Stonehenge bodies were from Wales

Stonehenge is a proudly English landmark, but new research points to the builders of the ancient monument coming from Wales – 290kms away.

It’s been known that Stonehenge’s giant blue stones had been sourced from the Preseli Mountains in west Wales, but little has been known of the origins of its builders.

But new research of the people buried at the 5,000-year-old Neolithic site show their Welsh origins.

And some of them might have been involved in lugging the massive stones over a distance of 290kms to the site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, southern England.

The study, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, involved isotope analysis of the skulls.

Isotopes of elements in the water and food consumed by humans become embedded in bone and tissue.

Scientists are able to determine where and when a person lived by looking at their isotope composition.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson told the UK Telegraph: “This is a really exciting discovery because it shows how far some of the Stonehenge people travelled”.

“But what’s really fascinating is that this date of around 3000 BC coincides with our radiocarbon dates for quarrying at the bluestone outcrops in the Preseli hills of Pembrokeshire. 

“Some of the people buried at Stonehenge might have even been involved in moving the stones – a journey of more than 180 miles (290kms).”

The team analysed skull fragments from 25 people which were originally excavated in the 1920s from 56 pits inside Stonehenge.

Results of the remains – dated to about 3000BC – about the time the monument was built showed 10 of them had spent most of their life outside Stonehenge.