The world famous Stonehenge is still full of secrets. New research now shows that the mysterious monument in prehistoric times only needed to be viewed and approached from one specific direction. And that is yet another proof that Stonehenge had an important astronomical function.
For those who walked 4500 years ago during the sunset on the shortest day of the year (winter solstice) via the access road on the northeast side towards Stonehenge, it must have been a beautiful sight. Spectators slowly saw the last thin rays of the sun disappear behind the largest and most beautifully finished stones of the mysterious monument. That sunset heralded the moment when the days got longer again.
Unknown details
Commissioned by the British heritage organization English Heritage, scientists examined the surface of the prehistoric stones with great precision. They did this with the most modern 3D laser techniques. This resulted in unknown details that are not visible to the naked eye.
Researchers could conclude that the stones on the northeast side are not only the largest and most uniform, but also that those stones were once beautifully finished. The builders had removed the coarse, brown and gray exterior of the bricks to reveal a fine, almost glossy white-grey layer. The large transverse stones were also carefully worked.
On the opposite outside of the circle, the builders took much less effort to finish the stones nicely. Of the megaliths on the southwest side and in the center of Stonehenge, only the side of the stones that was visible from the center of the circle or from the northeast was found to have been worked. It seems that Stonehenge was not intended to be viewed from other directions at all.
Both during the winter solstice and the summer solstice, when on the longest day of the year the sun rises precisely in the northeast and makes the stones gleam, the effect of this finish must have been magnificent. Incidentally, it has been known for some time that Stonehenge was built on the axes of the summer and winter solstices.
According to British experts, the results of this research mainly show how much effort the builders put in to achieve a spectacular effect during the solstices. This shows that the winter solstice in particular had an important meaning for the builders. Just like so much about Stonehenge, it is not yet clear what this meaning exactly entailed.
Graffiti
In addition to new clues about Stonehenge's importance during the annual solstices, the researchers also found a variety of small inscriptions. In later prehistoric times, visitors carved dozens of small images of axes or other tools into the stones. Stonehenge was already more than a thousand years old at the time. The researchers say it is remarkable that this prehistoric graffiti was also applied to the finished side of the stones. "As if people already didn't know the importance of the monument and how it worked," said one of the researchers in the British newspaper The Guardian .
In addition to prehistoric graffiti, the researchers also discovered a lot of 'contamination' of the monument from the nineteenth century, when many wealthy Englishmen from the Victorian era visited the monument. They often scratched their names, origin and date of visit into the stone. This in turn provides valuable information about Stonehenge's function as a tourist attraction in later centuries.
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