Stonehenge's Altar Stone: Who Moved It 700 km From Scotland? New 2026 Study | No Trace Podcast #15

At the centre of Stonehenge lies a six-tonne slab of sandstone, pinned under the fallen Great Trilithon. For a century everyone thought it came from Wales. In 2024, tiny crystals inside it proved it came from the far north of Scotland, more than 700 km away. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6hxv... In No Trace Podcast #15, Julian and Claire follow the Altar Stone from Merlin and Inigo Jones to a sliver taken from its underside in 1844, the zircon "clocks" that pointed to Scotland, and the Orkney test that came back negative. Then the 2026 study "From Highlands to Henge": Caithness as the closest match, an Ice Age model that sends ice as far as Dogger Bank but never to Salisbury Plain, the drowned land of Doggerland, and the idea that the stone was moved twice. Plus the critics, the sea and land routes, a cow from Stonehenge's south entrance, and the hardest question of all: why? CHAPTERS 00:00 Two words from a listener (intro) 00:57 The stone under the stones 02:41 How Stonehenge was built 04:20 Merlin, Romans and Druids 06:07 Buried and forgotten 08:05 A sliver from 1844 09:12 Clocks inside crystals 10:54 Scotland 12:43 Not Orkney 14:00 From Highlands to Henge 15:38 The ice 17:51 The land the sea took 20:24 Moved twice? 21:59 The critics 23:22 By sea or by land 25:49 The cow at the south entrance 27:06 Why? 28:46 Your theory SOURCES Clarke, Kirkland, Bevins, Pearce, Glorie & Ixer, "A Scottish provenance for the Altar Stone of Stonehenge", Nature 632 (2024): 570-575, doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07652-1 Clarke, Veness, Kirkland et al., "From Highlands to Henge: Refining the Provenance and Transport Pathways of Stonehenge's Altar Stone", Journal of Quaternary Science 41(6) (2026), doi:10.1002/jqs.70080 (CC BY) Bevins et al., "Was the Stonehenge Altar Stone from Orkney?", J. Archaeological Science: Reports 58 (2024); Bevins et al., authenticity of the 1844 sample, JAS Reports 49 (2023) Clarke & Kirkland, Communications Earth & Environment (Jan 2026), Salisbury Plain stream zircons Parker Pearson et al., "Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources", Archaeology International 27 (2024) Evans, Madgwick et al., J. Archaeological Science 180 (2025), the Stonehenge cow tooth; BGS release (Aug 2025) Walker, Gaffney et al., Antiquity (2020), Storegga and Dogger Bank Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136); English Heritage articles on the 1620 dig and the 1958 restoration Press and releases quoted: Curtin University, UCL, Aberystwyth University, Sheffield Hallam University (June 2026), BBC, Evening Standard, ScienceDaily (Sept 2026), EurekAlert, Smithsonian (June 2026), The Conversation (July 2026); commentary by Tim Daw (sarsen.org), Mike Pitts and Brian John The Scottish origin is peer-reviewed and has held up in follow-up studies. The exact outcrop, the route, the date the stone arrived and the reason it was moved are not known. The "moved twice" idea is a hypothesis its own authors call hypothetical. Theories are presented as theories. IMAGE CREDITS Public domain / CC0: first aerial photograph of Stonehenge (P. H. Sharpe, 1906); Archaeologia plate (1800); James Waterhouse photograph (1867, Yale Center for British Art); Clement Reid's Dogger Bank map; Doggerland 10,000 BP map; Preseli Hills (H. K. Rieder) Wikimedia Commons (CC licences): Altar Stone (The Stones of Stonehenge, CC BY 4.0); Simon Burchell (CC BY-SA 4.0); TobyEditor (CC BY 4.0); Frank Parkes, 1958 (CC BY-SA 2.0); Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness (Stevekeiretsu, CC BY-SA 3.0); Grey Cairns of Camster (Gaius Cornelius, CC BY-SA 4.0); Durrington Walls and Grooved Ware (Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0); Sarclet (Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0); Doggerland maps (Francis Lima; North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project, CC BY-SA 4.0); and others as credited on screen Figures from Clarke, Veness et al. 2026 (CC BY). Article pages shown on screen are screenshots of the cited sources. AI-generated (Grok) where no real image exists, labelled on screen "Illustrative image". No AI image depicts a real person's face. Thumbnail: AI-generated studio image of the hosts with a real photograph. Hosts Julian and Claire are AI-voiced characters (ElevenLabs). Script researched and written by No Trace History. By sea, over land, partway by ice, or something else? Tell us in the comments. We read every one. #Stonehenge #AltarStone #Archaeology #History #Scotland #Doggerland #NoTraceHistory