One of the most famous prehistoric monoliths may have been packed up and shipped out similarly to your Ikea living room set, a new study suggests. Archaeologists have slowly been chiseling away at the mystery surrounding the construction of Stonehenge, and the latest findings point to two quarries in Wales where some of Stonehenge's rocky ingredients may have been assembled. 

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The new study, published in the journal Antiquity, looks at one of two kinds of stones used to construct the monument. While the larger slabs of Stonehenge are made of sandstone, the smaller ones are made of what's known as bluestones. Archaeologists tracked down the origins of these bluestones to two quarries in the Preseli mountains in west Wales – more than 100 miles away from the Stonehenge site itself. Not only were they farther from the site, but the researchers dated artifacts at the quarry and found they outdate Stonehenge by hundreds of years. 

"We have dates of around 3400 BC for Craig Rhos-y-felin and 3200 BC for Carn Goedog, which is intriguing because the bluestones didn't get put up at Stonehenge until around 2900 BC," Parker Pearson said. 

So what explains the 500 year gap? While the mere transporting of the stones could have spanned that time, Parker Pearson has another theory: the bluestones formed their own monument before making their way to Stonehenge, and were slowly moved because they were so important to the Neolithic people who built that initial monument. 

"We don't make that many fantastic discoveries in a lifetime of archaeology but this is certainly one of them," the study's lead author, Mike Parker Pearson of the University College London, told CNN. "This is the first time we've found empirical evidence of how they moved stones. There have been all sorts of ideas from rolling them in a strange cart-like construction to skimming them across the ice." 

As it turns out, the study shows quarrying and transporting the bluestones might not have been as complex as we might have thought.

"They only had to insert wooden wedges into the cracks between the pillars and then let the Welsh rain do the rest by welling the wood to ease each pillar off the rock face," Josh Pollard of the University of Southampton told National Geographic. "The quarry-workers then lowered the thin pillars onto platforms of earth and stone, a sort of 'loading bay' from where the huge stones could be dragged along trackways leading out of each quarry." 

Not everyone agrees with Parker Pearson's theory, however. Discovery News reported that geologist John Downes and geomorphologists Dyfed Elis-Gruffyd and Brian John argue that the site at Craig Rhos-y-felin is not a quarry at all, but rather natural features shaped by time. 

Further research will analyze the area around the quarries to see if there are any local monuments that may have once been that first Stonehenge.