The druids were about 2,000 years too late
You've probably heard the Stonehenge-druids connection. It wasn't invented in ancient times: in the 17th century, antiquarian John Aubrey called the stone circle a temple of Celtic priests, and 100 years later William Stukeley took up the idea. Radiocarbon dating separated these stories: the ditch and bank were built around 3,000 BCE, the sarsens around 2500 BCE. Druids appear in written sources almost 2,000 years later.
The Merlin version is older: in the 12th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that the wizard moved the stones from Ireland, where giants had brought them.
A settlement 3 kilometers from Stonehenge
The builders did not live by the stones. At Durrington Walls, about 3 kilometers from the circle, archaeologists excavated a Neolithic settlement: chalk floors, hearths, piles of bones. The bones are mostly pig bones - traces not of everyday life but of feasts: meat was roasted and thrown away unfinished. Isotopes in the animals' teeth show that livestock was driven from hundreds of kilometers away: people came from across the island.
Those who stayed here forever were examined too. In early pits around the edge of the site lie the cremated remains of several dozen people. Strontium in bones preserves a trace of the place where someone spent their final years - and for some of the buried, it is not local.
About 4 out of 10 people examined spent their final years away from Stonehenge: isotopes point to western Britain, where the bluestones came from too.
Ancient DNA adds a twist: the builders were descendants of farmers who came from southern Europe, and their line here was almost cut off. After 2400 BCE, new people arrived on the island, and the gene pool was, by estimates, replaced by about 9 tenths. Some later alterations to the circle happened in their time.
Rope, wood, and a great many hands
They had neither metal nor the wheel. The largest sarsens weigh around 25 tons and came from about 25 kilometers away, from hills to the north. The bluestones are lighter, but traveled about 230 kilometers from Wales - exactly how is still debated. In an experiment by London archaeologists, 10 people were enough to move a 1-ton stone on a sledge over logs.
A team pulls a rope to a shared count: they gather themselves on the inhale, then pull on the exhale. Breathe in this rhythm - it makes their day easier to imagine.
Raising a pillar is a different kind of task: it takes precision, not mass. The sequence is visible in the pits themselves: their walls left impressions in the chalk.
Dig a sloped pit. One wall was vertical, the other sloped: the stone slid down it base first.
Pull with ropes. The pillar was pulled upright with ropes and levers, with its base braced against the vertical wall.
Pack the gap. The pit around the base was packed with rubble - and it still holds.
Set the lintel. A tenon on top, a socket in the lintel: a carpentry technique in stone.
Finish reading in the Miqo app
1 more minute, then a quiz at the end. Find it under “History → Mysteries”
Point your phone camera here to open the App Store or Google Play.
Sources
- Dating - Historic England
- sarsens and livestock at feasts - Science Advances, 2020 and 2019
- remains - Scientific Reports, 2018
- population - Nature, 2018