Ancient Britons Hauled 25-Ton Stones 11 Miles To Build The Devil’s Arrows

Geologists Use Sticky Tape to Solve a Stone Age Mystery

Thousands of years ago, during the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age, people in what is now Yorkshire moved enormous stones weighing around 25 tons apiece. Here’s the odd part: builders passed over closer sources of suitable rock to do it. A new geology study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, lays out the evidence behind one of British prehistory’s stranger choices, the building of the Devil’s Arrows, Britain’s tallest surviving row of standing stones.

For decades, researchers argued over where these massive stones came from and how they ended up outside Boroughbridge. Some thought glaciers had dumped them there naturally, others assumed builders simply grabbed the closest usable rock. A team from Curtin University and the University of York settled the debate by reading mineral clues locked inside the stones, and what they found upends the assumption of convenience.

Using a technique that involved sticking tape onto the ancient stones, researchers traced the rock to a site roughly 11 miles away, passing over a much closer outcrop. Eleven miles isn’t extreme compared to other famous monuments, but it’s far enough to suggest the builders cared where their sacred stones came from, not just how easy they were to reach.

Sticky Tape Helped Trace the Devil’s Arrows’ Hidden Origin

Three surviving Devil’s Arrows stones stand about 23 feet tall and weigh around 25 tons apiece. They’re protected by law, so researchers couldn’t chip off samples the way a geologist normally would. Instead, the team pressed short strips of sticky tape onto dry patches of the stones, let them sit a few minutes, then peeled them off along with whatever microscopic mineral grains clung to the glue. Back in the lab, they sorted out tiny crystals of two minerals that act like time capsules, recording when they formed. Different rock formations carry different mixes of these ages, so matching the pattern to a quarry reveals the source.

Researchers pulled hundreds of usable age readings from the three stones, and all three matched, meaning they almost certainly came from the same source rock. Some grains dated back more than 3.7 billion years, likely from ancient crust now sitting in Greenland.

Brimham Rocks, Not Plumpton, Matches the Devil’s Arrows’ Fingerprint

For years, a rocky outcrop called Plumpton Rocks, about 8 miles from the stones, was the leading guess for their origin, even making it into an official government heritage listing. A second candidate, Brimham Rocks, sits farther out at roughly 11 miles. Comparing the mineral fingerprint from the standing stones against samples from both outcrops, Brimham Rocks matched closely while Plumpton Rocks did not.

Researchers also found strong evidence against the old idea that glaciers simply dropped these stones near Boroughbridge. Reconstructions of ancient ice movement show glaciers flowed from the northwest toward the southeast, carrying debris away rather than pulling material eastward from the Brimham Rocks uplands. Combined with the shared mineral fingerprint across all three stones, rather than a glacial jumble, the evidence points toward people, not ice, doing the moving.

Missing Devil’s Arrows Stones Turned Up in a Bridge and a Cross

Old written accounts hint the Devil’s Arrows once included more than three stones. A 16th-century writer named John Leland described a fourth standing stone near the site, and later visitors recorded that locals had broken up at least one stone, using part of it in a nearby bridge and another piece in a manor house. A 19th-century historian even proposed a stone cross nearby, built to mark a 14th-century battle, had been carved from a leftover piece of the monument.

Researchers tested this old story by sampling both the bridge stonework and the stone cross, and the mineral ages recovered from both matched the fingerprint of the Devil’s Arrows. Pieces of a missing ancient monument appear to have been hiding in plain sight for centuries, without anyone realizing where they may originally have come from.

Distant Quarries Point to Deliberate Choices by Ancient Builders

This kind of long-distance sourcing fits a pattern seen at other Stone Age sites. Stonehenge’s smaller bluestones traveled roughly 140 miles from Wales, and one stone there has been traced hundreds of miles away in Scotland. Builders at these sites repeatedly passed over nearby rock for material from specific, distant places.

Researchers suggest Brimham Rocks may have carried special meaning. The outcrop features strange, sculptural rock towers shaped by wind and water erosion, scenery that could easily have inspired myths or been treated as sacred ground. Nearby carvings from the same broad era support the idea the quarry was more than a convenient rock pile.

Practical concerns played a role too. Brimham Rocks naturally splits into long, block-like shapes along existing cracks, so workers may have broken loose usable stones with less effort than at a solid rock face. Picking a source probably came down to meaning, material, and practicality.

Britain’s Stone Age builders weren’t hauling multi-ton stones out of laziness or a lack of options. They made deliberate choices about where their sacred material came from, choices that outweighed the ease of grabbing whatever rock sat closest. The Devil’s Arrows now join Stonehenge and other famous monuments as proof that where a stone came from mattered just as much as what it eventually became.

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Disclaimer: This article is based on peer-reviewed research. Interpretations regarding the symbolic or spiritual significance of Brimham Rocks are presented as reasonable speculation offered by the study’s authors, not established fact.

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