along the coast of Britain. This implies long-distance trade networks and a higher level of societal organization than is widely understood to have existed during the Neolithic period in Britain.' You Might Also Like Can Apple Cider Vinegar Lead to Weight Loss? Bobbi Brown Shares Her Top Face-Transforming Makeup Tips for Women Over 50
The Independent
25-02-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Was Stonehenge a phallic temple? New study suggests key stone represents a giant penis
New research suggests that, as well as being a probable centre for the veneration of the Sun, Stonehenge was also a fertility temple. A detailed study of a partly buried fallen stone at the monument has revealed that it may have been sculpted to resemble a giant penis. The research carried out by Professor Terence Meaden, an archaeologist and retired physicist, suggests that when the stone had stood upright, it would have looked like a 2.6 metre erect male member, equipped at its upper end with an 80-centimetre long glans or bulbous tip. Professor Meaden, who taught physics at universities in France and Canada and studied archaeology at Oxford, has examined the stone in detail - and has concluded that its shape was deliberately altered in order to give it a phallic appearance. He estimates that prehistoric craftsmen used tools to remove up to 200,000 cubic centimetres of stone to give it that form. Although no other phallic standing stones have ever been identified in or around Stonehenge, several small carved stone phalluses, dating from the Stonehenge era, have been found relatively near to the monument - just two miles from it. Penis-shaped standing stones and carvings seem to have been important elements in many prehistoric belief systems throughout much of the world (especially in Europe and Asia) - and Professor Meaden's research suggests that rituals at Stonehenge itself may have had a phallic dimension. The monument's newly identified phallus-shaped standing stone (up till now, known to archaeologists simply as 'Stone 67'), now lying horizontal and partly buried, once stood erect in what was arguably the single most important location in Stonehenge and was aligned directly with the mid-summer sunrise and the mid-winter sunset. The only other stone within the stone circle on that alignment is a six-tonne rock known in recent centuries as the Altar Stone. It too had been shaped, before being put in position. Some evidence suggests that the latter stone never stood upright and had therefore always lain horizontal. Because, in solar alignment terms, it seems to have been deliberately paired with the phallus-shaped standing stone, Professor Meaden suspects that the Altar Stone may symbolise or represent female fertility. Certainly, it is significant that more effort was expended to bring it to Stonehenge than any of the monument's other stones - for it was transported (probably by sea) all the way from northern Scotland. In terms of alignments, Stonehenge was primarily associated with the Sun (specifically the solstices) - but there is some evidence that it may also have had lunar alignments. If Professor Meaden is correct in asserting that Stone 67 was deliberately shaped as a phallus to represent the male principle and that the Altar Stone was intended to represent the female principle, then it is conceivable that the two stones represented, respectively, a solar and lunar deity. Alternatively, they may have represented, respectively, a solar deity and Mother Earth. In Europe and Asia, many ancient solar deities were male, while Earth and Moon deities were often female. Solar/lunar deity pairings were relatively common in the ancient world, with the Sun often representing masculinity and a moon deity sometimes being the Sun's female consort. Throughout much of the prehistoric and ancient world, specific rocks or standing stones were perceived as deities, or as containing deities within them or being somehow associated with the divine or the supernatural. Still today, those traditions live on in some parts of the world - especially in India and in Japan. And in parts of Europe, including the UK, some ancient standing-stone-related rituals were practised until the mid-20th century. Professor Meaden's identification of a phallus-shaped stone at Stonehenge has been published as part of his latest book about the monument - How Pytheas the Greek Discovered Iron-Age Britain, Stonehenge and Thule. The phallic-shaped stone would have stood erect, as the monument's key focal feature, for hundreds (probably over two thousand) years - but appears to have eventually been knocked over by some sort of natural or man-made catastrophe. For, at an as yet unknown stage in Stonehenge's history, two huge stones (one weighing over 20 tonnes), located behind the phallic-shaped stone, collapsed - and seem to have knocked over Stone 67. Professor Meaden believes that during winter solstice (December 20 or 21) rituals at the monument, the phallic-shaped standing stone would have been spectacularly backlit by the setting Sun. The event would have marked the shortest day in the year - the symbolic death and rebirth of the Sun, the point when the days started to get longer again. "When the phallic stone was in its original upright position on the main solar solstice axis of the monument, it would have blocked any view of the winter-solstice sunset for observers approaching along that probably sacred axis. Instead, they would have witnessed the great stone penis, framed between the two uprights and lintel of what would have been Stonehenge's largest single structure, the so-called Great Trilithon, standing immediately behind it. The phallic stone would then have been wonderfully backlit by the Sun as the glowing solar disc descended to the horizon," said Professor Meaden.
