The Stonehenge Mystery

Join Kelli as she goes over Stonehenge. We'll start with the basics - what stonehenge is, what it's made of, who might have built it, how they built it, what a henge even is... before talking about some of the more recent explanations for some of its mysteries.

We'll also talk about its purpose - a gathering place to celebrate the summer and winter solstices? A burial ground? Both? And does it have a connection with nearby Durrington Walls, only two miles away, and a henge complex that might have the evidence needed to understand who built Stonehenge, and why.

Sources referenced:
Stonehenge―A New Understanding: Solving the Mysteries of the Greatest Stone Age Monument by Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

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Transcript

The Stonehenge Mystery
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.

Stonehenge. It’s the most iconic Stone Age monument in the world. Located on the Salisbury Plain, it was likely built by Neolithic peoples over the span of at least 1,500 years between roughly 3,000 to 1,500 BCE, making it a 5,000-year-old structure. It was done using Stone Age technology and engineering, and stands as one of the most magnificent megalithic structures in England - though it’s certainly not the only one.

But despite everything that we think we know about Stonehenge… there are still mysteries to uncover.

In today’s episode, I have so many questions I want to explore. Who built it? What is it? How did they get those stones to sit like that, and more impressively, how did they get those horizontal lintels on top?! Was Stonehenge ever even finished? How did the Stone Age peoples manage to build this? And why? And also, are there other henge structures, and are they related in some way to Stonehenge? And also also - what is a “henge…”

So first, we’re going to start with some context - what was going on around the time Stonehenge was built? We’ll take a look at where and when it was built, who built it, and what stonehenge is made of. The five W’s, if you will. But we won’t cover the “why” until later on - because we have some best guesses, some really strong and sound ideas, but they are still just theories. 

Then, we’ll go over what we currently know - or at least think we know - about Stonehenge. So all the latest theories. But of course, there are a lot of things we just don’t know, so we’ll wrap up the episode with some of Stonehenge’s enduring mysteries.

I’m looking forward to this one today - as an avid fan of both fantasy and English history, there’s something so alluring about these stones. It’s a foundational part of England’s heritage, so much so that it’s protected by several different bodies and groups to ensure that nothing happens to one of England’s most recognizable pieces of monumental architecture.

So let’s get started!
Stonehenge: the Basics
I think it’s best to go over the basics. Who, what, when, and where. And also what a “henge” is. Maybe we’ll start there.

A “henge” is a circular or oval earthen area made of banks and ditches. So imagine a circular chunk of ground - around that chunk will be a ditch, and on the other side of the ditch, a bank. It has the effect of making the circular part in the middle look like an island of sorts. There are also gaps in the banks and ditches to allow passage into the henge - avenues, or causeways, we call them.

As the English Heritage website notes, quote,
The key feature of every henge is a ring-shaped bank on the outside and a ring-shaped ditch on the inside that mark out a central, circular area. Some henges have multiple rings of bank-and-ditch, and some have additional structures (like standing stones or timber posts) inside the henge earthwork. They all have openings, or ‘causeways’ that pass through the earthwork circuits into the central circle. If there are two causeways, they often face one another across the circle.

End quote.

And inside the henge is where we find standing stones, like the ones at Stonehenge.

Stonehenge, we think, was built by ancient Britons, the indigenous Celtic peoples who lived there. It was built on the Salisbury Plain, most likely because of the geography of that area - you can see pretty far all around, and it’s relatively flat. And it took an estimated 1,500 years to build it. Archaeologists, using various dating methods, have identified 6 different stages of building, beginning in 3,000 BCE and ending around 1520.

Now as its name implies, Stonehenge is made of… stones. There is an outer ring of large stones, a ring inside that with smaller stones, then a collection of the larger stones again roughly in a horseshoe shape. There are more stones elsewhere that are connected to the area as a whole, but for right now I just want to focus on the circular structure we’re all familiar with.

On some of the standing stones, you’ll see horizontal stones bridging the tops together - these are known as lintels. Now we believe, if Stonehenge was ever fully finished, the outer ring would have been a complete set of standing stones with lintels on top in an unbroken chain all the way around. Within the last decade, they discovered impressions in the ground that suggest there were standing stones all the way around the perimeter, but those stones have since disappeared.

Today, there are only 6 lintels still in place atop the outer ring of standing stones. But what’s really interesting about their construction is that the lintels aren’t just sitting on top relying on gravity to keep them in place - they are locked into place with joints, sort of like tongue and groove joints that you see in woodworking. And according to researchers, the lintels were carved a bit to give the illusion of a continuous ring of stone

Now the inner set of large standing stones are arranged in a horseshoe pattern, but they aren’t connected like the outer ring was meant to be. Instead, these are organized in groupings of three stones we call a trilithon - two standing stones with a third on top as the lintel. And there are five of them, the biggest at the “head” of the horseshoe, though it’s partially fallen over. And buried underneath it is the altar stone.
 
In addition to the intrigue posed by the position of these stones and what that could possibly mean, there are also different types of stones. Which stones they used, and where they came from, adds to the mystery.

There are two main types of stones. The big grey ones you think of when you think about Stonehenge are Sarsen stones. They make up the outer ring and the trilithons in that inner horseshoe. But what’s really peculiar about these sarsen stones is that the nearest quarry of them is about 20 miles away in the Marlborough Downs. And it’s generally accepted by most that the stones were taken from the Marlborough Downs quarry. Which means the builders had to find a way to transport them over hills to get to the Salisbury Plain.

Let’s talk more about that, because that’s really fascinating.

There are 52 sarsen stones remaining at Stonehenge. And according to the most recent studies and analysis, 50 of those came from the Marlborough Downs, though archaeologists working with English Heritage and the other organizations that protect the Stonehenge site are still doing research on that. 

Archaeologists believe that the sarsen stones were transported over land on large wooden sledges, pulled along on wooden rollers using ropes, levers, and pulleys. And this would not have been easy; the route from the Marlborough Downs to the Salisbury Plain is not flat. And also, these stones are as heavy as they look - some weigh upwards of 30 tons, though I’ve read other sources that say they could have been 45 tons. It would have taken hundreds of men to move each stone.

Now the other type of stone is bluestone, the smaller ring of stones between the outer sarsen ring and the trilithons in the middle. Analysis tells us that these bluestones came from the Preseli Hills in Wales. Pembrokeshire to be specific. So how did the ancient Britons transport Welsh bluestones, roughly 140 miles away, to Stonehenge?

There are a few theories. Some argued that they were brought to the area around Salisbury Plain by glacial ice a long, long time ago. Some thought it was brought over by boat. Others argue that it was brought over land. Or maybe a combination of both. One of the preeminent experts on Stonehenge today, Professor Mike Parker Pearson of the University College London, leans towards the land theory. Professor Parker Pearson is an absolute legend and a Stonehenge expert, among other things. Here’s what he said about it, quote,

The only logical direction for the bluestones to go was to the north then either by sea around St David's Head or eastwards overland through the valleys along the route that is now the A40. Personally I think that the overland route is more likely. Each of the 80 monoliths weighed less than 2 tons, so teams of people or oxen could have managed this. We know from examples in India and elsewhere in Asia that single stones this size can even be carried on wooden lattices by groups of 60 - they didn't even have to drag them if they didn't want to.

End quote.

I’m inclined to believe him - this guy knows his stuff and has been studying and digging at Stone Age sites near Stonehenge for decades. But it could also have been a combination; the river Avon runs very close to Stonehenge, and could have been used to ferry materials to the site. And what’s even more fascinating about these Welsh Bluestones is that they belonged to their own henge monument, but were dismantled and brought to Stonehenge around 2,900 BCE; they predate the placement of the sarsens, which were erected beginning around 2,500 BCE. Stonehenge took… a long time to put together.

The Stonehenge Riverside Project, led by Professor Mike Parker-Pearson found evidence of a second, smaller bluestone circle about a mile away - called Bluestonehenge, or the West Amesbury Henge. And there’s also evidence to suggest that bluestones were placed on the outside of the main Stonehenge structure, outside the ring of sarsens. But I’ll talk about the other stones and things connected with the complex in a bit.

There are a few other stones that aren’t sarsen or bluestone, and the one that stands out the most is the Altar Stone, partially buried beneath the fallen stones of the largest trilithon. 

The Altar Stone is around 12,000 pounds and 16 feet long. They’re still doing research into its origins, but the most recent evidence, compiled in 2024, suggests that it’s originally from northeast Scotland. Prior to this they believed that it came from the Brecon Beacons in southeast Wales. 

As for how it got from northeast Scotland to southern England? We’re still figuring that part out. But the researchers behind this 2024 study think it came by boat. Anthony Clarke, the lead author, had a funny thought about it. Quote:

Spare a thought for our Neolithic ancestors, where the heavily forested landscape, rivers, bogs and mountains — it would have been formidable, if not impossible.

End quote. 

He also believes it came by boat, by the way.

The altar stone is pretty neat - it’s smooshed into the ground at this point, but it was clearly meant to be an important part of the whole structure based on where it is - the center of the whole thing, in front of the Great Trilithon.

Now in addition to the main structure, there are other elements to the Stonehenge complex. And for the sake of my explanations here, I’m considering the Great Trilithon and altar stone to be the focal point. So just picture yourself standing at Stonehenge facing the Great Trilithon and altar stone.

To the sides, both left and right, are station stones. There were originally four, but now there are only two left. These are also trilithons, so two standing stones connected on the top with a lintel. The four stones together mark the corners of a perfect rectangle. And the center of that rectangle is the center of the monument, where you’re standing in front of the Altar Stone. 

Now if you were to turn around from the Great Trilithon, directly behind you, you’d see an avenue leading out of the henge. As you walk down this avenue, which cuts through the ditch and bank out the henge, there is what we call the heel stone - a large block of sarsen, tapered on the top, leaning about 27 degrees.

At the entrance to the henge, on the sides of this avenue, before you get to the heel stone, is the slaughter stone, named by the Victorians because it turned red from the iron in the stone reacting with rainwater. Today, only the slaughter stone remains, and it’s fallen down. But when it was built, there would have been multiple stones flanking the avenue at the entrance to the henge.

Back inside the complex. Just outside of Stonehenge outer ring of sarsens, is a ring of holes called the Aubrey holes, given that name in the 1920s after John Aubrey, who discovered them way back in 1666. There are 56 of them, evenly spaced in a circle. Multiple excavations, beginning in the 1920s, have given us some interesting information about them. 

For example, the Aubrey hole pits contain ash from cremations, making the Aubrey Holes at Stonehenge the oldest cremation cemetery in Britain. It was thought for a while that these holes perhaps held wooden posts, similar to other structures like the Woodhenge found at Durrington Hills - more on that in a bit - but in 2008, Professor Parker Pearson and his team with the Stonehenge Riverside Project found evidence to suggest that they were actually filled with Welsh bluestones. Here’s what Professor Parker Pearson says of the find. Quote:

Our excavations at Stonehenge in 2008 produced evidence that the Welsh bluestones had formed the site’s first stone circle, set in a wide ring known as the “Aubrey Holes”. Then, recently, geologists matched [the bluestones] present at Stonehenge to specific rock outcrops in the Preseli Hills [in Wales]. This led our team to Preseli to dig at the outcrops, where we recovered evidence of quarrying tools – stone wedges and hammerstones – which confirmed that the sites were indeed Stone Age quarries. 

Welsh geologist Herbert Thomas [in 1923]... concluded that the bluestones originally formed a “venerated stone circle” somewhere in Wales. To prove this theory, we needed to find that original site. So we set about searching for a Welsh stone circle that we could conclusively link to the stones on Salisbury Plain.

Subsequent digs [at Waun Mawn in southwestern Wales] unearthed further stone holes, arranged in a circle with an identical diameter to Stonehenge’s enclosing ditch.

End quote.

Parker Pearson goes on to present his hypothesis, with some pretty compelling evidence, that the stones at Waun Mawn [wahn mown] were dismantled and brought to Stonehenge, laid out in essentially the same ring. But get this - it was done before 3,000 BCE, before Stonehenge was erected. Which means that the first phase of putting Stonehenge together was transporting this Welsh circle of Bluestones to a new location and reinstalling them. Fascinating.

But why? Well to answer that, I want to broaden our scope here to include the Durrington Walls. So let’s talk about what we think we know about Stonehenge, the surrounding complexes, and the people who built them.
What We (Think) We Know
Durrington Walls is two miles from Stonehenge. And archaeologists have found all kinds of stuff here: animal bones - mainly from pigs, but there were also cow bones - pottery, and the floors and remnants of Stone Age houses. The Stonehenge Riverside Project, in the mid-2000s, found evidence of seven houses. But with the sheer amount of food, waste, and other things found there, they’re pretty confident that upwards of 1,000 houses once existed there - the running theory is that it was the town where Stonehenge’s builders lived, on and off. And that it was also a gathering place an temporary home when people came from all over to celebrate at the henges

But what’s really fascinating about Durrington Walls, and what we think connects it to Stonehenge just down the road, is a great wooden henge, built about the same time. The Woodhenge at Durrington Walls is made of six concentric circles of wooden posts. It’s surrounded by a bank and ditch, so it’s a proper henge. And like with the human remains found in the Aubrey holes that encircle Stonehenge, archaeologists found evidence of human remains respectfully buried there, as well. Meaning it wasn’t just a dude who died in that area - there were cremated remains buried there intentionally.

So two henges, made of different materials, built at the same time, only 2 miles apart. They have to be connected, right?

Archaeologist Ramilisonina, who specializes in Madagascar’s prehistory, worked with Mike Parker Pearson on his studies of various megalithic structures. And conversely, Parker Pearson worked with Ramilisonina in Madagascar. And Ramilisonina has a captivating theory about stone and wood, and how they might be connected.

I’m going to quote from Mike Parker Pearson’s book, which details the Stonehenge Riverside Project and its findings. It’s called “Stonehenge - A New Understanding: Solving the Mysteries of the Greatest Stone Age Monument” and it’s a super detailed and interesting read. Quote!

For me a flash of insight came from sharing ideas with a colleague from Madagascar. Many archaeologists had assumed that the choice of materials - stone for Stonehenge and wood for the Durrington Walls timber circles - was of no particular significance. My colleague Ramilisonina saw things differently. When he visited the monuments of Wessex with me for the first time, he explained that in his country, before the arrival of the missionaries, stone had been reserved for the tombs of the ancestors while timber was used for the houses of the living. Might not this be the case here in Neolithic Britain?

If Stonehenge and Durrington Walls really were contemporary, and if there were burials at Stonehenge…, and if there were some way of showing how Stonehenge and Durrington Walls were physically connected, then there was a case for arguing that timber and stone symbolized the living and dead respectively.

End quote.

It’s a fascinating theory. And in ensuing discoveries, Parker Pearson is confident in that theory being true. As he notes, quick quote, “burials suggest Stonehenge was a place of the dead, while there is evidence of nearby ‘woodhenges’ at Durrington Walls that were surrounded by the houses of the living.”

I buy it - the evidence seems to line up. But I still have a few questions. They managed to roll huge heavy stones up to the Salisbury Plain, and I buy the explanation how. But once they got there, how did they get the stones in place? With such precision? And while I’m on the subject - is there any meaning to how they’re positioned?

Well, archaeologists have found evidence of small ramps built up to where the stones were placed. And they’re not just sitting on top of the soil, they are buried a little bit in the ground. So the stones would have been brought up the ramp a bit and laid down in front of these holes. But they’re massive and heavy, so they couldn’t just be picked up and tipped in. Instead, we believe that a system of ropes, levers and pulleys were used. Here’s one theory put forth by archeologist Mike Pitts, who has done excavations at Stonehenge and is a British prehistory specialist. Quote:

I found inspiration for a solution on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), in a demonstration islanders put on for Thor Heyerdahl in the 1950s. They raised a fallen statue, similar in weight to a large Stonehenge megalith, by repeatedly rocking it from side to side with levers, each time carefully placing small stones underneath the lifted side. Slowly a rubble mound grew beneath one end of the rising head, until, when it was nearly upright, a gentle tug on some ropes finished the job. 

The same thing could have been done on Salisbury Plain – not with stones, but wood, slowly adding tied and perhaps jointed timbers to a growing tower as 30 tons of megalith gently and safely rose to an upright position.

End quote.

The lintels were likely installed similarly - ramps, levers, pulleys, and ropes. There’s a way called the Timber Crib method - a platform of wood was built around the stones, gradually increasing in height. The lintel was then levered up onto each wooden platform until it was high enough to slot on top of the standing stones.

Okay, so let’s step back then. We’ve got a massive stone structure made up of stones from different parts of the British Isles. They are organized and arranged in a very particular pattern, right? Why is that?

Well one thing we know about the Celts in general is their beliefs in the various solstices and equinoxes. They celebrated the changing of seasons - when to plant, when to sow, to harvest, and to rest. One theory about why Stonehenge was built - and remember, it took 1,500 years, so people clearly saw value in it to continue it over so many generations - was to honor their astronomical calendar.

For example - the Heel Stone. It sits in the avenue leading up to Stonehenge, right? Well when the sun rises on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, the start of midsummer, it rises directly over the center of the heel stone. Well - to be fair, it would have when it was erected. The Earth’s axis has tilted ever so slightly so it’s 1 degree off now. But it would have been dead center :) 

And similarly, on the winter solstice, the shortest day the year, the sun sets directly between the two standing stones of the Great Trilithon. Well it would, if the Trilithon were still standing. Both the Heel Stone and the Great Trilithon were perfectly arranged to highlight the sun on these important days.

And based on the evidence found at neighboring Durrington Walls, people in the thousands might have gathered for the summer and winter solstices to partake in various rituals. And if Mike Parker Pearson’s theory is correct, these rituals might have been about life - the wooden henge - and death - the Stonehenge.

It’s also worth pointing out that other henges and standing stone (or wood) structures were aligned with the sun. Durrington Walls had circles that were aligned with the setting sun on the solstices as well. As did others throughout the British Isles, including over in Ireland.

But a lot of this is theory. It’s logical, believable, and very well argued - but theory. But there are some things that I can say about Stonehenge with certainty as a historian.

I know that the peoples who built Stonehenge, over the span of 1,500 years, lived in agricultural communities. They had plenty of food, strong, organized political systems, and engineering knowledge. 

To be able to devote so much time to building these megalithic stone structures meant that they weren’t needed to procure food. Hunting and gathering is likely out; hunters and gatherers don’t get to take this much time away from finding a means of sustenance to help move stones hundreds of miles and inch them up wooden platforms bit by bit. No - there were agricultural surpluses. Only having extra food would have allowed our builders to go away and work on the stones. The workers weren’t needed to till the fields, harvest the food, or plant more fields. There was definitely enough food to go around.

How do we get to a point where there’s enough food for able-bodied people to go off and build religious monuments? Organization and political structure. Surpluses don’t happen on accident - it was planned. Societies were thriving. People are doing well. When your society, politics, and economy are doing well, personally or on a community-wide scale, then you have time to engage in culture and participate in ceremonies.

And the engineering is self-explanatory. How else did they transport and pick up the heavy sarsen stones? Aliens?

But there is still a lot we don’t know.

We have good ideas about how things were done, but we still don’t 100% know how the stones were lifted, especially those lintels.

We don’t know precisely how long it took to complete the project, or if it was completed at all.

We also… still don’t know who built it. Which seems wild, right? We think it was the Neolithic Britons living there. We generally accept that premise, as they were living in the area. It’s the best answer we have, and there’s some evidence that points to them. But there’s no definitive proof. There have been other ideas over the years, like Druidic cults… but the Druids weren’t really around that far back. 

And though we have good guesses for why it was built… it’s all just speculation. Speculation based on some very educated guesses, with some good evidence to support it… but it’s still just theory. 

And I doubt we’ll ever know all of Stonehenge’s mysteries. But in exploring it, and the surrounding area, we get an even more complete picture of our own history.

Now of course, there’s tons more information about Stonehenge, the homes built at Durrington Walls, the people who might have built it, previous excavations, and more. What is your favorite thing about Stonehenge? Let me know in the comments what you know about this megalithic marvel.
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of the Stonehenge Mystery. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!

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