SHROUDED in mystery down through the centuries, Stonehenge is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. Now a recent theory on its purpose has been debunked by scientists.

 

It is an icon of Britain?

Towering over Salisbury Plain in Wiltsire, the prehistoric monument, was constructed in stages in a process that spanned hundreds of years. Work began in the late Neolithic Age - around 3000BC - and over the following thousand years, many changes were made to the monument, with the last adaptions made in the early Bronze Age, around 1500BC ,when it took on the form we recognise today.

 

Which is…?

The ancient stone circle, lying at the heart of what is recognised as one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Europe, sits about two miles west of Amesbury in Wiltshire, consisting of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13ft(4m) high, 7ft (2.1m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. They were likely sourced from quarries 25 miles away, while the dozens of smaller bluestones have been traced to the Preseli Hills in Wales, 200 miles away.

 

Why was it built?

That’s the focus of ongoing thought and research. Theories have included that it was an ancient burial site or a healing centre, with its entrance facing the rising sun on the summer solstice and some believing this suggests it was used by ancient astronomers to track the movement of the sun and the moon and to mark the changing seasons.

 

So what’s going on now?

Earlier this month, a new study from Bournemouth University argued that Stonehenge was potentially an ancient solar calendar enabling people of the time to track the days of the year. Having analysed the positioning and numbers of the sarsens, archaeologist Professor Timothy Darvill said the monument was likely a "simple and elegant" perpetual calendar that was based on a tropical solar year of 365.25 days, saying that the 30 stones in the sarsen circle represented a day within the month.

 

So it was a giant calendar?

That was the latest thinking. Professor Darvill said in his report: “Stonehenge has long been thought to incorporate some kind of calendar, although its specific purpose and exactly how it worked remain far from clear. Understanding the sarsen elements as a unified group and recognising the numerical significance of the elements in each component opens up the possibility that they represent the building blocks of a simple and elegant perpetual calendar based on the 365.25 solar days in a mean tropical year.”

 

However?

A new paper from experts at the University of La Laguna in Spain declares this to be unlikely.  Dr Giulio Magli of Politecnico di Milano and Professor Juan Antonio Belmonte say such a theory is simply “unsubstantiated”.

 

What do they think?

Their paper states: “'Stonehenge is an astonishingly complex monument, which can be understood only by taking into account its landscape and the chronology of its different phases along the centuries. In a recent paper, the author has proposed that the project of the ‘sarsen’ phase of Stonehenge was conceived in order to represent a calendar year of 365.25 days. The aim of the present letter is to show that this idea is unsubstantiated, being based as it is on a series of forced interpretations, numerology, and unsupported analogies with other cultures.”

 

The heel of the reel…?

As theories continue to abound down through the centuries, the mystery endures and interest in Stonehenge heightens over time. Around 1 million people visit Stonehenge - a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986 - each year.