You are currently viewing the summary.
View Full TextLog in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
More options
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
Summary
Around 3200 B.C.E., farmers in Wales's Preseli Hills built a great monument: They carved columns of dolerite, or bluestone, from a nearby quarry, then thrust them upright in a circle aligned with the Sun. Exactly what the circle meant to them remains a mystery. But new research reveals that several centuries later, their descendants took down many of the giant stones and hauled them 200 kilometers to the Salisbury Plain. There, they created what is still the world's most iconic prehistoric stone monument: Stonehenge. The paper presents a "brilliant hypothesis" that Stonehenge is a dismantled stone circle from Wales.