Stonehenge It is perhaps the most famous of all the henges, vast circular monuments of wood or stone that litter the British countryside. The prehistoric monument was probably erected in what is now England between 3000 BC. C. and 2000 a. C. and some of The stones were transported from neighboring Wales. – no small feat for a Stone Age civilization.
Surely this must have been a gigantic effort and begs the question: why terre Why did the people of the Stone Age build so many chickens?
“The short answer is, I don’t know and no one else,” said Rosemary Hill, historian and author of “Stonehenge” (Profile Books and Harvard University Press, 2008).
Related: What are rock cairns?
Before we continue, it’s important to note that technically speaking Stonehenge isn’t even a henge. The word “henge” is actually a relatively recent term, first defined by British archaeologist Thomas Kendrick in 1932 as meaning a circular bank with a moat inside and one or more entrances protruding from the bank. “But Stonehenge is upside down, it’s a bank in a ditch,” Hill told Live Science.
Another fun fact: Even ignoring the reverse order of the trench and bench, most of the hens still wouldn’t have looked like Stonehenge as they were usually made of wood, which makes sense. Wood is everywhere and it is much easier to carve and transport, although it is not as durable. It was not until the 20th century that archaeologists He noticed that Britain once boasted of an abundance of wooden hens that rotted long ago.
“After World War I, when people started to fly over the country, they started to see where these buildings were because they had left footprints on the ground with their mounds. People didn’t realize it until they got a bird’s eye view. Hill said. “They are also quite unique in Britain.”
In Ireland and the French region of Brittany, there are also equally ancient stone circles, which although technically do not overlap in academic discussions. There is also a wooden henge monument It dates from the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age, not far from Berlin, and is 4,500 years old. “Wooden circle” monument in Portugal. If we count all these different types of circles together, there is we think there are thousands scattered throughout the British Isles and parts of mainland Europe. So, back to the question asked: why?
The researchers have proposed a myriad of ideas over the years, suggesting that monuments like Stonehenge were used as sacred hunting grounds, community gathering places, astronomical calendars, sound amplification structures, cemeteries or shelters for ancestral cures. The excavations provide evidence to support some of these claims.
“They found [human] stay in stonehenge, this is strong evidence that it was a burial site and that it is oriented at sunset during the Winter solsticeHill explained. So I think you can say it has to do with the dead and the solstices. It is not unreasonable to think that this is a ritual site and there is no evidence that people eat or live there. “
But this is not the case with other hens like the Durrington Walls, which incidentally is only two miles from Stonehenge and contains evidence of people partying there, apparently pig. “Henges could have been used for different reasons, but I don’t know and anyone who can tell you that for sure is too ambitious,” Hill said. “What the henges seem to have in common is that they don’t appear to have been locked up and may have been hangouts.”
This uncertainty may seem like a disappointing answer to the question of why Stone Age Europeans saw fit to build so many circular monuments, but there is a kind of magic that is not to be known, Hill said. “Stonehenge is still a mystery and you can be a Druid or an anthropologist or an archaeologist or a New Ager and you can bring your own. “
Originally posted on Live Science.
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