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STORY: A new discovery concerning Britain’s famous Stonehenge monument has stunned researchers.

Its Altar Stone - weighing an estimated six tons - traveled roughly 435 to 465 miles in ancient times from Scotland all the way to England's Salisbury plain.

New research published in the journal Nature was carried out by scientists at Aberystwyth University, UCL, Curtin University, and the University of Adelaide.

“How ever you brought it, whether you brought it down by boat or whether you brought it over land, it must've taken a huge effort to do that."

Nick Pearce is a geologist and co-author of the study.

"It sits right at the center of the Stonehenge monument. It's the bit that you stand on to watch the sunrise between the other stones. So it's right in the middle. So it must have been placed there as an important stone.”

The origin and purpose of the Altar Stone have been among the mysteries of the megalithic monument.

For the past century, the common belief had been that it had been sourced from Wales, like other large components at the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

To find out the age of the stone, researchers studied its geochemical fingerprint.

"It's a micro-analysis technique, you fire a focused laser beam on the minerals in the rock and it vaporizes them. Then you analyze the vapor and you analyze the uranium concentrations and the lead concentrations.”

They found that the minerals of the Altar Stone are a perfect match for bedrock found in northeastern Scotland.

“You analyze 50 or 60 minerals and you get this fingerprint of the different ages of those minerals in the rock. And that's the characteristic that tells us this is Ocadian Basin. So that age, that suite of ages from those individual minerals in the grains in the Altar Stone."

No stone from any other monument dating back to that time period is known to have been transported so far.

Researchers say this feat, perhaps by both land and sea, suggests a degree of societal organization among Britain's Neolithic communities unexpected for the time when it was moved, thought to have been about 4,600-2,500 years ago.

The precise location where the Altar Stone was sourced remains unknown.

But researchers say the challenge of taking such a massive cargo such a long distance underscores its importance to Stonehenge's builders.

The monument was built in multiple stages over 500 years or so, starting about 3000 BC.

It remains a site of fascination and mystery over its exact purpose, drawing tourists from around the world.