"So every month, we highlight a handful of the best stories that nearly slipped through the cracks. January's list includes a lip-syncing robot; using brewer's yeast as scaffolding for lab-grown meat; hunting for Leonardo da Vinci's DNA in his art; and new evidence that humans really did transport the stones to build Stonehenge from Wales and northern Scotland, rather than being transported by glaciers."
"Stonehenge is an iconic landmark of endless fascination to tourists and researchers alike. There has been a lot of recent chemical analysis identifying where all the stones that make up the structure came from, revealing that many originated in quarries a significant distance away. So how were the stones transported to their current location? One theory holds that glaciers moved the bluestones at least part of the way from Wales to Salisbury Plain in southern England,"
Mineral fingerprinting of zircon crystals from rivers near Stonehenge finds no Pleistocene-era sediment signatures consistent with glacial transport. Earlier zircon analyses traced the Stonehenge Altar Stone to Orkney rather than Wales. Chemical provenance studies identify many stones as originating in quarries far from Salisbury Plain. The absence of glacial sediment signatures supports human transport of bluestones from Wales and northern Scotland to the monument. The combined mineral and zircon analyses constitute the strongest scientific evidence yet favoring human movement of the stones rather than glacier-mediated relocation. Questions remain about the precise methods and social organization required for such long-distance prehistoric transport.
Read at Ars Technica
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