Stonehenge first stood in Wales

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - Professor Mike Parker Pearson (UCL Institute of Archaeology) discusses his research which has found a dismantled stone circle in west Wales which was moved to Salisbury Plain and rebuilt as Stonehenge. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose History of the Kings of Britain was written in 1136, the mysterious monoliths at Stonehenge were first spirited there by the wizard Merlin, whose army stole them from a mythical Irish stone circle called the Giants' Dance. Centuries before the development of rudimentary geology, Geoffrey's exotic theory - that the stones at Stonehenge were filched from a foreign field - has enveloped the 5,000 year-old site in yet another layer of mystical intrigue. Now, it appears the medieval chronicler might have been on to something. Though the stones were moved by manpower not magic, and taken from Wales not stolen from Ireland, our new research has revealed that Stonehenge may actually have first stood on a windswept hillside near the Pembrokeshire coast, at a site called Waun Mawn, before 3000BC. Our findings have dramatic implications for our understanding of the UK's best-known Stone Age site. Stonehenge was built in five constructional stages over 1,500 years, beginning around 3000BC.