On my mind

THERE have been many theories about the origin of Stonehenge. I particularly like: a dog park; a Neolithic bouncy castle; an alien’s game of dominoes; the ground floor of a prehistoric unfinished office block.

Whatever its origin it was believed to have been built by the descendants of people who travelled from modern Turkey in a mass migration around 6,000BC. When they arrived in Britain 2,000 years later they replaced hunter gathering with farming and brought the tradition of building large stone monuments. According to the Brexiteers it was a brazen case of Europeans coming over here and taking our stones.

Now archaeologists have discovered that they are second hand and recycled from a site called Waun Mawn in the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire. The Preseli circle has long been dismantled but was located where the smaller ‘bluestones’ of Stonehenge are known to have come from. It seems the ancient people of the Preseli region migrated with their monuments and reerected them at Stonehenge.

So, as calls have been made to return the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum to Egypt, the Elgin Marbles back to the Parthenon in Athens, the Bust of Nefertiti from Berlin to Amarna in Egypt and the Benin Bronzes back to modern-day Nigeria, will there be a clamour for the return of the Preseli Stones?

Of course, all the others mentioned are original priceless treasures stolen or pillaged as the spoils of war, whereas the Preseli Stones seem to have been transported overland for 175 miles in a regional migration. A petition to the Senedd for their return has been rejected: they are the property of the Crown.

So without official permission from England and a suitable courier they will always be between a rock and a hard place.