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Even if you don’t know much about ancient
history and prehistoric monuments, you’ve
probably heard of Stonehenge.
The story of this incredible structure goes
back more than 5000 years, and while it was
certainly important to the people who built
it, those architects would have had no way
of knowing that their creation would become
world-famous.
These days, Stonehenge is featured everywhere,
from popular movies to your friend’s vacation
photos.
But if there’s one thing that everyone seems
to know about Stonehenge... it’s that there’s
a lot that nobody seems to know about Stonehenge.
The monument is surrounded by famously puzzling
questions, like who built it?
What was it used for?
Who’s buried beneath it?
And especially: How did ancient people manage
to move and erect those huge stones?
Over the years, lots of explanations have
been proposed, including lost technologies,
outright magic, and — of course — aliens.
But while speculation is fun and all, Stonehenge
doesn’t need any help from myths and legends
to be cool.
After all, just because you understand something
doesn’t make it any less fascinating — and
there is a lot about Stonehenge we understand.
Archaeologists have been intensely studying
this structure for more than a century, and
while many mysteries still remain, modern
science has taught us quite a lot.
For centuries, visitors to Salisbury Plain
in Wiltshire, England have marveled at Stonehenge
and tried to guess at the identity of its
builders.
One of the earliest written suggestions came
from Geoffrey of Monmouth, a bishop famous
for his fanciful writings on British history.
In the 1100s, he claimed that the monument
was built by Merlin.
Yep.
The wizard Merlin, of Arthurian legend.
The story goes that Merlin used magic to construct
Stonehenge as a monument for fallen soldiers,
using huge rocks that were originally carried
out of Africa by giants.
And for a while, this was actually a pretty
popular story.
Later scholars got more realistic, though,
and proposed a list of non-fictional suspects,
including the Romans and the Mycenaeans from
Greece.
And while artifacts found at Stonehenge indicate
that some of those cultures did use or visit
the monument in its later years, recent evidence
has ruled them out as its builders.
A lot of that evidence has come from radiocarbon
dating.
This method is one of the most useful tools
archaeologists have, because it mostly just
requires some radioactive carbon.
In nature, carbon atoms come in a few different
forms, or isotopes, which have different numbers
of neutrons.
Some of these isotopes — like a key one
called carbon-14 — are radioactive, so they
break down over time at really predictable
rates.
By figuring out how much radioactive carbon
has decayed in a material, scientists can
calculate how long ago the material formed.
And that means they can place a date on all
sorts of organic substances.
Including ones found at Stonehenge.
Radiocarbon dating of human remains and artifacts
has revealed that the monument’s history
actually goes back to around 3000 BCE.
Which is definitely too old to have been built
by the Romans or Mycenaeans… or Merlin!
Unfortunately, whatever group made Stonehenge
didn’t leave behind much evidence about
who they were, so their identity remains a
mystery.
And the story is complicated even more by
the fact that, like many ancient landmarks,
Stonehenge wasn’t built in a day… or even
in a century.4
Archaeologists have identified multiple phases
of construction at the site over a period
of about 1500 years, possibly by different
groups of people.
The earliest construction happened around
5000 years ago, and it involved the digging
of the circular ditch that still surrounds
the monument.
This formation is very similar to a type of
earthwork called a henge.
We know this partly from carbon dating pieces
of tools that were left behind.
But we’ve also found cremated human remains
from this period, hiding in pits within the
henge.
It’s possible that some early stones were
also put up around this time, but based on
other evidence, it’s most likely that the
famous, giant standing stones didn’t arrive
for another 500 years.
So, even if there isn’t enough evidence
to say exactly who did the heavy lifting,
archaeology has been able to help us understand
when it happened, which has ruled out some
suspects.
MERLIN.
Science has also been able to help us figure
out how Stonehenge was built.
And one thing is for sure: Getting all these
rocks into place was no easy task.
There are two major categories of stones — also
called megaliths — at Stonehenge.
The enormous sarsens typically weigh around
22 metric tons each, while the smaller bluestones
are a modest 2 to 5 metric tons.
Today, there are around three dozen stones
at the site, arranged into two outer circles
and two inner horseshoes.
But based on the holes dug into the ground,
there likely used to be more.
From what we can tell, workers first dug holes
for the rocks to sit in, and then hauled them
upright, probably with the help of ropes,
A-frames, and lots and lots of people.
The standing stones were then capped with
horizontal beams to form what architects call
lintels, like the beam over the top of a doorway.
These were probably lifted up there on wooden
platforms that were dismantled after construction.
But these lintels weren’t just plopped down.
Holes, tabs, and joints were carved into the
rocks so that the architects could insert
Tab A into Slot B and fit them all together,
like a very heavy piece of IKEA furniture.
Admittedly, this is some very advanced engineering
for that time period, but unlike what a lot
of Internet forums say, it’s not impossible.
The builders might have lived a few thousand
years before cranes and power tools, but they
still had that good old fashioned human ingenuity…
which we tend to overlook.
Also, never underestimate the power of a good
ramp and pulley system.
Archaeologists think major work on Stonehenge
continued until around 1500 BCE, and that
in that time, more earthwork features were
dug, and the bluestones were rearranged multiple
times.
But who built the structure and how actually
aren’t the biggest questions scientists
and historians have asked.
Instead, the real mystery is how the stones
got there.
See, the big sarsens are made of sandstone,
and the bluestones are variously formed from
rhyolite, dolerite, and other types of rock.
But none of them match the geology of the
nearby area.
Thankfully, no matter how far a stone has
traveled, it still has the same geologic age
and composition as the formation it came from.
So, after analyzing the mineral makeup of
the stones at Stonehenge, as well as determining
their age with other forms of radiometric
dating, geologists have been able to go hunting
for outcrops that match its features.
And we think we’ve found some answers.
Although there’s still plenty of debate,
many scientists believe the sarsens came from
a region called Marlborough Downs, about 32
kilometers from Stonehenge.
And the bluestones most likely came from the
Preseli Hills of Wales more than 200 kilometers
away.
A 2015 study from the journal Antiquity even
identified a site that not only matches the
geology of the bluestones but also shows evidence
of quarrying during the right time period.
The researchers have suggested this might
actually be a site where Stonehenge rocks
were extracted.
Which is pretty amazing.
Of course, that still doesn’t explain how
people moved the rocks.
It seems like an overwhelming task, to the
point where it’s been proposed that the
rocks weren’t moved by humans at all.
For once, though, I’m not talking about
aliens.
I’m talking about glaciers.
It’s been suggested multiple times that
these huge stones may have been glacial dropstones,
carried by advancing glaciers and deposited
when the ice receded.
But modern archaeologists tend not to agree
with this.
For one thing, they point out that there’s
a lack of good evidence for glacial activity
on the Salisbury Plain.
We don’t see any major piles of glacier-carried
rocks, and certainly no deposits of the type
of stones used to build Stonehenge.
And for another, they argue you don’t need
glaciers to explain the movement of these
megaliths.
Again, human ingenuity is enough.
For example, some researchers think the rocks
may have traveled over water.
Ancient peoples could have loaded them onto
boats and carted them along rivers and coastlines.
.Some people have even traced out specific
waterways that could have taken the bluestones
from the Preseli Hills in Wales all the way
to Stonehenge
On the other hand, the stones could have also
moved over land.
In 2016, a group of students from University
College London conducted an experiment to
test just how hard it would be to move a megalith.
Inspired by technologies from ancient Japan,
they constructed a large wooden sleigh laid
on top of a path of wooden logs.
They put roughly one-metric-ton of stone on
the sleigh, and pulled it across London’s
Gordon Square.
With only ten people pulling, they were able
to move the rock up to three and a half kilometers
per hour.
So maybe Stonehenge architects used a similar
technique.
Or, like other scientists have pointed out,
maybe they just rounded up a bunch of people
and carried the rocks.
All in all, it’s hard to say which of these
ideas — if any — is closest to the truth,
because no one has found any direct evidence
of a transport route.
It has, after all, been an awful long time.
But there’s good reason to suspect people
were at least capable of moving these megaliths
without any help from magic or tractor beams.
Historians are still investigating why they
might have gone through so much trouble, but
either way, with all of the hard work that
went into building it, it’s pretty clear
that Stonehenge was important.
It may have served a number of purposes, but
scientists know for sure that it was a long-used
burial ground.
The cremated remains of more than 60 people
have been extracted from beneath the monument,
and it’s estimated that there may have been
more than 150 burials at the site over its
centuries of use.
For a long time, we didn’t know who these
people were, but recent research ha s begun
to unravel that mystery, too.
New excavations at Stonehenge in 2008 opened
up the doors for more modern scientific analyses
on these remains, including a technique called
stable isotope analysis.
Unlike radiocarbon dating, this method looks
at isotopes that haven’t decayed much over
time.
And instead of being used to determine age,
it can be used to examine the chemical makeup
of remains.
Kind of like the stones themselves, the bodies
at Stonehenge hold the chemical signatures
of the environments they lived in, picked
up from the water they drank and the locally-grown
food they ate.
That can tell scientists where they likely
lived.
A 2018 study in Scientific Reports found that
some of the bodies had isotopic signatures
that matched the local environment.
So these were probably people who lived nearby.
But others had signatures pointing to more
distant regions like Devon or Wales.
Since these signatures are also affected by
the type of wood used for the cremation process,
the .
It’s not yet clear exactly who these people
were, but it seems people from near and far
were buried here, maybe because their relatives
were, or because this site was used by a culture
that was often on the move.
More digging and more research will hopefully
tell.
Regardless, whoever it was that built, used,
and buried their dead at Stonehenge, we do
know that they weren’t alone.
Whether because of the environment or other
factors, the Salisbury Plain is one of the
richest archaeological regions in the world.
There are hundreds of other burial sites and
ancient remains, and researchers have used
all kinds of cool methods to investigate them
— including ground-penetrating radar and
lasers.
So there may still be a lot of mystery surrounding
Stonehenge, but those questions aren’t unanswerable.
And as we keep researching and introducing
newer technologies, more science — and more
knowledge — is yet to come.
Unlike the builders of Stonehenge, you probably
won’t be dragging megaliths across the countryside
any time soon.
But if you want to get in touch with your
inner Bronze Age human, you can always try
pottery.b
Archaeologists have found plenty of pottery
shards around Salisbury Plain, and thanks
to Skillshare, you can learn to make some
of your own, too.
In this class, called Building Dishes by Hand,
artist Emily Reinhardt teaches you how to
make ceramic dishes at home, without having
to go out and buy a potter’s wheel.
Which is pretty helpful, if you’re just
looking for something new to try out.
Also, there’s just something really satisfying
about storing your pins or loose change in
a little plate you made all by yourself.
Skillshare has classes on everything from
design to public speaking.
And right now, Skillshare is offering SciShow
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over 20,000 classes for free!
To check it out, you can follow the link in
the description.
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