Wednesday 18 March 2015

Has the Stonehenge mystery been solved? New theory emerges for Britain's most famous prehistoric site

The World Heritage site could be "an ancient Mecca on stilts" according to Julian Spalding, an art critic and ex-director of some of the UK's top museums

It's been the subject of speculation for hundreds of years with theories ranging from stones flown from Ireland by Merlin to the work of the Devil.
Others claim Stonehenge is an astronomical calendar or a Druid temple.
But now a new theory has emerged that claims the prehistoric monument - one of Britain's most treasured sites and a World Heritage site - was “an ancient Mecca on stilts”.
The idea is that the mega stone structure, built between 3000 and 2000BC, would not have been used for religious ceremonies at ground level but instead propped up a huge circular platform.
Julian Spalding, an art critic and ex-director of some of the UK's top museums, argues for the existence of “a great altar” able to support hundreds of worshippers.
Aerial view of megalithic monument of Stonehenge
Treasured: Stonehenge is on the World Heritage List - Getty

He told The Guardian: "It's a totally different theory which has never been put forward before.
"All the interpretations to date could be mistaken. We've been looking at Stonehenge the wrong way: from the earth, which is very much a 20th-century viewpoint.
"We haven't been thinking about what they were thinking about."
Among the myriad of theories around the makings of Stonehenge is one that the Wiltshire stone circle is "a unique, possibly failed experiment".
Professor Ronald Hutton an expert on Paganism from Bristol University said one of the giant sandstone slabs had broken in two during construction, but that rather than throwing it away and crafting a new one, the builders simply "put one broken bit on top of the other broken bit, jammed a lintel on top and hoped they'd stay together.

Last September a hidden complex of monuments was found around Stonehenge using hi-tech methods of scanning below the Earth's surface.
The find, from a four-year study using subterranean scans, includes evidence of 17 wooden or stone structures and dozens of burial mounds, 6,000 years old.
Most of the monuments are merged into the landscape and invisible to the naked eye.
The four-year study, the largest geophysical survey ever undertaken, covered an area of 12 square kilometres and penetrated to a depth of three metres.
Last summer an outline of missing stones revealed by a drought showed that the monument was not left unfinished as some had believed, but was once a perfect circle.
Spalding, whose theory is detailed in a book released this week called Realisation: From Seeing to Understanding - The Origins of Art, has pointed to monuments constructed by ancient civilisations in China, Peru and Turkey where sacred circular monuments were built high up.

Original source and full article in the Mirror News paper: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stonehenge-mystery-been-solved-new-5345149#ICID=sharebar_twitter

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