Stonehenge was built to unify ancient Britons during a “crisis” caused by migration from mainland Europe, researchers have suggested.
More than 4,000 years ago, The British Isles was facing a “period of substantial population replacement” amid the arrival of European communities, known to archaeologists as the Beaker people.
This wave of migrants, whose ancestry lay in central Europe and further east to the Steppes, brought knowledge of metalworking and the wheel. Over time, the newcomers gradually replaced the indigenous population.
Now researchers have suggested that the stone circle at Stonehenge may have been created to unite early farming communities across the British Isles in response to the influx of new people.
It comes after evidence showed the monument’s six-tonne Altar Stone did not orginate from Wales as previously thought, but the far north of Scotland.
“This was a period of substantial population replacement following the arrival from continental Europe of Beaker-using communities with steppe ancestry,” Prof Mike Parker Pearson, from the UCL Institute of Archaeology, and Professor Richard Bevins, of Aberystwyth University, said in the new research paper.
“The Altar Stone’s incorporation into Stonehenge as an attempt at unity may have been a response to a legitimation crisis brought on by this influx of new people.”
But by the end of the five-stage construction sequence of Stonehenge that included the stone circle, Britain’s “insular Neolithic population appears to have been largely replaced”, the authors note. They conclude: “As an attempt at unification, Stonehenge was ultimately a failure.”
It has been known for a long time that the stones came from further than 12 miles away, but the long-distance links boost the theory that Stonehenge served a unifying purpose in ancient Britain.
“The fact that all of its stones originated from distant regions, making it unique among over 900 stone circles in Britain, suggests that the stone circle may have had a political as well as a religious purpose – as a monument of unification for the peoples of Britain,” said Prof Parker Pearson.
Leading theories on Stonehenge suggest it may have been a site of religious significance, an ancient observatory or a solar calendar. But the latest theory indicates the possibility of a more pragmatic and modern dimension to Stonehenge.
Prof Parker Pearson said: “We’ve known for a while that people came from many different parts of Britain with their pigs and cattle to feast at Durrington Walls, and nearly half the people buried at Stonehenge had lived somewhere other than Salisbury Plain.
“The similarities in architecture and material culture between the Stonehenge area and northern Scotland now make more sense. It’s helped to solve the puzzle of why these distant places had more in common than we might have once thought.”
Stonehenge was built over several phases, the first was a circular ditch and bank constructed around 5,000 years ago with a ring of 56 timber or stone posts.
Some 500 years after the bluestones arrived from Wales, larger sarsen stones came from Marlborough Downs 15 miles away and formed the outer circle and inner trilithon horseshoes seen today.
It is during this time that the Altar Stone is also thought to have arrived from Scotland – with the latest research suggesting it may have been a gift from the people of northern Scotland as part of an alliance.