Stonehenge-New Ideas on its origins

Angela

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See:https://www.archaeology.org/news/9468-210212-wales-stonehenge-bluestones
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"LONDON, ENGLAND—Traces of a Neolithic stone circle have been discovered in west Wales, near ancient bluestone quarries in the Preseli Hills, by a team of researchers led by Mike Parker Pearson of University College London, according to a Science Magazine report. Parker Pearson said that just four bluestone monoliths remain at the site, which is named Waun Mawn. Excavation revealed six empty stone holes, indicating that the four remaining monoliths were part of a larger circle made up of an estimated 30 to 50 stones, he explained. The dating of charcoal and sediments in these holes suggests the circle was constructed between 3600 and 3200 B.C. Radiocarbon dates also show there was no activity at Waun Mawn from 3000 to 2000 B.C. When the researchers compared their findings at Waun Mawn to the bluestones at Stonehenge, located some 175 miles away, they found that the shape of one of the Stonehenge bluestones matches an empty imprint at Waun Mawn, and chips of stone found in that hole are of the same type of rock as the stone at Stonehenge. Both Waun Mawn and the ditch that encloses Stonehenge measure some 360 feet in diameter, and both monuments were aligned on the midsummer solstice sunrise, Parker Pearson added. He and his team members suggest that the Waun Mawn monument was dismantled and re-erected on the Salisbury Plain around 3000 B.C., perhaps because the people who used it left west Wales and migrated to a new area. Isotopic analysis of people buried at Stonehenge around this time suggests that about 15 percent of them came from western Britain. To read the original scholarly article on this research go to Antiquity."

The general public has yet to catch up to population genetics. I'm on an online book club, which I'm going to quit, and some woman was raving about some idiot book about the "Celtic" rituals which took place at Stonehenge. I had to break it to her that the Celts didn't build Stonehenge. I have to start my own online book club or blog. Too many women read such horrible fiction and rarely read history.
 
Stonehenge was built when Indo-Europeans arrived. I guess the incoming Indo-European clans met with rivalling megalithic elite clans.
I can imagine some Indo-European clan making a pact with a megalith clan and robbing the stones from a distant enemy megalith clan.
Just speculating. I think it makes a nice story though.
Maybe the distant enemy megalithic clan was enslaved and had to drag their own stones to the new site.
 
That Indo-Europeans used it I don't deny.

However, please provide papers with dating which conclude that Stonehenge was built by Indo-Europeans and not just at approximately that time or a little before their arrival.
 
These form the source of my opinions.

"As there was evidence of the underlying chalk beneath the graves being crushed by substantial weight, the team concluded that the first bluestones brought from Wales were probably used as grave markers.[3][4] Radiocarbon dating of the remains has put the date of the site 500 years earlier than previously estimated, to around 3000 BC.[3][4] A 2018 study of the strontium content of the bones found that many of the individuals buried there around the time of construction had probably come from near the source of the bluestone in Wales and had not extensively lived in the area of Stonehenge before death.[29]"

Christophe Snoeck; et al. (2 August 2018). "Strontium isotope analysis on cremated human remains from Stonehenge support links with west Wales". Scientific Reports. 8 (1): 10790. Bibcode:2018NatSR...810790S. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-28969-8. PMC 6072783. PMID 30072719.

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Between 2017 and 2021, studies by Professor Pearson (UCL) and his team suggested that the bluestones used in Stonehenge had been moved there following dismantling of a stone circle of identical size to the first known Stonehenge circle (110m) at the Welsh site of Waun Mawn in the Preseli Hills.[30][31] It had contained bluestones one of which showed evidence of having been reused in Stonehenge. The stone was identified by its unusual pentagonal shape and by luminescence soil dating from the filled-in sockets which showed the circle had been erected around 3400-3200 BCE, and dismantled around 300-400 years later, consistent with the dates attributed to the creation of Stonehenge.[30][31] The cessation of human activity in that area at the same time, suggested migration as a reason, but it is believed that other stones may have come from other sources.[30][31]"

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These Neolithic migrants to Britain also may have introduced the tradition of building monuments using large megaliths, and Stonehenge was part of this tradition.[56][57]"At that time, Britain was inhabited by groups of Western Hunter-Gatherers, similar to the Cheddar Man. When the farmers arrived, DNA studies show that these two groups did not seem to mix much. Instead, there was a substantial population replacement.[56]
The Bell Beaker people arrived later, around 2,500 BC, migrating from mainland Europe. The earliest British beakers were similar to those from the Rhine.[58] There was again a large population replacement in Britain. The Bell Beakers also left their impact on Stonehenge construction.[59] They are also associated with the Wessex culture."

Their contributions would have to have been dated to around 2500 BC or later. Indeed, I have seen opinions that they didn't reach the Salisbury plain until around 2400 BC. The Amesbury Archer is dated still later, to 2300 BC.
 
Yes it is a bad joke. The Keltic thing about Stonehenge, all those idiots in white robes and funny hats pretending to be Druids. It is not just women who are ignorant but lots of people of both genders. They think they are connected to Cheddar Man, a WHG, placed in a cave after death and defleshed, when the Neolithics and whatever was left of the WHGs were mostly killed (90% replacement) by the I.E speaking Steppe herder descendants.

Whenever Megalithic structures are mentioned, they just mention Western Europe, they forget it all started in Mesolithic Anatolia and moved westwards during the Neolithic. Like it is all to do with the those Kelts and Germans, not slightly built, light skinned, brown haired and eyed Mediterranean looking Neolithic people. Cultural appropriation on a megalithic scale.
 
The evidence is convincing that the blood of the Neolithic inhabitants of Wales runs strong in the modern Welsh. It is unlikely that the 90% replacement took place in Wales.
 
The evidence is convincing that the blood of the Neolithic inhabitants of Wales runs strong in the modern Welsh. It is unlikely that the 90% replacement took place in Wales.

Well, that certainly isn't what that huge paper, "People of the British Isles" shows. They and the Cornish/people of Devon, are slightly more similar to the northwestern French than other Brits, but I don't think that would equate to the blood of the Neolithic inhabitants of Wales running strong in the Welsh. Perhaps it might turn out to be a difference of a few percent. After all, the English have a lot of "Neolithic" ancestry too. They're descended from the Bell Beakers, who were about 45/55 Old Europe and steppe, and they then gained a few percent in subsequent millennia.
 
The Welsh have orders of magnitude more DNA related to Spain according to that Paper. The Welsh also have a considerable amount of a French component that maps to Central/Southern France. It is absent in much of the UK except a few other Celtic groups. It peaks in South Wales. There is a German component from that paper that peaks in North Wales, and it is almost certainly highly related to the Bronze Age invasion of the Isles. As for the NW France component you mention, I'm sure it is related to the British Neolithic in some way, although this is difficult to prove. The scientists at 23andMe agree with me, they make this same claim on the website: Wales is a haven for Neolithic and Bronze Age DNA, with admittedly more Bronze Age. Also, check out the list of countries by MTDNA on Eupedia. You will see that Wales is in a different Universe for MTDNA. Completely divergent from the rest of the British Isles and NW Europe. This is likely because Maternal ancestry in Wales is highly biased towards the British Neolithic, and Paternal Ancestry is biased towards the Beaker folk.

That last guy was talking something about cultural appropriation? No chance. The Welsh are likely the closest living relatives to the people that built Stone Henge and all those amazing world heritage sites!
 
The Welsh have orders of magnitude more DNA related to Spain according to that Paper. The Welsh also have a considerable amount of a French component that maps to Central/Southern France. It is absent in much of the UK except a few other Celtic groups. It peaks in South Wales. There is a German component from that paper that peaks in North Wales, and it is almost certainly highly related to the Bronze Age invasion of the Isles. As for the NW France component you mention, I'm sure it is related to the British Neolithic in some way, although this is difficult to prove. The scientists at 23andMe agree with me, they make this same claim on the website: Wales is a haven for Neolithic and Bronze Age DNA, with admittedly more Bronze Age. Also, check out the list of countries by MTDNA on Eupedia. You will see that Wales is in a different Universe for MTDNA. Completely divergent from the rest of the British Isles and NW Europe. This is likely because Maternal ancestry in Wales is highly biased towards the British Neolithic, and Paternal Ancestry is biased towards the Beaker folk.
That last guy was talking something about cultural appropriation? No chance. The Welsh are likely the closest living relatives to the people that built Stone Henge and all those amazing world heritage sites!

Please provide links to the paper and list the pages which support the statements above that Wales has orders of magnitude more ancestry related to Spain than other parts of Britain or French ancestry for that matter (you can also copy/paste the statements once you have given the link to the paper and pages).

If you can't stop making the claims.
 
Due to how new I am to this forum I cannot post links. I will name the Sources best I can:

1) People of the British Isles 2015
2) Distribution of European MTDNA haplogroups by region in percentage, from Eupedia website
3) 23andMe info page on British & Irish Ancestry "Welsh Connection"

For #1 check out the visual where they show each region
 
That Indo-Europeans used it I don't deny.

However, please provide papers with dating which conclude that Stonehenge was built by Indo-Europeans and not just at approximately that time or a little before their arrival.

I didn't say that Stonehenge was built by Indo-Europeans.
I just speculated that it might have been built by a neolithic tribe which allied themselves with incoming Indo-Europeans.
 
Due to how new I am to this forum I cannot post links. I will name the Sources best I can:
1) People of the British Isles 2015
2) Distribution of European MTDNA haplogroups by region in percentage, from Eupedia website
3) 23andMe info page on British & Irish Ancestry "Welsh Connection"
For #1 check out the visual where they show each region

I know the paper. You need to support your specific words with quotes from this paper showing that the Welsh have "orders of magnitude" more relationship to Spaniards than to the English.

It was a rhetorical question, really, because I knew you wouldn't be able to do it.

The paper shows no such thing.

We don't go in for baseless and unsupported allegations on this site.
 
Well, sorry, but I don't go in much for speculations which are based on no evidence at all.

If you had read all the papers I cited, you would see that Neolithic people first started building Stonehenge at a time when "Indo-European" speaking steppe admixed people were not even close to having entered Britain.

A long, long, time later, some time after their arrival on that plain they did get involved in work on the site.

The papers make it very clear.
 
A lot of stuff on this site is baseless armchair science. Look at the POBI study again. Look at the figure mapping continental European genetic clusters to different regions in the British Isles. Look at the UK average for Spain (labeled SFS 31). Look at the amount of SFS 31 in North Wales. You will see that North Wales has at least 3x as much SFS 31 as many other places in the UK. Ergo, North Wales has orders of magnitude more DNA from Spain than other places in the UK.
I'm not saying that Spanish DNA Constitutes the majority of North Welsh DNA. It does not. But the Welsh still have a different magnitude of this DNA compared to much of UK. There are also French genetic clusters that reach their peak in Wales and these are undoubtedly related to the Neolithic.

Did I mention the scientists at 23andMe agree with me? By the way... I admit that the majority of Welsh DNA is Bronze Age... not claiming otherwise. But the Welsh have a healthy amount of the Neolithic Farmers who built Stone Henge!
 
Do some of you people even bother to read the papers you say support your conclusions?
You have some nerve. We always support our opinions based on papers, rather than the rank speculation they must engage in wherever you usually post.

"
The three Welsh clusters are the most distinctive and completely lack contributions from North and North West Germany (EU3 pink) and Northern France (EU17 red). They have the largest contributions from West Germany (EU6 medium green) and North West France (EU14 dark green)."

As I said, btw, based completely on memory.

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The small differences between South and North Pembrokeshire, especially the slightly larger contributions from Belgium (EU11 yellow) and Denmark (EU18 dark red) (matching Danish place names in South Pembrokeshire) are consistent with the suggestion that this group may represent the area that is sometimes called “Little England Beyond Wales”. This is because the farmers settled there by Henry II probably mostly came from that part of Europe."

https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/#:~:text=The%20People%20of%20the%20British%20Isles%20%28PoBI%29%20project,first%20ever%20detailed%20genetic%20map%20of%20a%20country.

Are you freaking kidding me? Of course Wales has Neolithic farmer ancestry. It, along with Cornwall and Ireland, have more than, say, Orkney, precisely because they have more French "like" ancestry, not because they have so much more Spanish ancestry.

(I'll leave aside that using modern populations like this can distort and confuse the issue at times. Wales was not settled by the French, for example.)

Finally, there is no way on earth at this point for scientists to distinguish Anatolian farmer ancestry as to when it entered a certain population. For all we know, that ancestry in the Welsh could all come from the Bell Beakers from whom they are descended. There is no way of telling.

Now I'm tired of talking to someone who is this clueless.

image4.png
 
The image you posted is from another study. Not the one I am citing. Admittedly the image you have posted is from a more recent study. In the image you show, the Spanish component in Wales does indeed look comparable to the rest of the UK. in POBI 2015, they obtained different results based on their analysis. POBI 2015 shows that Wales has at least 3x the Spanish DNA as other parts of the UK.
One can ask a legitimate question: which is right? The one you have shown, or POBI 2015? I obviously believe POBI 2015 is right. POBI 2015 also found that there is a deep connection between North Wales and some German admixture. This is not demonstrated in the image you posted, and yet the Welsh-German connection is undeniable, based on many studies and this fun crowd-sourced stuff. Even if we go with the image you posted, there is not a single compelling reason to assume Wales and the Republic of Ireland have more French DNA besides it coming from the original Neolithic inhabitants of the Isles.
The evidence so far clearly shows that any iron age migration to the Isles mostly had a big impact on South East England, and seems to have upped their EEF.
As for the Normans, the vast majority of researchers will tell you they had close to 0 impacts on the Isles.
And yes... the researchers at 23andMe agree with me.
 
The image you posted is from another study. Not the one I am citing. Admittedly the image you have posted is from a more recent study. In the image you show, the Spanish component in Wales does indeed look comparable to the rest of the UK. in POBI 2015, they obtained different results based on their analysis. POBI 2015 shows that Wales has at least 3x the Spanish DNA as other parts of the UK.
One can ask a legitimate question: which is right? The one you have shown, or POBI 2015? I obviously believe POBI 2015 is right. POBI 2015 also found that there is a deep connection between North Wales and some German admixture. This is not demonstrated in the image you posted, and yet the Welsh-German connection is undeniable, based on many studies and this fun crowd-sourced stuff. Even if we go with the image you posted, there is not a single compelling reason to assume Wales and the Republic of Ireland have more French DNA besides it coming from the original Neolithic inhabitants of the Isles.
The evidence so far clearly shows that any iron age migration to the Isles mostly had a big impact on South East England, and seems to have upped their EEF.
As for the Normans, the vast majority of researchers will tell you they had close to 0 impacts on the Isles.
And yes... the researchers at 23andMe agree with me.

You can believe what you wish. When the authors of a paper include more samples, and use newer software, changing their conclusions, I'll go with that, not with my pre-conceived notions.
 
Newer isn't always better. The one you posted seems to have some problems.
1) Does not replicate the result that has been replicated many times: the closest relatives to the Welsh (and Celts more broadly possibly) on the continent are the west Germans.
2) Level of Norwegian DNA in Ireland could be inflated due to there being Irish DNA in Norway and not the other way around. Also most studies suggest very little Norwegian impact on Wales.
3) The evidence is strong that there was a migration from France, or somewhere on the continent bringing additional EEF to England in the Iron Age before the Romans got to Britain. This migration seems to have had a strong impact on South East England, and a more minimal to 0 impacts on Celts and Wales.The image you posted does not replicate this result in any way.
 

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