Ring of truth: Stonehenge came from Wales
Medieval tale that structure was moved to current spot may be partly correct, say archaeologists at dig site
‘It’s giving us a whole new perspective on what Stonehenge was about. This must have been an act bound up with the unification of tribes in southern Britain’
GEOFFREY of Monmouth’s claim that Merlin created Stonehenge with megaliths seized from elsewhere in the British Isles has long been seen as nothing more than fantasy.
But his 12th-century tale of a transported monument may not be complete myth, according to archaeologists who have unearthed the site of a stone circle in Wales they believe was dismantled and moved to Salisbury Plain.
Experts believe Stonehenge was conveyed by migrating peoples to become Britain’s first “monument to unification” in the 3rd millennium BC. Radiocarbon dating had revealed the structure was “second hand” and its smaller bluestones stood for centuries in another location after being quarried in South Wales around 3400BC, but the original site remained a mystery.
Now, Prof Mike Parker Pearson, project leader at Stones of Stonehenge, believes he has found the site after unearthing a dismantled stone circle at Waun Mawn, in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, which may have formed part of a sacred landscape for western British tribes.
So it may not have been a Neolithic Merlin who moved the monument but people moving eastward and bringing their cultural “crown jewels” with them from ancestral homelands in Wales.
Prof Parker Pearson believes the new discovery “raises the possibility that a 900-year-old legend about Stonehenge being built from an earlier stone circle contains a grain of truth”.
After a decade of work Waun Mawn is now considered a likely point of origin because it lies next to quarries where Stonehenge’s smaller bluestones originate, its perimeter ditch has the same 360ft diameter, and it also aligned with the midsummer solstice sunrise.
DNA and archeological evidence suggests its Neolithic population “vanished” after 3000BC in a migration from what is now Wales into southern England, which could have ended with “political” unity symbolised by Stonehenge.
Prof Parker Pearson told The Daily Telegraph: “It’s giving us a whole new perspective on what Stonehenge was all about. It may have actually been a monument to unification. This must have been an act bound up with the unification of tribes in southern Britain.”
Remains show that the first people buried at Stonehenge came from southern Wales. “They bring the stones because they’re like the crown jewels. They are symbols of who they are,” said Prof Parker Pearson.
Merlin was said by Geoffrey of Monmouth to have plundered stones from just one monument, in Ireland rather than in Wales, but experts believe the amount of megaliths at Salisbury Plain mean multiple circles may have been moved to build Stonehenge and the nearby Bluestonehenge.
Prof Parker Pearson said: “My guess is that Waun Mawn was not the only stone circle that contributed. There are more in Preseli waiting to be found.” The Stonehenge complex was built in stages over thousands of years, first with earthworks and wooden poles before five-ton Welsh bluestone arrived followed by larger 30-ton sarson stones to form its famous arches.
The latest research, which is featured in a TV documentary presented by Alice Roberts, suggests the large stones could have been moved the 170 miles from Wales at a rate of three miles a day.
“People would have come to see and to join in so the whole thing would have been an extraordinary spectacle,” Prof Parker Pearson said.
“In its own right, it’s an act of unification because it’s actually bringing everybody together.”
Waun Mawn was identified as a place of interest in 2010, but it was not until 2018 that excavations uncovered holes where up to 50 stones would have stood that the site’s significance was revealed. Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed airs on BBC Two tonight at 9pm.