Solar calendar. Place of worship. UFO Landing site. Many uses have been theorized for Stonehenge. Researchers have now added another: monument to unity, they propose in an Archaeology International article.
Because the stones making up different aspects of the mysterious structure were moved from many parts of the British Isles, there must have been a reason for it. After all, it’s not the only henge in town. Hundreds of other stone circles have been found in Britain. But almost all of them have used locally sourced building materials.
The Significance of Distant Stones
Stonehenge is unique in that regard. Its building blocks were gathered from both near and far. The most recent—and perhaps most famous — example is the “Altar Stone.” That dominant crosspiece was somehow transported from Scotland, about 700 miles to the north.
“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 — as a monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos,” Mike Parker Pearson, a University of College London archaeologist and author of the paper, said in a press release.
But the Altar Stone is not a “one-off.” The article provides a comprehensive list of where each stone likely originated and when it was probably moved. For instance, its 43 “bluestones” were transported from West Wales about 140 miles away, while the larger “sarsen” stones originated about 15 miles northwest of Stonehenge’s site on the Salisbury Plain.
Read More: Stonehenge May Be an Ancient Solar Calendar
Cultural Significance of Stonehenge
Both the Altar Stone’s provenance and placement hint that it was moved such a great distance, not just because it is an exceptionally cool rock. The paper highlights how Stonehenge’s horizontal Altar Stone matches the size and placement of similar stones from circles of northeast Scotland, where the Altar Stone originated.
Megalithic stones had ancestral significance, the authors write. They represent a people’s origins. So, the Altar Stone may have been offered by the people of northern Scotland to represent an alliance.
Stonehenge was also built in two phases. The first one appeared to involve more local material on the site. The second phase included stones from farther away, including Scotland and Wales. The succession of stones could somehow mark the area of Stonehenge as increasingly cosmopolitan — at least in the Neolithic sense.
“The distant origin of the Altar Stone confirms Stonehenge’s unique status as the one stone circle built entirely from non-local stone, a material microcosm projecting at an enormous scale,” the paper concludes. “It is consistent with recent interpretations of Stonehenge as a monument whose builders attempted — ultimately unsuccessfully — to establish some form of political unification and shared identity across much or even all of Britain, bringing together these extraordinary and alien rocks which symbolized and embodied far and distant communities within a complex material and monumental expression of unity between people, land, ancestors and the heavens.”
Read More: Stonehenge Poses a New Mystery: The Altar Stone Came From Faraway Scotland
Article Sources
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Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
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