New Stonehenge Discovery: Misaligned Stones Reveal Previously Unknown Purpose Of Mystery Megalith

A new discovery about Stonehenge sheds a whole new light on the purpose of the mysterious, 5,000-year-old megalith — literally. While archaeologists have long been certain the ancient monument was created as a religious altar for worship of the summer sun, the new discovery shows that the winter sun was just as important to the long-lost civilization that built the strange structure.

The discovery relates to the tallest stone in the semi-circular structure, a stone that most researchers have long assumed was aligned incorrectly, because while the rest of the massive stones that make up Stonehenge align with the sun at the summer solstice, that particular stone does not.

But according to researcher Tim Daw, who is also a groundskeeper at the ancient site, just because the stone does not align with the mid-summer sun doesn’t mean it isn’t in the right place.

By 1901, the stone had mostly fallen. At the time, it was raised back to what was believed to be its original position. But the stone did not line up with the summer solstice, so Stonehenge experts simply assumed the 1901 restoration job was carried out poorly — and the stone was in the wrong place.

But Daw’s findings say that the stone was in the right place all along. The 1901 restoration workers did not make a mistake. In fact, the stone lined up not with the summer solstice, but the winter solstice — as did five other stones around it, which have long since fallen and were never restored.

“My research shows that not only was the standing stone out of symmetry with the central solstice alignment originally, but that its now fallen partner had also been, and so were surrounding stones, including the Altar Stone,” Daw said.

“The stones point to the midwinter solstice sunrise and midsummer sunset. This alignment had been missed by previous investigators,” Daw said. “This isn’t some nebulous sighting line on a distant star. This is 100 tons of stone deliberately pointing to the major event at the other end of the day the rest of the monument celebrates. One stone out of line might be a coincidence but that it is five of the major stones, at least, shows it was a designed feature.”

Daw is the same researcher who made headlines last year when he discovered, largely by accident, impressions in the ground that proved Stonehenge was originally a full circle, not just a semicircle. But what happened to the rest of the stones remains one of the many mysteries of Stonehenge.

Article source:  http://www.inquisitr.com/2038760/new-stonehenge-discovery-misaligned-stones/

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1000's more tourists can visit Stonehenge as new coach park is given the go-ahead

Thousands of extra tourists a day will be able to visit Stonehenge after council planners gave the go-ahead for a new 26-space coach park at the visitors' centre a mile and a half away.

Numbers to the increasingly popular English Heritage site Stonehenge have gone up by 300,000 in the last year, but parking has remained a problem

English Heritage asked Wiltshire Council planners for permission to convert a field near the Airmen's Cross visitors' centre into a new coach park alongside the one built at the same time as the visitors' centre back in 2013.
Visitor numbers have rocketed up by a third at Stonehenge since the centre opened just before Christmas 2013, with 300,000 more people visiting the Wiltshire monument last year than the previous highest of a million.

Most of those come by coach on organised tours from London, but operators warned they were struggling to find the space in the coach park, and English Heritage warned coaches were turning up anyway, and dropping passengers off in potentially dangerous spots around the centre.

Planners gave English Heritage permission for the coach park but this was temporary for two years, amid fears of the impact on the landscape and the increased traffic.
The same planners turned down a similar English Heritage application to make the grassed temporary car park permanent, saying the government body had not sufficiently landscaped its plans to help hide the cars on the open spaces of Salisbury Plain.


Read the full story in the Western Daily Press: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/New-coach-park-stones-offer-26-spaces/story-26321440-detail/story.html#ixzz3XGALPn93
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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.

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.

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"They didn't, they fell over quite soon after," he said.

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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