Stonehenge Builders Likely Descended From Immigrants, Genetic Analysis Says

There's a lot we don't know about Stonehenge, but until recently, the structure was thought to have been built by hunter-gatherers native to what's considered England today. A new study disputes that theory. As IFL Science reports, Stonehenge was likely the the work of Turkish people who migrated to Britain 6000 years ago and their descendants.

In the new report published in the journal Nature: Ecology & Evolution, scientists from London's Natural History Museum and University College London explain how they analyzed the DNA from the remains of dozens of people who lived in Britain between 8500 BCE and 2500 BCE.

The results contained fewer native British genes than expected: Researchers found that when the people whose bones they studied were alive, most of Britain's hunter-gatherer population had already been replaced by farmers from the Aegean region.

Roughly 6000 years ago, people from what is now Turkey traveled across Europe and settled in Britain. In addition to reshaping the British gene pool, the new group also introduced agriculture to the area. Archaeologists have long debated whether farming is something that was brought to Britain by a different culture or if native hunter-gatherers gradually adopted it on their own.

"The transition to farming marks one of the most important technological innovations in human evolution. It first appeared in Britain around 6000 years ago; prior to that people survived by hunting, fishing and gathering," study co-author Mark Thomas said in a press release. "Our study strongly supports the view that immigrant farmers introduced agriculture into Britain and largely replaced the indigenous hunter-gatherer populations."

That means Stonehenge, the first part of which was constructed around 3000 BCE, was likely the work of people who were culturally and genetically closer to ancient Aegeans than native Britons. But how they moved the 25-ton stones to their current location and for what purpose remains a mystery.