"The iconic megaliths that make up Stonehenge may have once stood in a temporary monument, not too far from where they were quarried in Wales, before they were transported to their final destination in Salisbury Plain, a new study suggests." Source: Live Science (Feb. 19, 2019).
"The site of this possible temporary monument, known as Banc du, is a couple of miles to the southwest of two Stonehenge quarries. Ancient humans used Banc du as a gathering place about 700 years before Stonehenge was built. But recent evidence, from radiocarbon-dated charcoal found at Banc du, suggests the site was used again around 3000 B.C.— right about the time of Stonehenge's construction."
Comment: I'm not sure if this is an old or new story. The video report was made in 2015, but the 2019 Live Science article says this theory is based on a new report. In either case, it's highly speculative. The idea that a massive megalithic structure like Stonehenge was set up, then taken down and moved to another location doesn't seem very likely, to say the least.
"Despite over a century of intense study, we still know very little about the people buried at Stonehenge or how they came to be there. Now, archeologists suggest that a number of the people that were buried at the Wessex site had moved with and likely transported the bluestones used in the early stages of the monument's construction, sourced from the Preseli Mountains of west Wales." Source: Science Daily (2018).
"Analysis of small fragments of cremated human bone from an early phase of the site's history around 3000 BC, when it was mainly used as a cemetery, showed that at least 10 of the 25 people did not live near Stonehenge prior to their death. Instead, they found the highest strontium isotope ratios in the remains were consistent with living in western Britain, a region that includes west Wales -- the known source of Stonehenge's bluestones."
Video from 2017.
Archaeologists have known for years that the Stonehenge bluestones came from Wales, but they only identified the actual quarry sites [1] a few years ago:
"The very large standing stones at Stonehenge are of ‘sarsen’, a local sandstone, but the smaller ones, known as ‘bluestones’, come from the Preseli hills in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Geologists have known since the 1920s that the bluestones were brought to Stonehenge from somewhere in the Preseli Hills, but only now has there been collaboration with archaeologists to locate and excavate the actual quarries from which they came." Source: University College London (2015).
[1]: Some archaeologists questioned the idea that the bluestones came from Wales, claiming that there was no evidence that the Presili sites were ever used as quarries. I'm not sure where this controversy stands today. If the bluestones, some weighing up to four tons, were quarried in the Presili hills -- and the current consensus seems to be that they were -- they would have had to be transported around 140 miles to Stonehenge.
If accurate, this analysis of the cremated remains at Stonehenge not only supports the theory that the bluestones were quarried in Wales, but suggests that some of the quarry workers traveled with the stones to the Stonehenge site and were most likely involved in the early stages of its construction.
"The [~4 ton] bluestones were arranged in a circle inside the sarsen circle [the outer circle of stones]. They were also set into a horseshoe arrangement within the sarsen trilithon horseshoe. However, there were many changes in the stone settings prior to the arrangement that we see today, and archaeologists have found traces that indicate that the bluestones may originally have been set in a double circle. Regardless, only 43 of these foreign bluestones have been identified in these smaller stone settings at Stonehenge. Of these, 16 are still standing; the others are either leaning, lying on the ground or traceable only through buried stumps. No one knows how many bluestones might have been there originally." Source: Earth Magazine
Note: "The term 'bluestone' in Britain is used in a loose sense to cover all of the 'foreign' stones at Stonehenge," according to Wikipedia. "It is a 'convenience' label rather than a geological term, since at least 20 different rock types are represented."
"Excavations at two quarries in Wales, known to be the source of the Stonehenge 'bluestones', provide new evidence of megalith quarrying 5,000 years ago, according to a new UCL-led study." Source: Phys.org.
"Geologists have long known that 42 of Stonehenge's smaller stones, known as 'bluestones', came from the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. Now a new study published in Antiquity pinpoints the exact locations of two of these quarries and reveals when and how the stones were quarried."
"The mystery of Stonehenge may be solved, thanks to a new study that reveals the iconic rock structure may have originated from a single hunter gatherer society in France 7000 years ago." Source: Russia Today.
"...A new study suggests the impressive ring of stones was created thanks to a hunter gatherer society in Brittany in northwest France, which first started building the impressive structures and monuments 7,000 years ago."
Note: The RT article is kind of misleading. This study doesn't actually "solve the mystery" of Stonehenge since it doesn't explain why the monument was built. If you check the study itself, it's mostly concerned with the origin of the megalith culture.
According to this research, the monuments in Britain were probably built by Stone Age sailors who crossed over from the area of modern Britanny on the northwestern coast of France. In other words, this is a maritime diffusion model. If accurate, the study provides evidence that megaliths were first constructed in Europe:
According to the study, "a Bayesian statistical approach to 2,410 currently available radiocarbon results from megalithic, partly premegalithic, and contemporaneous nonmegalithic contexts in Europe" suggests that "megalithic graves emerged within a brief time interval of 200 y to 300 y in the second half of the fifth millennium calibrated years BC in northwest France, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic coast of Iberia."
Comment: I've written a lot of scathing posts about these mobs of so-called pagans who swarm all over Stonehenge for the equinoxes and solstices, but I'm too apathetic this year to crank out another long screed mocking them for their improvised rituals, costumes, drum circles, and all the other New Age anachronisms they indulge themselves in during these gatherings. What the hell. I guess they're not doing any harm as long as they don't completely trash out the site like they've done in the past. (More here.) After all, Stonehenge may have been, among other things, an ancient cemetery.
These winter-solstice events should include feasts, however. According to English Heritage, "[t]he winter solstice may have been more important than the summer solstice for the people who built and used Stonehenge. Excavations at Durrington Walls suggest that people held huge feasts around this time of year."
The events should probably include sacrifices as well, both animal and human, though the evidence for sacrificial rituals at Stonehenge is apparently still kind of sketchy. According to The Daily Mail (2015), "animal sacrifice, feasting, dancing, and religious rituals" were conducted on the Salisbury Plain around the monument, and National Geographic reported in 2009 that "evidence that Druids possibly committed cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice—perhaps on a massive scale—add weight to ancient Roman accounts of Druidic savagery."
According to Caesar, "the Gauls are extremely superstitious; and so persons suffering from serious diseases, as well as those who are exposed to the perils of battle, offer, or vow to offer, human sacrifices, for the performance of which they employ Druids. They believe that the only way of saving a man's life is to propitiate the god's wrath by rendering another life in its place, and they have regular state sacrifices of the same kind." -- Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul [VI.16].
Modern neopagans are too civilized for that kind of thing, however, which is the main reason they can never be real pagans. I have a feeling that most of the people in these gatherings would run away screaming if they ever found themselves in the presence of the ancient gods of Stonehenge.
"Although Stonehenge has become an increasingly popular destination during the summer solstice, with 20,000 people visiting in 2005, scholars have developed growing evidence that indicates prehistoric people visited the site only during the winter solstice. The only megalithic monuments in the British Isles to contain a clear, compelling solar alignment are Newgrange and Maeshowe, which both famously face the winter solstice sunrise." (Wikipedia)
"The most recent evidence supporting the theory of winter visits includes bones and teeth from pigs which were slaughtered at nearby Durrington Walls. Their age at death indicating that they were slaughtered either in December or January every year. Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield has said, 'We have no evidence that anyone was in the landscape in summer.'"
Both Julius Caesar and Strabo recorded instances of human sacrifice conducted by the Celts and Druids.
According to Strabo, "the Romans put a stop [to the customs] connected with sacrifice and divination, as they were in conflict with our own ways: for example, they [the Celts] would strike a man who had been consecrated for sacrifice in the back with a sword, and make prophecies based on his death-spasms; and they would not sacrifice without the presence of the Druids. Other kinds of human sacrifices have been reported as well: some men they would shoot dead with arrows and impale in the temples; or they would construct a huge figure of straw and wood, and having thrown cattle and all manner of wild animals and humans into it, they would make a burnt offering of the whole thing..." Source: Celtic Studies Resources.
Caesar reported that "those [the Gauls] who are greatly affected by diseases and in the dangers of battle either sacrifice human victims or vow to do so using the Druids as administrators to these sacrifices, since it is judged that unless for a man’s life a man’s life is given back, the will of the immortal gods cannot be placated." (Ibid) Caesar also described how the Celts would burn human sacrifices in giant wicker effigies, the apparent origin of the Wicker Man legend. Whether this actually happened or not is a matter of debate. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he main evidence for this practice is one sentence in Julius Caesar's Commentary on the Gallic war, which modern scholarship has linked to an earlier writer, Poseidonius."
Stonehenge "maintains its less explored, darker aspects, not least of which are the enigmatic burials scattered in and around this famous Neolithic monument. What can these burials, both cremation and inhumation, tell us about the rituals and activities that went on at Stonehenge more than four millennia ago?" Source: "The Stonehenge Burials," Ancient History Encyclopedia.
"...During the 20th century CE nearly 60 cremation burials were uncovered at Stonehenge, with perhaps a couple of hundred more remaining in unexcavated areas of the monument. Interestingly, the latest of these cremations has been radiocarbon dated to c. 2300 BCE, which illustrates that cremation was still being practiced at Stonehenge long after the bluestones and sarsens had been erected."
"In Stonehenge's early years, ancient people used it as a cemetery. In fact, excavations from 1919 to 1926 revealed the cremated remains of up to 58 people, 'making Stonehenge one of the largest Late Neolithic burial sites known in Britain..." Source: Live Science (2018).
"These cremated remains were discovered in the Aubrey Holes, a series of 56 pits at Stonehenge that were named in honor of the 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey, who first wrote about them. All of the human remains were moved into Aubrey Hole 7, which was then re-excavated in 2008."
Note: There's a conspiracy theory floating around out there that Stonehenge is actually fake, having been constructed in the 1950s. This theory is based on old photographs which supposedly show construction work being carried out at the site decades ago. As it turns out, some of these photographs are authentic (see 1:09 and on in the video, for example).
According to English Heritage, Stonehenge was partially restored back in 1914 when some of the capstone lintels (which had collapsed) were lifted back into place using cranes and concrete was used to patch some of the standing stones. The land around the site was also cleared to some extent and I think this work is still going on. At any rate, the Stonehenge that exists today is, in a certain sense, a reconstruction.
This kind of restoration / preservation work isn't uncommon in archaeology and it sometimes has unintended consequences. For instance, efforts have been made to keep Egypt's oldest known pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser, from collapsing completely, but this may actually have made things worse, according to a 2014 story in Smithsonian Magazine.
2018 Stonehenge Winter Solstice Celebrations
Comment: I've written a lot of scathing posts about these mobs of so-called pagans who swarm all over Stonehenge for the equinoxes and solstices, but I'm too apathetic this year to crank out another long screed mocking them for their improvised rituals, costumes, drum circles, and all the other New Age anachronisms they indulge themselves in during these gatherings. What the hell. I guess they're not doing any harm as long as they don't completely trash out the site like they've done in the past. (More here.) After all, Stonehenge may have been, among other things, an ancient cemetery.
These winter-solstice events should include feasts, however. According to English Heritage, "[t]he winter solstice may have been more important than the summer solstice for the people who built and used Stonehenge. Excavations at Durrington Walls suggest that people held huge feasts around this time of year."
The events should probably include sacrifices as well, both animal and human, though the evidence for sacrificial rituals at Stonehenge is apparently still kind of sketchy. According to The Daily Mail (2015), "animal sacrifice, feasting, dancing, and religious rituals" were conducted on the Salisbury Plain around the monument, and National Geographic reported in 2009 that "evidence that Druids possibly committed cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice—perhaps on a massive scale—add weight to ancient Roman accounts of Druidic savagery."
According to Caesar, "the Gauls are extremely superstitious; and so persons suffering from serious diseases, as well as those who are exposed to the perils of battle, offer, or vow to offer, human sacrifices, for the performance of which they employ Druids. They believe that the only way of saving a man's life is to propitiate the god's wrath by rendering another life in its place, and they have regular state sacrifices of the same kind." -- Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul [VI.16].
Modern neopagans are too civilized for that kind of thing, however, which is the main reason they can never be real pagans. I have a feeling that most of the people in these gatherings would run away screaming if they ever found themselves in the presence of the ancient gods of Stonehenge.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Ancient Britain, Commentary, Culture, Paganism, Prehistory, Religion, Ritual Sacrifice, Stonehenge, Videos | Permalink