This year has been a landmark year for learning more about the creation of Stonehenge. Researchers now speculate that the iconic stone circles may have been built to unite ancient farming communities, CNN reported.
Earlier this year, experts discovered that the six-ton altar stone at the center of Stonehenge may have come from Scotland, more than 450 miles away. It was previously known that the sarsen stones came from 16 miles from the site in what is now the English town of Marlborough, while the smaller bluestones came from the Preseli Mountains 125 miles away in what is now Wales. hills).
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Mike Parker-Pearson, a professor of late British prehistory at University College London, suggested that the formation of Stonehenge may have depended on the geographical distance of the stone. He claimed that Stonehenge may have been the result of an early effort to unite farmers and their communities in the British Isles during a period of social change. The stones may have been gifts or symbolized political alliances.
“Stonehenge stands out as a physical and monumental microcosm of the entire British Isles,” he writes in a new study published in the journal International Archeology Thursday.
No other monument in the area contains stones from such a distance. Parker Pearson believes that Stonehenge should be regarded as a political monument as well as a religious monument. Although the structure aligns with the winter and summer solstices, this may not be its primary purpose.
“I think we just don’t look at Stonehenge in the right way. You really have to look at all of them to figure out what they were doing. They were building a monument that expressed the timelessness of a particular aspect of their world.” Parker Pearson Tell reporters. guardian.
For example, the altar stone was previously thought to have fallen to its current location. However, other stone circles in northeast Scotland contain stones that have been laid flat. It is now believed to be intentional and may even have come from another monument.
It is believed that the altar stone was added around 2500 BC, at a time when Britain was undergoing a cultural shift with the influx of new immigrants from the European continent.
“That was the moment when Stonehenge was built, and I wonder if it was that moment of contact that, in some way, became the catalyst for Stonehenge’s impressive second phase. It was an attempt to maintain unity, Newcomers may well be integrated – or not.”
So the “Beaker People” who came to Britain from the Eurasian steppes around 4,400 years ago eventually replaced the local Neolithic population. However, Stonehenge is still considered an important monument by newcomers.
