Small Talk 24 - Stonehenge
About 5,000 years ago, people in the British Isles began building circular monuments in the landscape. The earliest of these were ring-shaped ditches surrounded by a bank—this is called a henge. On the Salisbury Plain in southern England, not far from the River Avon, people built a particularly large henge, about 100 meters across. Over the next 500 years, they brought massive stones to the site and arranged them in concentric circles. We call this monument Stonehenge.
Now right there you might find yourself chuckling a bit. Stonehenge has been associated with so many silly theories over the years, that it's become kind of a one-word punch line. I visited Stonehenge recently with my English friend Steven and his two dogs. It's such a spectacle, steeped in so much mystery and conjecture, the subject of so much tourism, that it was difficult at first to take in. Like witnessing a full solar eclipse, or the Mona Lisa, or Bob Dylan. But eventually I was able to connect with the monument and the enormity of its creation, and concluded that this is a fine subject for small talk.
Instead of the usual summary of Stonehenge, let's start with Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was a Catholic cleric from Wales, most famous for writing The History of the Kings of Britain around 1136. This book is considered a pseudo-history, because it describes as fact many of the legends of King Arthur, and other myths—like the Trojans founding Britain. The book is also one of the first written accounts of Stonehenge. In it, Geoffrey explains that the monument was built to honor Britons murdered by Saxons, and that the stones were brought from Ireland by the wizard Merlin, who employed magic to complete the extraordinary task. Until the 1500s, people generally accepted Geoffrey's history as truth.
So began a long tradition of explaining Stonehenge with outlandish claims. In the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, the band sings, "In ancient times... before the dawn of history, lived a strange race of people... the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing, but their legacy remains, hewn into the living rock... of Stonehenge!" It's a joke, of course, but the belief that druids built (or had a hand in) Stonehenge has persisted from the Roman Empire to this day. Julius Caesar wrote the first known account of druids (a latin term) and the murky record suggests that these Celtic religious leaders emerged in the British Isles about 3,000 years ago, long after Stonehenge was built. There is no archaeological evidence that the early druids performed rituals at stone circles, but that hasn't stopped groups like the Ancient Order of Druids (of which Winston Churchill was a member!) from embracing the monument.
Then there are theories that Stonehenge was built by aliens, or races of giants, and so on. Conspiracy theories and bizarre conjecture, once fringe and kind of funny, have worked their way into the mainstream to the point where they're now just tiresome, if not dangerous. In my opinion, anyway. But persistent silly explanations do beg the question: why are they so popular? In the case of Stonehenge, it's probably because the monument is so extraordinary.
By about 4,500 years ago, the site of Stonehenge had several major features:
The circular ditch and bank, or henge, about 100 meters across.
Within the henge, thirty sarsen stones arranged in a circle about 30 meters in diameter. They were capped with interlocked lintels and weigh on average about 25 tons.
Within the ring of sarsens, a ring of about 80 bluestones, which weigh three or four tons.
And within the ring of bluestones, five trilothons, the largest structures of Stonehenge, arranged in a horseshoe. These are the most recognizable shapes—two massive sarsens up to 30 feet tall, capped with a lintel.
That list is probably hard to parse, so here is a nice video summary of the monument. If you watch it, please come back.
It's hard to write about Stonehenge without getting lost in statistics, so let's just highlight some incredible aspects. For starters, it took hundreds of years to construct the monument at its most complete. That's many lifetimes, and so it suggests a coordinated social effort involving hundreds of people. They had foresight and a purpose that they must have known would outlive them. They transported these massive stones long distances. The bluestones came from the Preseli Hills in Wales, more than 200km away. The sarsen stones (the ones that weigh 25 tons!) came from Marlborough Downs, about 32km away.
One of the great mysteries of Stonehenge, of course, is how they did it. No one knows exactly how the stones were brought to the site, but it seems most likely that they were dragged across the landscape using ropes and a kind of wooden rail system. There have been demonstrations of how such a stone could have been moved so far without modern machinery. Expert archaeologists point out that moving the stones was probably a major social event—they weren't necessarily trying to do it the fastest way with the fewest people.
Then there's the question of how they erected the stones. The lintels—those stones across the trilithons and the sarsen circle—were held together with woodworking techniques. They locked with tongue-and-groove joints. They were held by carved-out holes and stone protrusions. We know this is possible using a combination of methods—large wooden a-frame structures to lever the stones upright, and earthen ramps to slide the lintels on top. Or magic. But probably the former.
And the most difficult question is: why did people build Stonehenge? Two explanations stand out clearly. From the very beginning Stonehenge was a cemetery. There are cremated remains of people all over the site. In later phases, there are remains of buried people. And archaeologists point out that it's a remarkably clean site—that is, there are very few artifacts of the kind you find at human settlements. In contrast, not far from Stonehenge is the settlement of Durrington Walls, which is loaded with remains of slaughtered animals, pottery, houses, etc. So people treated the monument as something to keep tidy—to respect.
The other clear reason people built Stonehenge is to mark the movement of the sun and moon. If you stand inside the great trilithons and look out the entrance, toward a sarsen called the Heel Stone, you will see the sun rise on the summer solstice. In the opposite direction, through two sarsens, you will see the sun set on the winter solstice. The monument also marks the extreme points of moonrise and moonset. Let’s pause for a second on that. It means that these people observed, over years, the extent of the sun’s alignment on the horizon. They observed the cycles of the moon and its relative position. Then they arranged enormous stones to align with those moments, which came but once a year. What perceptiveness and patience!
So we know that people used Stonehenge to bury their dead, and to observe the annual cycles of the Earth. We also know that people came there from far away, across the British Isles and continental Europe. It was a gathering place. There were great feasts held nearby. People brought livestock and tools. And there are scores of other henges and monuments across the broader area of south England. It is a testament to human cooperation, determination, engagement with the land and, in a way, the universe. During Stonehenge's heyday, we might say, there is very little evidence of war or violence or even social hierarchy.
I'll tell you one more amazing thing about Stonehenge—that is, how we know what we do about it. When you read contemporary scholarly works, you find incredibly ingenious science and deduction. The age of the pits are determined by radiocarbon dating of the deer antlers employed to dig them. The origin of the people is determined by isotope analysis of tooth enamel. The source of the stones is recognized by geological and chemical analysis.
The most plain and clear explanation of Stonehenge is incredible enough. It's a phenomenal story that fills us with wonder and admiration. We don't need ridiculous explanations and conspiracy theories to sate our imaginations. The real world, as we understand it, with all our evolving powers of insight—that's enough. And that is when life is most gratifying, when we humans are at our best.
Have a good one,
Kipling Knox
P.S. I know this was a long one. My friend Steven who took me to Stonehenge is one of my tl;dr readers, so may not get to this point. I thank those who are still with me. Fwiw, my notes are several times longer than this piece, drawing in particular from the excellent scholarly work Stonehenge, a Brief History, by Mike Parker Pearson, along with material from the English Heritage, who make visiting Stonehenge today a wonderful experience.
