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The first gene-silencing drug wins FDA approval3 comments • 2 days ago

John Turner — Err, that's Hereditary not "Heredity"Transthyretin Amyloidosis. And it's abbreviated hATTRnot "ATTR".But I'm sure you editor already left you …

This geoengineering tactic to cool the planetcould hurt crops64 comments • 4 days ago

RME76048 — "Can we talk about actual solutions,please, and not freaking chemtrail idiocy?"Relax!:)Solutions:a) cut back on the combustion of fossil …

What ‘The Meg’ gets wrong — and right — aboutmegalodon sharks18 comments • 2 days ago

John Turner — Don't you want to see Jason Stathameat nine 25-meter sharks, on after another? Then wezoom into his skull and discover he's an android …

Strange metals are even weirder than scientiststhought29 comments • 9 days ago

MJF Images — Not ‘any onel’ of those properties ofcourse, but a combination. I think simple metallic lustreis a big criterion. Anyhow, I didn’t want to argue with …

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⚑−Barak-Har Elkin7 days ago

Locals sent west with their families to quarry bluestone?

Reply△ ▽

⚑−CedarTree132510 days ago

Organic matter fozzillization is a product of its environment. The environment dictates the amount of minerals, water,etc. that will influence the organic matter, too promote the fozzillation. Perhaps the biopaleo's need to take a geologyclass? LOL.

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⚑−RME76048 10 days ago

> CedarTree1325

Is 'fozzillization' anything related to Fozzie Bear?

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⚑−Kang the Unbalanced 10 days ago

> RME76048

Wokka wokka wokka!

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⚑−Linda Brooymans 8 days ago

> CedarTree1325

they are not fossils, they are actual bones.

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NEWS ANTHROPOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY

Stone trailA new study suggests some people buried at

Stonehenge in southern England spent their final

years in what’s now West Wales. Researchers

previously tracked the source of some stones at

Stonehenge to quarries in West Wales such as Craig

Rhos-y-felin.

T. TIBBITTS

Citations

C. Snoeck et al. Strontium isotope analysis on cremated human

remains from Stonehenge support links with west Wales. ScientificReports. Published online August 2, 2018. doi:10.1038/s41598-

018-28969-8.

Further Reading

B. Bower. Herders, not farmers, built Stonehenge. Science News

Online, September 6, 2012.

B. Bower. Domain of the dead. Science News. Vol. 173, June 21,

2008, p. 13.

Cremated remains reveal hintsof who is buried at StonehengeChemical analyses of skull pieces suggest some of the dead came from WalesBY BRUCE BOWER 9:00AM, AUGUST 2, 2018

FOREIGN TIES Some cremated humans buried at Stonehenge in southern England around 5,000 years ago came from far away,possibly West Wales, researchers say.

AIRWOLFHOUND/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Stonehenge attracted the dead from far beyond its location

in southern England.

A new analysis of cremated human remains interred at the

iconic site between around 5,000 and 4,400 years ago

provides the first glimpse of who was buried there. Some

were outsiders who probably spent the last decade or so of

their lives in what’s now West Wales, more than 200

kilometers west of Stonehenge, researchers report August

2 in Scientific Reports.

West Wales was the source of rocks known as bluestones

used in early stages of constructing Stonehenge.

Bluestones are smaller than the ancient monument’s

massive sandstone boulders.

The new investigation “adds detail to a previously rather shaky framework” of archaeological finds

suggesting that links existed among ancient societies across southern England and Wales, says

archaeologist Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University in Poole, England, who was not involved in the

research.

Geographic origins of cremated remains at the site had previously eluded scientists. In the new study,

bioarchaeologist Christophe Snoeck of Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium and colleagues analyzed two

forms of the element strontium in human skull fragments that were previously found among cremated

remains at Stonehenge to narrow down individuals’ origins. Signature levels of these strontium types

characterize rock formations and soil in different regions. Humans and other animals incorporate

strontium into their bones and teeth by eating plants.

HOT TAKE Chemical analyses of human skull fragments such as these, found among cremated remains buried at Stonehenge,indicate that some of the ancient site’s dead had been brought from more than 200 kilometers away in West Wales.

CHRISTIE WILLIS

Snoeck demonstrated several years ago that, rather than absorbing strontium from surrounding soil like

unburned bone, pieces of cremated bone retain a strontium signal from around the last 10 years of a

person’s life. Of 25 cremated people whose bones were studied, 10 individuals spent their last decade in

West Wales or near there, the researchers found. The rest were locals.

“Our results show that it was not just bluestones but people, or in some cases perhaps just their cremated

remains, that came to Stonehenge in its early phases,” says coauthor Rick Schulting, an archaeologist at

the University of Oxford.

Stonehenge served as a cemetery for at least 500 years, beginning around 5,000 years ago (SN: 6/21/08,

p. 13). Excavations at Stonehenge between 1919 and 1926 recovered cremated remains of up to 58

individuals that had been placed in 56 pits. Researchers reburied these finds in 1935. Archaeologist and

study coauthor Mike Parker Pearson of University College London led a team that in 2008 re-excavated

remnants of the 25 individuals analyzed in the new study.

Nonlocal people buried at Stonehenge were

cremated before being transported to the

ancient site, Snoeck’s group suspects. Levels

of two forms of carbon absorbed into the

bones during cremation indicate that funeral

pyres consisted of trees from dense woods

such as those in Wales. A different carbon

makeup characterizes trees from relatively

open landscapes, as in southern England. The

extent of contacts between communities in

the two regions is unknown. One reason:

Cremation destroys tooth enamel, which

preserves a strontium record of childhood

diet. As a result, investigators can’t determine

whether nonlocal people buried at

Stonehenge grew up in West Wales or

elsewhere.

For now, the best bet is that nonlocal people

buried at Stonehenge around 5,000 years ago

spent their final years in western Britain,

possibly West Wales, says archaeologist

Alasdair Whittle of Cardiff University in

Wales. Archaeological finds from that time

link inhabitants of the Orkney Islands off

Scotland’s northeast coast to communities in

mainland Britain and probably continental

Europe, boosting the plausibility of long-

distance contacts between western Britain

and Stonehenge, Whittle adds.

Archaeologists also have discovered cultural ties between southern England and France’s northwestern

Brittany region dating to as early as around 5,000 years ago, Darvill says. That means outsiders could

have come from other places. Snoeck’s group should compare strontium signatures typical of Brittany

folk to those of people buried at Stonehenge, he suggests.

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