Stonehenge Might Not Be a Calendar After All

Archaeologist suggests it's a monument to unity, requiring 'significant coordination across Britain'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 24, 2024 8:44 AM CST
Stonehenge Is a Monument to Unity
People celebrate the Winter Solstice sunrise celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024.   (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Researchers spoke of the connectivity of Neolithic society in announcing Stonehenge's six-ton altar stone was likely transported at least 460 miles from northeast Scotland to southern England 4,500 years ago. Now, a leading expert says the prehistoric megalithic structure could only have been created with the unity of the region's ancient inhabitants—something the monument might have even been built to honor. "I think we've just not been looking at Stonehenge in the right way," University College London archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson tells the Guardian. The author of an upcoming study in Archaeology International argues the monument is not a temple, a calendar, or an observatory, at least not exclusively, but rather a symbol of the unity of the region's ancient inhabitants.

"The fact that all of [Stonehenge's] 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," Parker Pearson says in a statement. He points to the stages of the monument's construction beginning around 5,000 years ago. Some of the first stones to be erected around 2900 BCE were the bluestones, transported 140 miles from western Wales, while the larger sarsen stones, retrieved from 15 miles north of Salisbury Plain, were placed around 2500 BCE, per Smithsonian. Later, between 2500 and 2020 BCE, the famous trilithons and an outer circle of sarsen stones were added, along with the altar stone.

This phase of construction coincided with the arrival of new immigrants from Europe, which is no coincidence, says Parker Pearson. He argues Indigenous Britons used "the efforts of hundreds if not thousands of people" to transport the new stones "to assert unity, quite possibly integrating the newcomers—or not," per the Guardian. This "would have taken significant coordination across Britain—people were literally pulling together," he adds, per CNN. The altar stone, in particular, suggests the unity of the people extended far and wide, he says, noting it's "highly likely" to have come from an older monument in Scotland. The new arrivals, dubbed the beaker people, would ultimately displace the earlier populations But they adopted Stonehenge as a monument of their own. (More Stonehenge stories.)

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