Secrets of Stonehenge 3715 ✪ PBS Nova Documentary Channel

every year a million people descend on

Stonehedge they ask the age-old

questions about this mysterious

Monument who built it how was it built

and

why to find out archaeologists are

studying Stonehenge with new tools and

New

Eyes by constructing own hinge these

people were creating something which had

never been created before it's a bit

like their own space

program there's a new theory about the

meaning of Stonehedge when I say a lot

of

bone it's about the nature of Eternity

the meaning of life and death that's a

nice long piece of fibula I would think

we're going to get at least 50

individuals in here an ancient world is

coming back to life this is an

extraordinary time for Stonehenge we're

beginning to understand it in a way

we've never been able to do before the

secrets of Stonehenge revealed right now

on Nova

[Music]

brooding and Majestic Stonehenge is an

icon of

prehistory it dates back to a time

before Egypt built its pyramids to the

stone age in

Britain time has taken its toll

but this Monument remains a Marvel of

ancient

engineering a circular ditch and Bank

surround the

stones upright Stones Tower over 20 ft

and weigh up to 45

tons horizontal slabs called lentils

Crown huge

pillars all these Giants are made of s

a local Sandstone harder than granite

yet they were carved and fitted like

woodwork uprights were tapered and

topped with

knobs these fit Hollows on the bottoms

of

lentils curved lentils joined by tongue

and groove formed a nearly perfect

circle and despite a slight slope this

ring of lentils was level to within

inches the sarson Dominate

Stonehenge but nestled among them are

smaller Stones no less

remarkable geologists determined these

are blue stones transported here from

Wales at least 150 M

away who built

Stonehenge how was it built and

why for ages we could only

Wonder now a new age is

[Music]

beginning an army of archaeologists

deploys around

Stonehenge hey everybody led by Mike

Parker Pearson the Stonehenge Riverside

project is nearly 200 strong with

Scientists students and specialists in

everything from astronomy to field

survey we're six years into this

archaeological project it's one of the

biggest in the world I reckon so it's a

really big chance to find out some of

the key questions about Stonehenge we're

on a mission we're on a

quest it's a quest to reconstruct the

ancient world that gave rise to

Stonehenge and resurrect the people who

built

it the strategy is to dig not just at

Stonehenge but throughout the

surrounding

landscape Stonehenge itself was

extensively excavated during the 20th

century those digs established that the

monument was built in

stages prehistoric people chose a

rolling stretch of Salsbury

plane and around 3,000 BC they dug a

ditch a bank and a ring of 56 pits into

the underlying chalk of the

plane these pits probably held the blue

stones brought all the way from

Wales then some 500 years later the

Colossal sarson Stones were

installed the blue stones were pulled

from their outer ring and rearranged

among the

sarsens several other Stones completed

the

monument and later parallel Banks would

Define a processional Avenue that

stretched all the way from Stonehenge to

the river Avon

[Music]

20th century excavations also uncovered

the dead of

Stonehenge in the 1920s nearly 60 human

burials were excavated here many in that

outer ring of 56 pits known as the

Aubrey

holes but the discoveries were hardly

acknowledged because these were

cremation

burials these people have been cremated

so they didn't have nice skulls with

gleaming teeth to display they had

bundles of Ash and bits of broken burnt

bone the archeologists weren't

interested in those as objects at that

time it was firmly believed that there

was nothing you could learn from looking

at cremated phone not a single Museum in

Britain wanted the bones so in

1935 they were reburied in Aubrey Hall

number seven the idea that Stonehenge

was actually one of if not the biggest

chromation cemetery in early

prehistorical Europe just disappeared

into the ground into or behold 7 and was

forgotten

about the bones were left

undisturbed until

today Mike Parker Pearson has come to

retrieve the dead of

Stonehenge to him they represent a

treasure Trove of

information with closer analysis of

those remains even though they're burnt

we can work out people's approximate

ages we may be able to work out if

they're male or female we may even be

able to find out more about their

standard of life so it's a really

important opportunity to learn about the

Stonehenge

people records from 1935 State the bones

were placed in four burlap bags and

buried with a commemorative plaque

this is the first time anybody has seen

a decent Orbee hole for a good 80 years

it's quite impressive but it's what's

underneath it it's lower down that's

what we're most interested

in and we're getting close

so oh look what's that is it suddenly

they Spart a tiny piece of

bone yep SP bone yeah

there's

more it's all over the place the burlap

bags that contain the Bones have rotted

away I think we've just got to very

carefully loose the soil bit by bit is

it desperately uncomfortable yeah it is

Qui

yeah so we're just going to take it in

turns and do as long as each of us can

stand till the blood rushes to your head

and you start to feel faint that's

already happened

there we go here we

go oh look what I

found the

pl there it is read it

out most of these bones were dug up in

the Years 1921

1922 1923 reburied

1935 yeah but actually it doesn't tell

us anything we don't know does it I know

but isn't it

nice we finally reached the bone layer I

think we were all hoping that the two

men who buried these bones for posterity

would actually put them in decent

containers uh but what we're really

looking at is very loose cremated

bone oh c i a lot of bone we've lifted

the plaque and what we saw underneath

was quite a shock just a complete

jumbled mass of bone from who knows how

many

people the plaque has stopped soil

falling down in amongst them so as the

sack rotted the bones were left

completely clean but it's going to be a

serious jigsa puzzle in the

lab I was hoping it was going to be easy

but this is the worst case

scenario little remains of the people of

Stonehenge what do we know of their

world around 3 ,000 BC the age of the

Pharaohs begins in Egypt the first

cities are flourishing in the near East

with writing and wheeled Vehicles the

use of metal is spreading across Europe

but has yet to reach

Britain here the Stone Age is in its

Final Phase the

Neolithic the stone axe Reigns Supreme

with this tool people clear forests and

shape the Timbers of their

homes their settlements are small and

Scattered they keep livestock and move

with their

herds they raise barley and

wheat people tend to get the impression

that in the Neolithic life was grim and

short that's not necessarily the case at

all people generally seem to have been

probably fairly well-nourished they

would have had access to quite good food

resources they were obviously

sophisticated and they're probably

having a fairly good

lifestyle their stone tools and fine

Pottery have survived the

ages but objects crafted of wood plant

fibers or leather have mostly vanished

in Britain's climate and

soil the fabric of their daily lives

their customs and their beliefs have

long eluded

us but the remains of their dead are

providing new

Clues at Aubrey Hall number s Jackin

McKinley joins the excavation

effort an expert on Ancient human

remains she quickly spots individual

features that's a nice long piece of

fibula brilant probably second or third

Moler that's the back of the skull look

in fact that's a chap that's a male J

good it's a very important collection

we're in a very important Place although

it looks like a mass by separating out

the different sceletal elements we can

work out how many people there were in

there and the sex and the age of those

individuals looking at the amount of

material we've got I would think we're

going to get at least 50 individuals in

here in all 35 lbs of cremated bone are

eventually sent to the University of

Sheffield graduate student Christy Cox

is resurrecting the dead of Stonehenge

bit by

bit there's thousands and thousands of

bone pieces

um is far more than we ever anticipated

when we originally started the

excavation this sh Joy here that is just

amazing so we're looking at this this

bit down the side here where the

mandible goes be the tmga Jo yeah and

that suggests that we've got an older

individual the bones reveal that Burial

at Stonehenge was reserved for a select

group with a normal domestic Cemetery

you'd expect to find a range of Ages and

individuals from both sex but most of

the cremated bones are from adults and

the majority of those adults appear to

be male and mostly in the 25 to 40 year

age

group we're seeing just a slight wear

and tear on the bones in this population

so they were fairly healthy they were

fairly robust male

individuals if you mostly male

cremations in that that's something odd

that means that certain people are being

selected for bual here what was special

about

them I suspect they may well have been

people of important political stature

quite possibly the the men in one or

more Royal lineages whose authority made

Stonehenge possible in the first

place so what this could be indicating

is actually at the time Stone Henge was

built we have an an aristocratic

male-based Society now that's something

we would never have known without these

bones perhaps one royal family marshaled

the manpower to create

Stonehenge and across the British Isles

other families or Clans built their own

Stone

circles nearly a thousand still stand

today

Neolithic people also raised Timber

circles today All That Remains are

traces of post

holes but their size indicates some held

tree trunks 15 ft High weighing several

tons enormous pits were dug to hold

these Timbers and standing

stones and many circles were enclosed by

a circular ditch and Bank an earthwork

known as a

henge how did people with Stone Age

Technology manage to build on such a

vast

Scale near Stonehenge Parker Pearson's

team excavates a prehistoric ditch

carved into the chalk of Salsbury

plain suddenly an ancient digging tool

comes to

light oh

oh oh look at that it's a pick made from

the antler of a red

deer oh

yeah ant lipics were used as the means

of Excavating these features dites and

pits during the

Neolithic you can imagine people using

these pcks to lever out the great chunks

of chalk prizing it out and then putting

it into baskets and pulling it out of

the hole an enormously labor intensive

task when they got to the bottom and

when they finished maybe it was broken

and they just dropped it or maybe they

just deliberately left it there almost

as an

offering but how did people moved the

giant sarson up to 45 tons of solid rock

how did they raise lentils to the tops

of those gate light structures called

trons

to archaeologist Mike pittz the process

involved Manpower and

myth we're about 20 mi north of

Stonehenge and this area is probably

where all the big Stones the sassin at

Stonehenge came

from this landscape now looks very much

as I think it would have been in the

near lithic so we have the trees we have

the forests growing expressing life we

have the stones in thousands lying

largely under under the ground like

bodies these are places that could be

repositories of superstition of myth and

fear and

danger to find a sarson of the right

size and shape for Stonehenge may have

been a sacred quest for the most skilled

stonemasons like a Michelangelo they

examine the stone very carefully

these are guys that are used to making

stone tools they understand Stone and I

think a Stonehenge Mason would have

looked at a stone like this there's

something that he's used to making like

a stone axe or an aead but enlarged into

a huge

scale Masons may have roughly shaped the

sarsens at the Quarry site using

pounding

stones but they left few Clues to how

they moved and raised giant stones

1 2 3 so researchers have

experimented Stone Age Britain did not

have the wheel but people may have

pulled large Stones over rollers made of

tree

trunks perhaps they laid Timber tracks

and slathered them with

grease a wooden sled with a keel would

have kept the stones centered over the

tracks

[Applause]

[Music]

raising a giant Stone involved somehow

tipping it into a giant

hole 1 2 3 lentil may have been pulled

up ramps and levered into

place all these techniques are plausible

there's just no evidence they were

actually

used now there's a new Theory

Andrew Young became obsessed with carved

Stone balls during graduate work at the

University of

exitor some of these prehistoric objects

are elaborately

engraved but many are

unadorned most have been found in

Northeast Scotland an area known for its

Stone

circles these artifacts defy

explanation people had said they might

be weapons or for throwing or um

possibly pounding vegetables kinds of

things that you could do with a portable

Stone object nothing that anybody had

really said about them satisfied my

question what are they for young taught

himself to carve replicas and pondered

one strange fact many carve balls

engraved and plain have exactly the same

diameter large numbers are identical in

size to the millimeter and why would

they need to be identical in size and

that just gave him that Eureka moment

wow if you're going to use them as a

wheel you need them to be the same

size Andrew Young had a vision of Stone

Age ballbearing

Technology for his PhD thesis he's

testing his idea at a farm near

Stonehenge so this one's High

he's joined by a team of fellow students

and his graduate adviser Bruce Bradley

an authority on experimental archaeology

all right let's move them back towards

each other Andy brought this Theory to

me I was astounded because it just made

sense all it's just so obvious why

didn't somebody think of this before

with rails made of Douglas fur they'll

build 80 ft of track it's not straight

though each rail has a channel cut into

it

to hold Granite balls hand finished to a

precise 75 mm

diameter they'll also use wooden balls

during the time of Stonehenge people

were skilled at carving stone and wood

and could have produced all these

components that's a lot better instead

of a giant Stone the team has 25 tons of

gravel and Andrew Young has his

concerns outside I'm really worried

about the typee of wood we used um they

would probably have used Oak in the

Neolithic we haven't been able to use

out because of the

cost the wood we've got is perhaps too

soft they build a platform a crib to

straddle the rails and carry the

weight the worst fear would be that we'd

get just a couple tons on there and we

couldn't push it anywhere there's a lot

of unknowns right now and that's what

experiments they're all

about they load 3.3

tons roughly the weight of a blue stone

at

Stonehenge one two three

go keep it going keep it going oh

darn almost immediately they're

stuck man what happened the weight is

crushing the Douglas fur you know this

amount of weight seems to have

compressed it enough that our Gap we're

losing our Gap it's less than a

centimeter and that is not good no as

soon as you've got that crib touching

the rail you just got friction you've

totally undermined everything we've done

with the

balls Young's worst fear about the soft

wood has come

true but there's a quick fix to offset

the compression of the Douglas fur they

place wooden inserts in the grooves

Eastern 23 mil the Gap is back at least

for

now they load up nearly 6

tons roughly the weight of two blue

stones can they do it look at the

division of labor all of a sudden how'd

that happen hey you girls the call will

be giddy up all right one two 3 four go

it's

moving come on

keep going folks keep at it let's get on

those wood

balls they're gaining

Speedy we' moved the blue stones and

once it was going we were going yeah we

we were having a hard time stopping

we're not as heavy as the SARS at

Stonehenge but I'm convinced that that's

it we can move the sarson no problem the

largest sarson at Stonehenge weighs some

45

tons how much can this rig

handle the team has one more day to find

[Music]

out moving the sarsens was just one

challenge for the Builders of

Stonehenge they also had to carve these

Giants to fit

together how how did they achieve such

[Music]

Precision just outside Stonehenge Parker

Pearson's team noticed small pieces of

sarson emerging from of all things mole

Hills the little mole Hills allowed us

to see that there was sarson under the

ground as little chips were dug up by

these little furry

creates a small trench revealed an

astonishing carpet of stone fragments

debris from the dressing of giant

Stones The Stone dressing trench has

produced fantastic surprises this is

where the stones were lying and having

their faces trimmed and bashed and we've

been able to find in that tiny trench 50

hammerstones

this is the Hammerstone actually fits

quite nicely in the hand as it turns out

and uh you can see all the pitting

around the outside where it's been

banging against

something the Neolithic Builder would

literally have stood alongside the stone

to do the more fine scale work it's

going to take ages just to get that fine

fine

shape Stonehenge is an expenditure of

labor on a grand scale you know it's

easy for us to forget that these people

were creating something which had never

been created before it's it's a bit like

their own space program

Stonehenge is a masterpiece of Stone Age

Technology but what did it mean to the

people who built

it was it simply the burial ground of a

royal family or was there more to the

monument an enduring theory about the

meaning of Stonehenge dates back to an

observation made by 18th century

Scholars they noticed that the entrance

to Stonehenge faces the Rising Sun on

the longest day of the year the summer

solstice by the 1960s people had

embraced the monument as an

observatory used by ancient astronomers

to track the Sun and

Moon some astronomers even claimed the

mystery of Stonehenge had been solved

well let's get one thing clear this

wasn't some sort of astronomical

instrument Clive Ruggles has written the

book on Ancient astronomy an

archaeologist and astronomer he ran his

own studies of

Stonehenge everyone thinks that it's

some sort of ancient Observatory that

incorporated lots of alignments in fact

we archaeologists are only confident in

one alignment at this monument and that

was the main axis that you see here this

axis runs right through the center of

Stonehenge and down its Avenue in this

direction it points at sunrise on the

summer solstice around June

21st on those few days around the

longest day of the year just as the sun

rises you would have seen a shaft of

sunlight coming right into this it would

have been a very spectacular effect the

thing is if the axis is pointing at

Midsummer sunrise this way then it also

has another Direction

we come around the site you have to do a

bit of imagining here we we've got these

big trisons one and two standing here

there was another one standing here

we've only got one of the uprights left

then in fact the axis in this direction

points at the sun set on the shortest

day of the year midwinter sun set so the

sun would be coming down like this and

setting in this direction along the

[Music]

axis this extraordinary alignment sheds

light on the beliefs and rituals of

people in the ancient

world Stonehenge isn't the only place

that has an astronomical alignment built

into it there are many um ancient

peoples all over the world who have

Incorporated alignments on the Sun the

moon sometimes the stars and what it's

probably telling us is about a

connection in people's minds between the

Sun and the seasonal cycle and how by

having the right ceremonials at the

right time they could keep in harmony

with the cosmos

the alignment at Stonehenge suggests the

solstices were important times of year

for the people who built the

monument Mike Parker Pearson has

Unearthed evidence supporting that idea

though he didn't set out to study

Stonehenge I never thought I'd be doing

any work here in a million years and I

had many other interesting things to do

so it was a series of accidents that

really led to our project getting up and

running he had spent years in Madagascar

studying traditional burial

practices here people build stone

monuments for the dead they believe

Stone belongs to the realm of the

ancestors the realm of the living is

built of perishable materials like wood

[Music]

in 1998 Parker Pearson happened to visit

Stonehedge with an archaeologist from

Madagascar when my colleague Ramil son

saw all of this on a cold February

morning it was something of a bombshell

because what he was to say was to change

archaeologist's understanding of this

Monument completely and to lead to a

huge new program of archaeological

research

I believe this is a meeting place to

connect with the

ancestors I am utterly convinced the

stones are linked to the

ancestors and that's the moment the

light bulb went on in my mind and I

thought Stone was associated with the

ancestors the dead and constructions in

Timber should be associated with the

living and this made me think a little

more about what was happening in the

Stonehenge

landscape he knew Stonehenge was full of

cremated remains nearly 60 burials

excavated in the 20th century and

perhaps 200 more in untouched areas of

the

monument if Stonehenge marked the realm

of the

Dead where was the realm of the

[Music]

living less than 2 miles north of ston H

sits the giant henge of durington

walls in the 1960s when a road was cut

through this henge archaeologists

discovered the post holes of a Timber

Circle nearly identical in size to

Stonehenge if durington walls marked the

realm of the living and Stonehenge the

realm of the Dead perhaps the physical

link between the two was the river

Avon we know from mythologies all around

the world that water is a very important

part of that Journey from the world of

the living to the world of the

Dead it was a clever Theory with little

to back it

up until excavations began at durington

walls my interest in darington wolves

was to find out two things there should

be an Avenue linking it to the river

just as there was stonehengers famous

Avenue leading to the

water secondly there should be evidence

of settlement of something to do with

the

living the team did uncover an Avenue

some 30 ft wide running straight from

durington walls to the river

Avon the Dig all also revealed ample

evidence of the

living we've actually found the floor of

a house now it's only 4 M that way by 4

M this way it has steak holes along its

sides so Timber facade covered with

chalk plaster it's the first time we

have found the floor layer for a

Neolithic house anywhere in England we

can actually walk on the very surface

that people walked on 4 and a half

thousand years

ago the floors of eight other houses

came to light they were built around

2,500 BC the same time the sarsens were

put up at

Stonehenge hundreds of other dwellings

probably filled durington walls

clustered around the Timber

Circle I think we could be looking at

this entire area covered in houses

perhaps with the central open area

forming the largest Village in northern

Europe at that

time but people didn't live here year

round they came for special

occasions in between the houses the team

found huge piles of pig and cattle

bones we find a lot of them still joined

together so they must have been thrown

away while there was still soft tissue

holding them together

what this is telling us is that these

are people who are

feasting a clue to the timing of these

feasts turned up in the astronomical

alignment of durington

walls on the morning of the winter

solstice the Timber Circle pointed at

the Rising

Sun and at the end of the day Stonehenge

framed the Setting

Sun 6 months later the direction was

reversed on the summer solce Stonehenge

and its Avenue aligned with

sunrise and the Avenue at durington

walls aligned with

sunet the two monuments were linked on

the summer and winter

solstices on these days crowds may have

traveled along the river

moving between the realm of the living

at durington walls and the realm of the

dead at

Stonehedge some may have cast the ashes

of their dead into the sacred Waters a

gesture of

devotion perhaps Royal burials were held

at Stonehedge during these seasonal

[Music]

feasts it may just be the s of an

unending cycle that is being reenacted

by this flow back and forward between

the living and the dead to enable

Society to keep

going Parker Pearson had discovered

traces of an ancient belief system

etched into the landscape around

Stonehedge but one question still

lingered about The Monument's

location why was Stonehenge built on

such an unremarkable patch of

Countryside not on a ridge or

Hilltop the answer May lie hidden

beneath the surface of the Stonehenge

Avenue the great processional route

leading to the river

[Music]

Avon this feature was mapped by running

a small electric current through the

soil and measuring its

resistance the technique can detect

structures under the

surface it picked up a series of

mysterious grooves running beneath the

Avenue for more than 200

yards Parker Pearson was convinced these

grooves were the remains of a man-made

structure older than the Avenue his team

opened a shallow trench to investigate

it runs over there yeah I was convinced

we were going to find evidence for

gullies that contained vertical Timber

posts something like that and I was

bitterly disappointed because they were

entirely

natural soil Specialists determined that

these grooves were formed between two

natural ridges in the

landscape during the last ice age these

ridges funneled rainwater and snow melt

between them yearly freezing and thaing

caus the ground to crack into long deep

grooves what makes the grooves

extraordinary is that they are aligned

with the

solstices on the winter solstice they

would have pointed directly at the spot

where the Setting Sun touches the

Horizon think about this coincidence in

the landscape the fact that you've got

these natural stripes in the landscape

actually aligning with the direction

where the winter sun goes down yes to us

it's a coincidence of nature but imagine

how that seemed to people whose mindset

was different it would have made it a

very sacred and Powerful spot and that

for me provides a very plausible reason

why Stonehenge was constructed where it

was prehistoric people built Stonehenge

just beyond where the grooves

end later they enhanced the natural

ridges with massive Banks and extended

the Avenue all the way to the river Avon

or so it was

assumed no one had ever excavated the

riverbank where the Avenue ought to end

just beyond a row of Country Estates so

Parker Pearson brought his

team well we came down here looking for

the end of the Stonehenge Avenue um and

what we were expecting to find would

have been fairly straightforward just

two Banks and two ditches what we

actually found was completely different

what we have here is a ditch that is

curving around in a semicircle and most

likely it actually formed a complete

circle maybe it's marking off a

venerated space maybe there's even a

standing stone that once stood in this

spot maybe there are special things here

that the he was actually leading to by

the

river it will take more digging to get

to the bottom of this

mystery will that go through there not

far from the Riverside trench Andrew

Young and his team continue to test his

system for moving giant Stones they

tackle the equivalent of a sarson at

Stonehenge these range from 7 to more

than 40 ttimes

up the slack one two three the team

starts with a load of 8.3

tons they give it everything they've

got no not

going we didn't even budget it's that

moment of inertia that you've got to

break and obviously that was beyond 10

people some theories claim hundreds of

people were involved in pulling Giants

Stones young is convinced oxen did the

heavy work for now he'll settle for a

tractor a gauge will measure how much

force it takes to get this load moving

there it

goes keep it

going little

faster yeah

wow all right let's have a look at that

gauge just over 1.2 1.2 that's very good

young figures this would have been a

snap for about a dozen oxen so what's

happened there the uh insert is uh

obliterated the spacers are breaking

down it's too soft but young wants to

try one last load what we could do is

take off the top two build the of a crib

and spread the weight out more

redistribute it I think that's the plan

yeah pleased to meet you finally lovely

to see you just then Stonehenge expert

Mike pittz drops by I've been reading

your work for years and always been very

impressed thank you thanks thanks for

bringing the rain appreciate it pits is

briefed while the team sets up a second

I'm thinking as I look at this okay

supposing this did happen you've got to

have a really smooth track almost like a

road absolutely you need engineered

route again almost don't you basically

yeah it's pretty sophisticated yeah but

I can't believe that in the near lithic

when they're moving these stones that

the landscope is going to be nice and

clear and smooth like this but there's

going to be all sorts of things going on

with swamp and Forest and Stones getting

in the way and the Steep slops you've

got to get through and that's the case

but that's the case with any system that

doesn't make it unique to this one

absolutely okay now the rig is ready for

a final run nearly 13 tons heavier than

some sarson at Stonehenge about a third

the weight of The Monument's largest

Stones there it

[Music]

goes keep it

going keep it going keep it

going

uh-oh

stop what happened did you something

just it just sort of went down and I

think it went down I don't know where it

went down picked them all up the woods

bent now yeah but it worked I don't know

about you but I was pleased with that I

think we're done cuz we can't stay out

here and get everybody

Frozen the sky is clear for a few

afterthoughts I'm not at all convinced I

think it's too sophisticated we don't

need that level of complex it to move

Stonehenge the more complex you make it

the more likely it is to go

wrong I think a lot of times we think of

people that live in simple cultures as

we Define them don't have a science

because it's not written down or it's

not formulaic but these people's

technology is their

science I'm satisfied that my initial

idea seems to work on a big scale so I'm

just happy it's all gone the way it has

because you don't know until you

try for all we know the Builders of

Stonehenge use techniques no modern

researcher has yet

imagined if only we could excavate the

Neolithic

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mind back at the Riverside Parker

Pearson and his team expand their

trenches and expose more of that strange

circular

structure it appears to be the ditch and

eroded Bank of a

henge Ben we got a huge triangular Stone

hole in that

one in its Center they make a

spectacular

Discovery a ring of large

holes recorded in a laser scan their

shape and size point to one thing they

probably held blue blue stones just like

the ones now standing at

Stonehenge this place was selected out

as a special spot to build a stone

circle and to do that with antler piix

they had to dig a circle of holes and

the hole in front of me they've created

almost a nest of Flint nodules to form a

base to support the stone coming in on

top of it these Stones would have formed

almost a mini Stone Henge without the

lentils very close together standing

some 3 m high in

places the complete circle probably held

25

Stones the team names it Blue Stone

Henge so when was it put up when was it

taken down where did the stones

go and we still starting to get some

answers for those

questions found in the stone holes a

distinctive type of arrowe head suggests

blue Stonehenge may have been built

around 3,000 BC at the same time

Stonehenge was first built as a ring of

56 blue

stones the two monuments may have been

linked from the

start it may well be that these were set

up together as two separate Stone

circles

one right by the river one up at the

special Solstice place of Stonehenge

itself so providing the two ends of a

ceremonial route for people to move back

and

forwards but what happened to the blue

stones by the

river Parker Pearson believes they were

moved to

Stonehenge this probably happened around

2,500 BC when the giant sarsens were

installed in the center of the

monument but the blue stones still

mattered they were pulled from the

Aubrey holes and the Riverside and

rearranged perhaps enshrined inside the

sarson to the people who built and

rebuilt

Stonehenge what did the blue stones mean

why were dozens gathered from these

outcrops in whales at least 150 M

away some of Britain's first farmers put

down roots in Wales a thousand years

before Stonehenge was

created Parker Pearson believes their

descendants brought the blue stones to

Salsbury

plane when you actually move a stone

you're planted in your identity your

very ancestry into the ground you're

saying yes we used to come from over

there but this is our place and these

are the symbol that even our ancestors

occupy this

space so what I think we're seeing is

that sense of transferring one's

ancestors and ancestry in the form of

stones and here we have this very

expression of belonging

around

2,500 BC Stonehenge became a monument

like no other a symbol of everything the

Stone Age could

achieve but this is one of the last

great monuments to be built in southern

Britain it's the end of an era rather

than the flowering of a huge powerful

civilization it's something of a on

Sun as Stonehenge reaches its peak

something new is trickling into

Britain copper gold and later

bronze for people who Define their

existence in terms of stone and wood

metal change es nearly

everything with metal comes a focus on

personal wealth and

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status now the dead are laid to rest

with their riches in individual burial

mounts hundreds appear in the landscape

around

Stonehenge and the age of grand communal

monuments comes to an end

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a symbol of Eternity Stonehenge was

built to stand

forever but in time the great Stone

Circle was

abandoned its age was eclipsed by a new

technology a new way of

being and that is a story as old as the

Hills

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