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Why the mighty Stonehenge was built around 5,000 years ago has long been one of the great mysteries.But according to a new study, we may finally have an answer.Scientists say Wiltshire's famous stone circle was built as a symbol of unification between three distinct corners of Britain.We know that Stonehenge's rocky slabs were transported as far afield from southwest Wales and northeast Scotland.So the scientists, from University College London and Aberystwyth University, theorise that Scottish and Welsh people brought their own local stones down to Wiltshire as a well-meaning contribution to assembling the structure.In that sense, it represented a powerful...

I recently came across the fact that Stonehenge had a fence. Or lets call it a Palisade. Theorized to be at the time of the placement of the megaliths. So what was this Palisade for?The Unsolved Mystery of The Stonehenge Fence | 11:25Paul Whitewick | 135K subscribers | 4,451 views | August 25, 2024

The central six-ton altar stone at Stonehenge may have come from more than 450 miles away, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature. Stonehenge is thought to have been erected in several phases between 3100 BCE and 1600 BCE, with the circle of large sarsen stones placed there between 2600 BCE and 2400 BCE by Neolithic and Bronze Age people. While larger local stones may have been moved by hundreds of individuals with ropes and log rollers, the Welsh bluestones could have been transported by sea using rafts. Related Articles Researchers begin excavating a site in...

Cosmos Magazine reports that the Altar Stone at Stonehenge, which weighs more than six tons, may have been transported to southwestern England from Scotland. The Altar Stone currently rests under two toppled sarsen stones at the site. Anthony Clarke of Curtin University and his colleagues analyzed the composition of the minerals in the Altar Stone with mass spectrometry, and found that it has a distinct chemical fingerprint matching rocks in Scotland's Orcadian Basin, which is located more than 460 miles away. "Given its Scottish origins, the findings raise fascinating questions, considering the technological constraints of the Neolithic era, as to...

Did humans truly transport these massive stones from Wales, or could a far more natural force be responsible?...The massive bluestones, each weighing several tons, might not have been laboriously hauled over 200 kilometers by Neolithic people, as widely believed, but were instead delivered to the Stonehenge site by the relentless forces of ice.

A pair of climate protesters was arrested Wednesday after allegedly spraying the Stonehenge monument in England with orange paint, according to local authorities. The protesters, from the group Just Stop Oil, sprayed the monument with orange paint Wednesday, one day ahead of the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the environmental activist group said in a statement on the social platform X. The two individuals were “demanding the incoming government sign up to a legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030,” Just Stop Oil said. Wiltshire Police told The Associated Press...

Environmental protesters sprayed paint on Britain’s Stonehenge on Wednesday, with orange marks covering some of the stones of the prehistoric megalithic structure on the eve of the summer solstice celebrations. Two people have been arrested on suspicion of damaging the ancient monument, police said in a statement. “This is extremely upsetting and our curators are investigating the extent of the damage,” English Heritage, the charity that manages Stonehenge, said on X. Stonehenge remains open, it added. The monument, one of Britain’s most visited tourist spots, also holds spiritual significance and attracts thousands of revellers, spiritualists and tourists during the summer...

@ST0NEHENGE Just stop oil protestors damage Stonehenge 😭 (Video...)

The Altar Stone, identified as Stone 80, is a recumbent central megalith within the Stonehenge monument from phase 3i sometime around 2600 BC.The anomalous lithology of the Altar Stone led to the previous suggestion of a provenance from the Old Red Sandstone (ORS) of west Wales, close to where the majority of the bluestones have been sourced in the Preseli area some 225 km west of Stonehenge.The Pembrokeshire bluestones, created through the crystallization of molten rock, are thought to be among the earliest stones placed at the Wiltshire site approximately 5,000 years ago...The study has revealed that the Altar Stone...

The Telegraph: Stonehenge was built by black Britons, a new children’s history book has claimed. The illustrated book entitled Brilliant Black British History, by the Nigerian-born British author Atinuke, says “every single British person comes from a migrant” but “the very first Britons were black”. Readers of the newly-released book are told that Stonehenge was built while Britain was “a black country”. The book, published by Bloomsbury and promoted by Arts Council-funded literacy charity The Book Trust, states that “Britain was a black country for more than 7,000 years before white people came, and during that time the most famous...

A new ‘book’ claims that black people built Stonehenge! ...

Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious sanctuary in the central Netherlands made of burial mounds and ancient offerings of human and animal bones that has striking similarities to Stonehenge. The 4,000-year-old site was discovered in the town of Tiel and, like prehistoric stone circle Stonehenge, tracked the position of the sun on the solstices. “The largest mound served as a sun calendar, similar to the famous stones of Stonehenge in England,” the municipality of Tiel said in a statement. “This sanctuary must have been a highly significant place where people kept track of special days in the year, performed rituals and...

Around 8,000 revelers gathered around a prehistoric stone circle on a plain in southern England to express their devotion to the sun, or to have some communal fun STONEHENGE, England (AP) — All hail the rising sun. Around 8,000 revelers gathered around a prehistoric stone circle on a plain in southern England to express their devotion to the sun, or to have some communal fun. Druids, pagans, hippies, local residents and tourists, many clad in an array of colorful costumes and even antlers, stayed and celebrated at Stonehenge for the night and greeted sunrise on Wednesday, which is the longest...

Archaeologists have discovered a vast cemetery of Bronze Age burial mounds, thought to be up to 4,400 years old, ahead of a building development less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Stonehenge.The cemetery includes more than 20 circular mounds, known as barrows, built between 2400 B.C. and 1500 B.C. on a chalk hillside near Harnham on the outskirts of Salisbury in southwest England.Other than the site's proximity to Stonehenge, there's no evidence that the cemetery was connected with the famous monument. But the barrows were built around the same time as some of the central stages of Stonehenge, according to...

...To a number of scholars, there's more to Stonehenge's design than a symbolic reverence for the changing lengths of days. It's a timekeeper of some detail, a 'Neolithic computer' even...Last year, Bournemouth University archaeologist Tim Darvill published his claim that the monument operated as some kind of 'perpetual calendar', one based on a solar year equivalent to 365.25 days.Now, Polytechnic University of Milan mathematician Giulio Magli and astronomer Juan Antonio Belmonte from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, Spain, have countered Darvill's claim, stating it is based on "a series of forced interpretations, numerology, and unsupported analogies with...

Stone tools found in a 4,000-year-old grave near Stonehenge have traces of gold on their surfaces that indicate they were used to fashion gold ornaments. In 1801, archaeologists found the assemblage of Bronze Age artifacts, including the stone tools, in a barrow or burial mound from about 1800 B.C. near the village of Upton Lovell, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Stonehenge. The assemblage(opens in new tab) includes flint axes, a necklace of beads of polished stone and dozens of bone points — possibly from another necklace and the fringe of a garment. The collection, which is now on...

THE Moon destroyed a forest on Earth just by wobbling, according to a new study. The theory solves a mystery from 2015 which involved tens of millions of mangrove trees dying in Australia.... ...The researchers used 30 years of national satellite data to conduct their research and correlate the Moon's behavior with the mass tree death. This helped them spot a pattern of trees dying every 18 to 19 years, which is in keeping with the Moon wobble timeline....

Consider, for example, the Japanese stone circles from Ōyu and Isedotai in northern Japan. While not the imposing monoliths of Stonehenge, the two circles, made of thousands of smooth river stones, line up with the sun during the summer and winter solstices, and they were both used in burial rites. And for both monuments, collecting materials and completing construction would have taken enormous community effort. The similarities could also be related to topography: Japan and the United Kingdom are along the same latitude, sharing a similar climate and access to natural resources. But while the Neolithic people living near Stonehenge...

Archaeologists digging near Prague have discovered the remains of a Stone Age structure that’s older than Stonehenge and even the Egyptian pyramids: an enigmatic complex known as a roundel. Nearly 7,000 years ago during the late Neolithic, or New Stone Age, a local farming community may have gathered in this circular building, although its true purpose is unknown. The excavated roundel is large — about 180 feet (55 meters) in diameter, or about as long as the Leaning Tower of Pisa is tall, Radio Prague International reported. And while “it is too early to say anything about the people building...

Durrington Walls was a Neolithic settlement situated just 2.8km from Stonehenge, and dating from around 2500 BC, when much of the famous stone monument was constructed. It is believed that the site housed the people who built Stonehenge.A team of archaeologists led by the University of Cambridge investigated nineteen pieces of ancient faeces, or ‘coprolite’, found at Durrington Walls and preserved for over 4,500 years. Five of the coprolites (26%) – one human and four dog – were found to contain the eggs of parasitic worms.