While some look for traces of extraterrestrials in ancient monuments, others are establishing what ordinary mortals were capable of

While some look for traces of extraterrestrials in ancient monuments, others are establishing what ordinary mortals were capable of. A new study deals with the Altar Stone of Stonehenge, a six-tonne sandstone slab at the centre of the circle.

The stone hails from the north-east of Scotland, from the Orcadian Basin, some 700 kilometres from Salisbury Plain. A team led by Anthony Clarke modelled the movement of glaciers and showed that the ice could not have carried the stone as far as southern England, at best to Dogger Bank in the North Sea. Which means that the remaining hundreds of kilometres were covered by people hauling the slab, overland and along the coast, deliberately and in stages, some five thousand years ago.

No aliens, only ropes, water and an organisation astonishing for the Neolithic