Professor Peter Kokelaar has earned a distinguished reputation as a volcanologist, and that is exactly why his recent essay arguing that the Stonehenge bluestones came "mostly by ice" is worrying. I raise it in the spirit of a friendly warning: a record built over a career deserves better than to be spent on claims that don't survive a first look.
Take his "smoking gun", the Boles Barrow stone, which he calls a well-rounded erratic. Anyone can turn it round on the Sketchfab 3D model and see that it is squared off with dressed sides, worked by people rather than shaped by ice. Its link to the barrow isn't documented anyway. The Newall boulder, which he sets aside, has been discussed in detail by Bevins et al. (2023).
To say there is no evidence for neolithic human transport of monoliths is just absurd.
Even great minds can be led astray when they step outside their own field. Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the most rational detective in fiction, staked his name on the Cottingley Fairies photographs, and that is now what many people remember him for. Peter is a far better scientist than that, and I hope he will step back before the ice-transport case becomes his Cottingley.
Disclosure: I am a co-author of Bevins et al. 2023.
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