Stonehenge attracts visitors from around the world to look in awe at the large rocks and ponder why they were positioned where they are in Wiltshire around 5,000 years ago
Mystery has surrounded Stonehenge and the reason why it was built but scientists now believe they have the answer.
The iconic stones in Wiltshire attract tourists from all over the world to wonder why they were positioned as they are and plenty of suggestions have been put forward over the years. It is known that Stonehenge was built around 5,000 years ago and that the rocky slabs were moved from as far away as southwest Wales and northeast Scotland.
And now scientists think that they were moved such far distances as part of a project to unify people from the three distinct corners of Britain. Scientists at University College London and Aberystwyth University have reached the conclusion that people from Scotland and Wales brought stones down to Wiltshire as a gesture of unification with the rest of the country.
It is thought that Stonehenge had unique importance for people in Britain at the time and also from migrants who came to the UK from other parts of Europe. The research published in Archaeology International builds on the previous findings that the huge altar stone at the centre of Stonehenge came from Scotland. Due to the size of the blocks and the little capability at the time, it is understood that hundreds of thousands of people would have undertaken the tasks of bringing the stones and it could have taken nearly eight months.
The study stated: “Travel by land would have provided much better opportunities for spectacle, pageantry, feasting and celebration that would have drawn people in (the) thousands to witness and take part in this extraordinary venture.” And lead author Mike Parker Pearson said that it is logical to assume that with the stones coming from different regions, that there was a political as well as religious motive to unify.
He stated: “The fact that all of its stones originated from distant regions, making it unique among over 900 stone circles in Britain, suggests that the stone circle may have had a political as well as a religious purpose – as a monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”
Stonehenge is famous for its sandstone slabs known as sarsens which were sourced locally but there are also other rocks like the bluestones which are believed to have come from Rhos-y-Felin in the Preseli Hills of south-west Wales. And then the six tonne monolithic altar stone was moved more than 435 miles and was placed within the monument’s central horseshoe structure during a “rebuilding phase” after arriving sometime between 2500 and 2020 BC.
