A 5,000-year-old cow’s tooth may offer fresh new evidence about how Stonehenge was built, hinting that cattle travelled with the monument’s stones from Wales to Wiltshire.
Using advanced isotope analysis, researchers studied a jawbone first unearthed at the ritualistically significant southern entrance of Stonehenge in 1924.
Their results show the animal’s early life was spent on terrain underlain by rocks more than 400 million years old – a possible geological match for the Welsh landscape where Stonehenge’s bluestones were quarried.
“We now have the first evidence of a cow at the appropriate time of the movement of the bluestones having links to Wales and Stonehenge,” Prof Jane Evans, lead author of the study, told BBC Science Focus. “It's a hell of a story to come out of one tooth, and it's not something I expected.”
Stonehenge’s so-called bluestones are a set of smaller standing stones, distinct from the larger sarsens, that were transported more than 200km (125 miles) from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales.
Their long journey remains one of archaeology’s greatest puzzles: did people haul them with ropes and sledges, float them on rivers, or even harness animals to help?
The scientists sliced the tooth into nine layers, each recording chemical signals from a short window of the cow’s life.
Oxygen and carbon isotopes showed the cow’s diet shifting over roughly six months, from stored winter fodder to summer pasture. Strontium revealed the food came from different geological areas, suggesting either the cow moved to the food, or the food was moved to it.
But the lead isotopes told a more surprising story. Their composition pointed to terrain such as that found in Wales, while unusual spikes suggested that lead stored in the skeleton was released during pregnancy.
That lead would have been built into the skeleton earlier in its life. In other words, while the cow’s life ended at Stonehenge, it likely began in Wales, making the same journey as the stones.
Follow-up testing confirmed the animal was female, so it could have been pregnant or nursing at the time when that section of the tooth formed.
Together, the findings expand the picture of what it took to move Stonehenge’s massive stones, which weigh as much as 4.5 tonnes (5 tons), hundreds of kilometres.
Rather than solitary groups of men hauling rocks, the presence of a cow – perhaps pregnant, perhaps providing milk – hints at larger domestic groups and support networks travelling with them.
“You can theorise that cattle may even have been used to pull the stones themselves,” Evans said, suggesting that while this particular animal may not have pulled the stones, evidence is emerging that Neolithic people in the area did use so-called ‘beasts of burden’.
“This research has provided key new insights into the biography of this enigmatic cow whose remains were deposited in such an important location at a Stonehenge entrance,” Richard Madgwick, one of the study’s co-authors and a professor of archaeological science at Cardiff University, said.
“It provides unparalleled new detail on the distant origins of the animal and the arduous journey it was brought on. So often grand narratives dominate research on major archaeological sites, but this detailed biographical approach on a single animal provides a brand-new facet to the story of Stonehenge.”
Evans suggested more work could be carried out on other animal specimens found littered around the monument.
For now, this lone cow tooth offers the clearest sign yet that the journey of Stonehenge’s stones may have been shared by animals as well as people – reshaping how we imagine the building of this prehistoric monument.
Read more:
- Scientists have finally solved a major Stonehenge mystery
- What was Stonehenge made for?
- 4,500-year-old poo found near Stonehenge shows Neolithic Britons were infected with parasites
About our expert
Jane Evans is a British Geological Survey honorary research associate and honorary professor at the University of Leicester and the University of Nottingham. She is an isotope geochemist who specialises in the application of isotope systems to the archaeological issues of provenance and diet.