How, then, did prehistoric builders without sophisticated tools or engineering haul these boulders, which weigh up to 4 tons, over such a great distance?For centuries, historians and archaeologists have puzzled over the many mysteries of Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument that took Neolithic builders an estimated 1,500 years to erect. We didn’t think we’d get a direct match. While historians agree that it was a place of great importance for over 1,000 years, we may never know what drew early Britons to Salisbury Plain and inspired them to continue developing it. Did you know? “Now we can start to understand the route they might have travelled and add another piece to the puzzle.”But the question still remains of how the giant stones, each of which weighs up to 40 tons, were transported to their resting site.The experts' guide to good living“We picked 20 areas and our goal was to try to eliminate them, to find ones that didn’t match. They then transferred the boulders onto rafts and floated them first along the Welsh coast and then up the River Avon toward Salisbury Plain; alternatively, they may have towed each stone with a fleet of vessels. Its construction is all the more baffling because, while the sandstone slabs of its outer ring hail from local quarries, scientists have traced the bluestones that make up its inner ring all the way to the Preseli Hills in Wales, some 200 miles from where Stonehenge sits on Salisbury Plain. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.Hoping to erect a memorial to his fallen subjects, King Aureoles Ambrosias sent an army to Ireland to retrieve a stone circle known as the Giants’ Ring, which ancient giants had built from magical African bluestones. “To be able to pinpoint the area that Stonehenge’s builders used to source their materials around 2500BC is a real thrill,” said English Heritage senior properties historian Susan Greaney. A sample of one of the megaliths taken by a maintenance worker in 1958 … Mystery solved: Scientists trace source of Stonehenge boulders Study finds most of the giant stones, or sarsens, seem to share a common origin 16 miles away; how massive slabs were moved … In 1958 the work of lifting the west trilithon began. Some 50 sarsen stones are now visible on the site, which may once have contained many more. Bones, tools and other artifacts found on the site seem to support this hypothesis. Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury.It consists of a ring of standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons.The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli (burial mounds).
Original Stonehenge was dismantled in Wales and moved to Wiltshire, archaeologists believe Save The smaller bluestones in Stonehenge were probably part of an earlier Welsh tomb.