6. Stonehenge: The World Famous Stone Circle Whose Mysteries Just Keep Deepening
Stonehenge is one of the world’s best-known monuments. However, its mysteries just keep deepening the more archaeologists investigate it. Activity on the site long before the first stone was laid indicates that as early as 4000BC Stonehenge was regarded as sacred. Then in around, 3200 and 2700 BC, a ditch and bank were created and in around 2500BC, the first stones were erected. Over the next 1400 years, the circle evolved to combine welsh bluestones from the Preseli Mountains 200 miles from Stonehenge with local stone from the Marlborough downs 17 miles away.
How the stones were cut and transported remains a matter of speculation, as does the exact function of Stonehenge. The arrangement and alignment of the stones suggest that the circle could have been a stone age calculator designed to predict lunar eclipses or a solar calendar related to the solstices. Or it could have been both. However, exactly why the circle’s original bluestones were transported from Southwest wales to the Wiltshire plain remains one of its most enduring puzzles.
A recent analysis of the cremated remains of twenty individuals found buried in pits contemporary with the initial phases of the circle’s construction shows that the early builders of Stonehenge weren’t all locals. At least ten came from a land far west of Stonehenge, with half of these originating from southwest Wales-the location of the circle’s earliest stones, the Preseli bluestones. Archaeologists now believe that these bluestones may have been part of an existing monument in Wales that was uprooted and moved to Stonehenge. As to why this would happen, nobody knows.