Stonehenge: Discovery 'challenges' preconceptions says expert

When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters.Sometimes they’ll include recommendations for other related newsletters or services we offer.Our Privacy Notice explains more about how we use your data, and your rights.You can unsubscribe at any time.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson, from University College London (UCL), made a breakthrough in understanding the famed monument last month with the discovery of an ancient stone structure at Waun Mawn, in the Preseli Hills. Experts now theorise the dismantled monument in Wales became the “building blocks” of the Stonehenge attraction that stands in Salisbury, Wiltshire, today. Yet who the ancient Neolithic Stonehenge builders were of the structure, and its surrounding sites, continues to raise questions.

Anthropologist and author Mary-Ann Ochota revealed during the English Heritage’s ‘Secrets of Our Sites’ series how clues have helped paint a picture.

She said: “Intriguing evidence comes out of Durrington Walls.

“What you can see in the landscape over there is an absolutely enormous earthwork that carries on across this field and then down there as well.

“It’s another henge enclosure with a bank and then a ditch, but this one is a super henge.

“This is a tiny slither of what was originally there.”

The large Neolithic settlement and later henge enclosure is located in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site and continues to be probed by experts.

Despite this, some incredible finds have emerged already.

Ms Ochota added: “We have found that it would have been bright white cut through to the chalk and it would have been much higher, and the ditch much deeper.

“That earthwork was built after some houses had fallen into disrepair and so the archaeologists think it was constructed in order to memorialise what had already happened.

“Another intriguing piece of evidence are the animal remains found at Durrington Walls, over 38,000 bones from pigs and cattle have been discovered that were butchered and cooked.

“From isotope analysis of the bones, we know that some of those animals were raised in Wales, and others in northern Britain.”

The Neolithic period is the final division of the Stone Age, with a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world.

It is first seen about 12,000 years ago when the first developments of farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East and later in other parts of the world.

Many believed our Neolithic ancestors lived a basic life, but Ms Ochota detailed how evidence suggests some even experienced luxury.

DONT MISS
End of the world: How archaeologist discovered ‘real Maayan doomsday’ [VIDEO]
Mayan DISCOVERY: How find in ancient city ‘reveals creation story’ [CLAIM]
Egypt: How ‘greatest archaeological find of all time’ stunned expert [REVEALED]

She continued in December: “They must have come here on the hoof in order to be fresh meat – we don’t know whether that means were complex trading networks across Britain at that time, or people were coming here with their animals.

“When the remains of these animal meat feasts were thrown into the ground, there was still plenty of meat attached to the bones, which indicates that they could afford to throw meat away.

“So it challenges all our preconceptions about what life in the Neolithic was like because we know that at least some people were eating very well.

“They were eating so well they could afford food wastage.

“So who was using this site and who came here with their animals for a big barbecue? It’s anyone’s guess.”

Source: Read Full Article