Building Stonehenge: A new timeline

Study says huge sandstone horseshoe built 4,600 years ago; smaller bluestones came later

Ancient people probably assembled the massive sandstone horseshoe at Stonehenge more than 4,600 years ago, while the smaller bluestones were imported from Wales later, a new study suggests.

The conclusion, detailed in the December issue of the journal Antiquity, challenges earlier timelines that proposed the smaller stones were raised first.

"The sequence proposed for the site is really the wrong way around," said study co-author Timothy Darvill, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University in England. "The original idea that it starts small and gets bigger is wrong. It starts big and stays big. The new scheme puts the big stones at the center at the site as the first stage."

The new timeline, which relies on statistical methods to tighten the dates when the stones were put into place, overturns the notion that ancient societies spent hundreds of years building each area of Stonehenge. Instead, a few generations likely built each of the major elements of the site, said Robert Ixer, a researcher who discovered the origin of the bluestones, but who was not involved in the study.

"It's a very timely paper and a very important paper," Ixer said. "A lot of us have got to go back and rethink when the stones arrived." [...] MSNBC.com

Actualización 02-12-12. Revelan un nuevo calendario para la construcción de Stonehenge
Los antiguos probablemente montaron la gran herradura de arenisca en Stonehenge hace más de 4.600 años, mientras que las pequeñas piedras azules fueron importadas de Gales posteriormente, según sugiere un nuevo estudio.

La conclusión, que se detalla en la edición de diciembre de la revista Antiquity, desafía las anteriores líneas de tiempo que proponían que las piedras más pequeñas fueron levantadas en primer lugar...