The Pont Saeson connection

Been to have a look at Pont Saeson, between Brynberian and Crosswell in North Pembrokeshire -- whence Richard Bevins took his rock samples which have now been matched up with rock fragments from the Stonehenge area. The interesting thing about this area is that there are no upstanding tors or craggy hills at all -- the landscape is gently undulating, with a couple of deep river valleys which have within them smallish outcrops of rhyolite on the slopes. In one place, pictured above, there is a prominent "spur" or crag of rhyolite, not far from the Pontsaeson ford, which owes its prominence to stream action -- and maybe to subglacial fluvial action during one of the glacial episodes that affected the area. But even this spur is within the valley -- it does not project above the overall land surface.

It is clear that the entrainment of erratics into the base of an overriding glacier could have occurred here -- but I can see no reason whatsoever why any Neolithic tribesmen would ever wish to take a stone, or a collection of stones, from an innocuous and undistinguished location such as this. Here, it just does not make sense -- even though there may some attraction in the idea (put forward with great enthusiasm by HH Thomas and Richard Atkinson) that the Stonehenge bluestones were taken from "sacred hills" or prominent high points in the landscape -- like Carn Meini -- which might have been treated with reverence by passing traders.

Another thumbs-down for the crazy human transport theory........