YORK, ENGLAND—According to a SciNews report, Anthony Clarke of Curtin University and his colleagues analyzed zircon and apatite crystals in the Devil’s Arrows—three megaliths standing in alignment in North Yorkshire—in an effort to trace their origins. The stones, each of which weighs more than 25 tons, are thought to have been erected around 2000 B.C. The monument is believed to have had a fourth stone that was broken up and reused in antiquity. “The Arrows are the tallest surviving standing stone row in Britain,” Clarke said. “The monument is rare and one of the few examples of a stone alignment within a lowland setting,” he added. The researchers were able to match the megaliths to a freestanding rock outcrop known as Brimham Rocks, which is located about 11 miles away from the monument. “Our research shows these stones weren’t simply taken from the nearest available source—they were deliberately chosen from a challenging landscape,” Clarke explained. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Proceedings of the Royal Society A. To read about a 5,000-year-old monument in the Lake District, go to "Off the Grid: Castlerigg Stone Circle, England."
