The source of the Stonehenge bluestones

Stonehenge is an ancient monument located in modern day Wiltshire that was built around 5,000 years ago. Construction of the site is believed to have started around 3000 BCE and wasn’t completed until close to 2,000 BCE, but why and how it was built remains a mystery. It seems to be religious in nature and no other reason would have been good enough for such a huge amount of work, but the strangest thing about the site is the original location of the bluestones that lay across the tops of the standing pillars.

The taller standing stones each weight about 25 tons and stand an average of 13 feet tall by 7 feet wide, but their source location is thought to be only a few miles away at a large deposit of the same type of stone. Moving these into place would have been done by hundreds of people pulling the stones across wet logs using ropes before tipping them into a hole dug at the build site.

The blue stones that sit across the tops of the standing stones seem to be a very odd choice to build with, mostly because the nearest place that type of stone if found is located in Wales within the Preseli hills, over 150 miles away.

(Craig Rhos-y-Felin, the site in the Preseli hills in Wales the Bluestone are thought to have come from)

The blue stones weight between 2 and 5 tons each, but transporting something that heavy with nothing more than wooden rollers without them cracking seems almost impossible, especially for people who are still in the early Bronze Age. There are 43 bluestones at the site but it’s been suggested that as many as 80 were originally present, though this has never been proven.

(A bluestone slab sitting on the ground at Craig Rhos-y-Felin, whether it fell there naturally or was left from 5000 years ago for some reason is anyone’s guess)

Even at the lowest estimate of 43 stones, it would take decades to move so many. If a team of pullers could average 2 miles a day per stone, the roughly 170-mile trip would take 85 days, and multiplying that by 43 gives 3,655 days, or 10 years if you prefer. This number is based on non-stop pulling, and doesn’t account for the huge amount of chopping for new logs and making new ropes, the supplies they would need and the difficulties along the route.

The site the bluestones are believed to have originally come from is called Craig Rhos-y-Felin, and is located in the Preseli hills at the Google map coordinates of 51°59’31.3″N 4°44’39.8″W

(Under the left over bluestone slab appears to be a number of small flat-topped rocks to form a platform for the slab)

The site is not only located with a large range of hills itself, but also has to pass across the Brecon Beacons mountain range shortly to the east. They would also have to go far inland to pass around the Bristol Channel before travelling south to the build site, a journey of epic proportions for people in the Bronze Age.

So how did they do it

There are two main theories of how the bluestones made it to Stonehenge, and they are glaciers and manpower. The most logical and widely accepted theory is that it was done using huge amounts of people and it took them almost 1000 years. After they went through a massive amount of bronze tools to dislodge and carve the stones, they would most likely have laid a bed of logs and kept them wet to help the stones slide. After placing the stone on the logs and pulling it to the end of the log path, the rear logs would be picked up and placed in front again to continue the path. The main problem with this method is that the logs wouldn’t last very long and it would require a tremendous amount of trees to be felled, but it does give an insight into why it took hundreds of years to build.

(The north side of the Craig Rhos-y-Felin rock outcrop)

The glacier theory suggests that during the ice age, a glacier managed to skim off a huge chunk of rock from the Preseli hills and carried it all the way to the current site. Though this would be possible it seems quite unlikely that such a small amount would have been carried to such a precise location, and it doesn’t explain why there isn’t a deposit or quarry site for the same type of bluestones in the area.

One other theory that’s out there is the use of ships to transport the stones along the Bristol Channel, a move that would make about 100 miles of the trip a hell of a lot faster and easier. The problem with this explanation is that the people who were doing this were only in the early Bronze age, and reliable sea faring ships were still 3000 years away. There has also never been any kind of Bronze Age ship excavation that amounts to anything more than a basic canoe type watercraft or simple raft, and nothing even close to a ship capable of moving several tons safely across the sea.