The peer review file for Clarke, A.J.I., Kirkland, C.L., Bevins, R.E. et al. A Scottish provenance for the Altar Stone of Stonehenge. Nature 632, 570–575 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07652-1 is interesting for the support the reviewers give to the analysis.
The comments on the proposed transport are less helpful. The authors and the reviewers aren't archaeologists and the paper's assertion of the probability of marine over land transport could have been usefully examined in detail. But it wasn't.
Reviewer 3, however, contributes a "layman's" opinion on the transport mechanism options for the Altar Stone journey from the Orcadian Basin to Stonehenge.:
".. I did a quick literature search with the keywords “provenance of glacial erratics in Britain”, navigated to the first result (Williams-Thorpe et al., 1999) and found a map (see attached) with highly complex ice flow paths that do not rule out a Scottish provenance for Wiltshire erratics..."
I believe this is the map referred to:
From: Williams-Thorpe, O., Aldiss, D., Rigby, I.J. and Thorpe, R.S. (1999), Geochemical provenancing of igneous glacial erratics from Southern Britain, and implications for prehistoric stone implement distributions. Geoarchaeology, 14: 209-246. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6548(199903)14:3<209::aid-gea1>3.0.CO;2-7
I think it is obvious that this map doesn't provide any support for a glacial erratic flow from the north east of Scotland to Wessex and I am surprised it was raised. Some
igneous glacial erratics (not sandstone) from the southern parts of Scotland were brought south, but the Grampians were the dividing line as to which way ice flowed.
There is a temptation to indulge in convoluted logic arguments about what is "ruled out" by evidence and then clasping to the possibilities of the vanishingly unlikely as the answer.
The evidence doesn't "rule out" the Altar Stone was pushed onto an ice flow at Svalbard and rowed by a crack team of Polar Bears to Gloucester but that is as likely as the convoluted fairy stories of successive glacial movements, which miraculously did not leave a mark on the sharp edged Sandstone block, that are being floated about.
Simple human ingenuity, enterprise and hard work are what brought the Altar Stone to Wiltshire. And any other proposed mechanism needs strong evidence before it is worth even considering.
I have spent two years considering how a stone slab could have been transported from Westray Orkney to Salisbury Plain. It would only take 72 days doing a sea journey in a large leather covered curragh (cf 36 ft Brendan Boat) . Simple and easy. It is the overland part that is the problem.
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