Archeologists think they solved a 4,500-year-old Stonehenge mystery

How and why ancient masons built Stonehenge has baffled historians and scientists for centuries. But researchers now believe that new analysis could support a lesser known theory about the monument’s purpose. According to archaeologists at University College London, the stone monument served another purpose beyond its practical uses as an observatory or solar calendar. Their theory, detailed in a study published in the journal Archeology International, is that Stonehenge also provided a unifying communal project for indigenous Neolithic tribal Britons in the face of newcomers from Germany and the Netherlands.

Their interpretation builds on findings released earlier this year about Stonehenge’s Altar Stone. For years, the 6.6 ton portion of the monument’s central formation remained the final piece lacking a definitive origin. But geological evidence laid out in Nature appears to confirm it came from Scotland. With this, experts now know that all of Stonehenge’s pieces are not indigenous to the immediate area, and came from miles away.

“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,” Mike Parker Pearson, a USL Institute of Archeology professor and lead author of the recent Archeology International study, said in an accompanying statement.

Knowing this, Pearson and his team believes Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”

Stonehenge consists of multiple stone groupings erected in different phases over hundreds of years, starting 5,000 years ago. Experts estimate the first stage’s 43 “bluestones” arrived roughly 140 miles away from Wales around 3,000 BCE, while workers delivered the larger “sarsen” stones from at least 15 miles away. While the wheel existed elsewhere in the world at this time, the technology had not yet arrived in Britain. This implies organized efforts to transport the giant stones involved the coordination of hundreds, if not thousands, of locals.

It wasn’t until about 500 years later that renovators installed the Altar Stone near Stonehenge’s largest three-stone structure, known as a trilithon, to frame the midwinter solstice sunset. Given that Stonehenge and the other “recumbent stone circles” are only located in a specific region of Scotland, archeologists hypothesize that building the structures may have served as major, communally binding events. According to Friday’s announcement, “the Altar Stone may have been brought as a gift from the people of northern Scotland to represent some form of alliance or collaboration.”

Regardless of its effectiveness at unifying local communities, demographic changes continued to shift as mainland peoples increased their presence on the island. By 2000 BCE, Europeans comprised the dominant population in what is now modern-day Britain.