A set of giant monoliths known as the “Devil’s Arrows” were moved 18km (11 miles) across Yorkshire by Stone Age people, new research has found.
The three columns have been standing in a farmer’s field in Boroughbridge for thousands of years, with information signs stating that they came from Plumpton Rocks, now a pleasure garden.
Now academics in York and Australia have used isotopic fingerprinting techniques to determine they were transported from Brimham Rocks, a National Trust attraction.
Dr Jim Leary from the University of York said: “We have now proved Neolithic communities moved several 25-tonne stones, transforming a familiar site into an epic quest to create a sacred landscape.”
The three Devil’s Arrow stones were erected between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago. The pillars are almost seven metres (23ft) tall.
Early accounts of the stones record varying numbers of them – at least five but possibly more – but just three have survived.
Why they were placed there, and for what purpose, remains a mystery, but for the first time their origins have been identified.
It was previously thought that they had come from Plumpton Rocks near Knaresborough, which is 13km (nine miles) away, and this information was recorded on signs near the site.
It was the mineral mapping work by the university researchers which identified the stone as coming from Brimham – where the giant rock formations were created by a river 100 million years before dinosaurs walked the planet.
The discovery means that the Neolithic people who erected the monuments bypassed more local stone sources during construction.
The study also confirmed a local legend that a long-lost fourth Arrow had been “hiding in plain sight” and had been moved and carved into the Battle Cross monument in nearby Aldborough.
