SPECTACULAR STONEHENGE FINDS

Following the latest astonishing revelation about the Stonehenge Altar Stone's Scottish origins, Dixe Wills looks at recent discoveries that have changed the way we view this impressive and enigmatic Neolithic monument

Impossibly huge and implausibly ancient, for countless generations Stonehenge has inspired awe in those who have cast eyes upon it. Begun around 3000BC, with additions occurring over the next two millennia, it has become one of the planet's most famous and most puzzling prehistoric constructions.

Although we know that the stones are aligned with the sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstice respectively and that burials took place here - the precise motivations of those who built it might never be fully understood.

And just when you think the monument can't get any more bamboozling, Stonehenge tosses out another mystery.

A group of archaeologists writing in Nature magazine recently announced that the monument's Altar Stone is not from the Preseli Hills as previously believed but was quarried in the far north-east of Scotland. It was then transported either by land (over 450 miles) or sea (over 600 miles), all the way to south-west England.

This astonishing feat has caused academics to reassess the capabilities and organisational nous of our Neolithic forebears. According to University College of London's Mike Parker Pearson, who has been involved in many excavations around Stonehenge, "No other circle [in Britain] was made entirely of distantly sourced stones...

This has to be one of the biggest clues about its purpose - a monument to unite people on a grand scale." However, this latest discovery is just one of a clutch made about the monument - now in the care of English Heritage (english-heritage.org.uk/ stonehenge) over recent decades.

THE BLUESTONE QUARRY