This Wonder of the World isn’t done living up to its name.
Roughly 5,000 years after making an initial appearance on a patch of English grassland, Stonehenge has plenty of secrets left to spill, surprising new research suggests.
Experts on the prehistoric site are abuzz over a new report stating that the Altar Stone — one of the most mysterious pieces of the monument, according to the Washington Post — may have been “dragged 500 miles or more overland” from faraway Scotland to Salisbury Plain.
If true, the finding — released with 95 percent certainty by scientists at Curtin University in Australia — challenges a century’s worth of geological study that supposed Wales to be the point of origin.
Using tiny, long-ago secured fragments of the stone — which cannot be further tampered with for any reason, due to Stonehenge’s status as a World Heritage Site — the researchers were able to determine that the work of neolithic art was made of Old Red Sandstone.
This type of stone is found in Scotland’s northeast, in an area known as the Orcadian Basin, stretching north from Inverness and through the Orkney Islands.
Considering the wheel had yet to be invented, the feat of prehistoric long-haul transport ““demonstrates a high level of societal organization with intra-Britain transport during the Neolithic period,” researchers said.
The trip may have taken over a decade to accomplish, the WaPo reported.
Next up — figuring out where exactly the stone came from in Scotland and why it was moved.
The fascination with perhaps the world’s most famous ancient rock collection goes back to the Medieval period — the first time the site is discussed in writing, according to English Heritage.
Other stones in the circle are said to have traveled significant distances as well, the organization stated.
