Stonehenge Tourist Circa 1550 BC

'The Boy with the Amber Necklace' isn't a best-selling book by Stieg Larsson. No, it's much older than that. Seems archaeologists have unearthed what they say is proof that Stonehenge was a tourist attraction way back in the day.

The British Geological Survey has announced the discovery of the skeleton of a teenager a couple of miles southeast of the great circle of stones. The skeleton dates to about 1550 B.C., according to radiocarbon tests, but it's the necklace the teen was wearing just before he died and results of tooth scans that have intrigued the scientists.

The necklace features amber beads, which weren't exactly easy to find in England in those days, so that's one clue to the teen's "visitor" status. Scans of tooth enamel, however, reveal the more telling evidence, namely the levels of strontium and oxygen isotopes that scientists say prove that he came from hundreds of miles away, much nearer the Mediterranean Sea. The teen would have absorbed the elements from drinking water near his homeland. Why he died where he did remains a mystery.

Was he a pilgrim on a religious quest? Did he seek healing? Was he attending a ritual? Did he want to learn more about the heavens? None of this is known, of course, nor is it known (still) what purpose Stonehenge served.

This latest find, coupled with previous long-distance visitors the "Amesbury Archer" and the "Boscombe Bowmen," serve to prove that people in olden days traveled farther from home than conventional wisdom generally allows.