Secret history of Stonehenge revealed

[n2doc]

DAVID KEYS SATURDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2011

Current research is now suggesting that Stonehenge may already have been an important sacred site at least 500 years before the first Stone circle was erected – and that the sanctity of its location may have determined the layout of key aspects of the surrounding sacred landscape.

What’s more, the new investigation – being carried out by archaeologists from the universities’ of Birmingham, Bradford and Vienna – massively increases the evidence linking Stonehenge to pre-historic solar religious beliefs. It increases the likelihood that the site was originally and primarily associated with sun worship

The investigations have also enabled archaeologists to putatively reconstruct the detailed route of a possible religious procession or other ritual event which they suspect may have taken place annually to the north of Stonehenge.

That putative pre-historic religious ‘procession’ (or, more specifically, the evidence suggesting its route) has implications for understanding Stonehenge’s prehistoric religious function – and suggests that the significance of the site Stonehenge now occupies emerged earlier than has previously been appreciated.

more

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/secret-history-of-stonehenge-revealed-6268237.html

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[MADem]

2. Again?

They're always coming up with new theories--make no mistake, I enjoy them all, but it seems like they do this alot!

I have lived in UK, and I must say, I don't blame 'em for venerating the sun--you miss it when you don't see it!

This realization that the sun hovering over the site of Stonehenge at its highest point in the year appears to have been of great importance to prehistoric people, is itself of potential significance. For it suggests that the site’s association with the veneration of the sun was perhaps even greater than previously realized.

[DirkGently]

3. There's a cool Nat'l Geo piece available on Netflix that explores this

There were two "henges," the other one wood a short distance from Stonehenge. One UK researcher has compiled evidence of a seasonal pilgrimage to the site, including a procession along the Avon, perhaps to honor ancestors, whose souls may have been thought to travel along the river to the afterlife. He posits there were massive seasonal ceremonies in the area in which temporary housing was erected near the wooden henge, which was the site of wild bacchanals. Celebrants would presumably travel to the site of Stonehenge to "greet the sun."

Edit: Believe the National Geographic piece is called "Secrets of Stonehenge."

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Those huge bacchanals--those were

held at Woodyhenge, right?

[DirkGently]

7. Right-O. There are "bone pits" suggesting huge feasts in the area, but no sign or permanent habitat.

[panader0]

5. Worship the sun? Why not, it's the source of all life on earth.

My recently defunct construction company, Full Circle Bldg., had an image of Stonehenge on it's letterhead.

[starroute]

6. This ties in with speculation about the pyramids

I'm not sure exactly where I've seen it, but I've read things suggesting that the Giza Plateau was a sacred location with astronomical associations long before the pyramids were built over the existing observation points. (It may have been one of those books which argues that the Sphinx is much older than the pyramids and originally involved nothing more than crude reshaping of a lion-like rock formation.)

My best guess would be that the building of grandiose stone monuments went along with the rise of wealthy local elites in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age -- but that the sites themselves had been sacred for thousands of years.

Recent studies suggest that even the Australians were creating simple solar observatories 10,000 years ago -- and if they could do it without even the resources of an agricultural society, I suspect that every other culture in the world had the necessary knowledge as well.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1353719/Were-Aborigines-astronomers-Tribes-carefully-arranged-rocks-map-progress-sun-10-000-years-ago.html

Scientists are ecstatic following the discovery of the carefully arranged rocks, discovered on a farm near Mount Rothwell, 50 miles west of Melbourne.

For they are convinced the large stones have been laid out to map the progress of the sun - to create a primitive form of sundial. . . .

Professor Norris said the Aborigines who laid out the stones would have made their crude ground map around 10,000 years ago - thousands of years before Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt.

Scientific studies are continuing on the rocks, which have been laid out in a semi-circle, with two points set in perfect alignment with the setting sun on a midsummer's day.

[Gore1FL]

8. I heard it a little differently: