The huge 25-tonne rocks which make up the Stonehenge may have been sourced from various locations across England, according to new research which counters the belief that only the smaller bluestones of the 5000-year-old megalith were brought in from elsewhere.
Katy Whitaker, from the University of Reading in the UK, suggests that the Sarsen stones could have come from sites as far away as Kent - over 160 km away from Wiltshire where the Stonehenge is located.
"Most people are aware that some of Stonehenge's stones came all the way from south-west Wales. The really huge sarsen stones at Stonehenge are assumed to have come from sources on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, about 30 km to the north of Stonehenge," Whitaker said.
"Sarsen stone, however, is found in other locations across southern England," she said.
"There are sarsens in Dorset, spread about dry chalk valleys similar to the locations on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, and as well as locations in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Sussex, there are even sarsens in Kent," Whitaker was quoted as saying by 'The Telegraph'.
The new theory also challenges that Stonehenge represents monument construction which could only have been achieved through organisation by a hierarchical leadership.
Instead, it shows that smaller groups had banded together to bring meaningful stones to a central area.
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