Многие годы у учёных было огромное количество предположений относительно происхождения и предназначения Стоунхенджа — доисторического каменного монумента. Кто-то считал, что это был некий солнечный календарь, кто-то видел в нагромождении плит остатки древней обсерватории, а некоторые вообще полагали, что это был храм.

Как оказалось, все они были изначально неверными. Согласно недавним раскопкам, стало понятно, что Стоунхендж — это элитное кладбище образца каменного века. Говорят, что это также было местом погребения давно забытой королевской семьи. Благодаря найденным останкам, учёные установили, что первые захоронения проводились здесь ещё 3 тысячи лет до нашей эры. Строительство данного архитектурного памятника проходило на протяжении огромного количества времени. В нём принимали участие многие поколения.


Работы над сооружением закончились только к 2400 году до нашей эры. С тех пор его начали посещать европейцы, некоторые из которых были там же погребены.


For centuries scientists and historians have argued over what Stonehenge was built for.

Some said the grim monument - with its careful alignment to the midsummer solstice - was a giant calendar or observatory. Others insisted it was a temple of healing - or a cathedral to some unknown gods.

But now archaeologists claim they could have solved the mystery of the stones on Salisbury Plain after discovering evidence that it was a cemetery for the Stone Age elite. They say it may even have been the burial ground for a long-forgotten royal family.

The findings are based on the first radiocarbon dating of human teeth and bones discovered at the site in the 1950s.

The tests show the bones were buried around 3000BC - the same time Stonehenge was being created in what is now Wiltshire. A team led by Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University argues that it was temple of the dead and used as a cemetery for at least 500 years.

'I don't think it was the common people getting buried at Stonehenge,' the professor said yesterday.

'Archaeologists have long speculated about whether Stonehenge was put up by prehistorical chiefs, perhaps even royalty, and the new results suggest that not only is this likely to have been the case, but it also was the resting place of their mortal remains.' The first phase Stonehenge, built in 3000BC, was a ditch and bank which enclosed a circle of 56 holes. The holes could have housed wooden posts.

Around 2600BC, 82 bluestones, some weighing four tons, were brought from Pembrokeshire 200 miles away and placed in two circles inside the earthworks.

Around 150 years later, the ancient Britons mined the sarsen stones at Marlborough, weighing 50 tons each, cut them to shape and rolled them on sledges and tree trunks 25 miles south to Stonehenge.

The bluestones were repositioned and the sarsens added, creating the Stonehenge we see today. Over the years, archaeologists have discovered the remains of 52 burials in the ditch surrounding the stones.

Three sets of remains were removed in the 1950s and kept at nearby Salisbury Museum. Professor Parker Pearson carried out his radiocarbon tests on these.

The earliest pile of burned bones and teeth was dated to between 3030 and 2880BC - roughly the time when Stonehenge's ditch was being built. A second burial, belonging to a man, was found in the ditch and was dated to 2930 - 2870BC. The most recent was a woman in her mid-20s and was dated to 2570 to 2340BC - when the sarsen stones were going up.

Scientists had believed the bones were buried hundreds of years after the stone circle was created.

Professor Parker Pearson - whose study is featured in the June issue of National Geographic Magazine - believes up to 240 bodies may be buried at Stonehenge.

Last year, the same researchers found evidence of a large settlement of houses nearby. They said the latest findings reinforced their belief that the settlement and Stonehenge form part of a larger ceremonial complex along the nearby Avon that also included the vast earth mound at Silbury Hill. The stone circle represented death - while a timber circle two miles away represented life.

'What we suspect is that the river is the conduit between the two realms of the living and the dead,' Professor Parker Pearson said.

Nearly 5,000 years ago - as Stonehenge was being laboriously pieced together - was a time of dramatic and unsettling change for the early Britons.

New technology in the shape of metals was forcing them to change the way they lived and worked. Foreigners from Europe were arriving by boats in unprecedented numbers and settling in the country.

And rituals and traditions going back centuries were being lost in favour of a flood of new ideas.

Stonehenge was created at the tail end of the British Stone Age - when the old flint and bone tools were being replaced by metal arrows and axes.

Britons at that time were farmers, living in small villages. Their homes were made of wooden stakes and twigs, covered with a thick layer of wattle and daub - or clay and chalk. A typical hut covered 25 square yards - plenty of room for a large family to huddle around the central oval fireplace.

Farming had been introduced 1,000 years before and the late neolithic Britons were adept at growing wheat and barley, and keeping pigs and sheep.
It is possible they made cider and beer, and ground wheat into flour for bread and cakes. They still relied on wild food --supplementing their diet with apples, cherries, nuts, honey, peas, lentils and berries.

Clothes were primitive - leather coats and jackets, woollen leggings and maybe even simple shoes made of skins bound with twine.

No one knows what gods these people worshipped, but the alignment of Stonehenge to the solstice shows that the Sun was important.

'The period around 3000BC was the calm before the storm,' said Professor Parker Pearson. 'By 2400BC - just 600 years later -everything was changing. This was just 180 generations ago - they are fairly sophisticated people. It's a transitional period. Britain is increasingly becoming open to ideas from the Continent.'

By 2400BC - when Stonehenge had been completed - visitors from Europe were common. They included the Amesbury Archer, a wealthy figure from central Europe who was buried near Stonehenge with metal tools, gold jewellery and a quiver of arrows.

By then, Britain had been shaken out of isolation and a new culture was appearing.

The traditional British way of dealing with the dead, for instance, was going out of fashion. The Britons of 3000BC used to leave their dead out for wild animals, or bury cremated bones in pots. In the new era, they adopted the European tradition of burials.