It is one of many world’s most iconic historic websites and a British cultural icon, but it surely appears the talk over how and why Stonehenge was constructed some 5,000 years in the past is way from over.
A brand new paper claims to “debunk” a idea proposed final 12 months that the Wilshire monument served as a photo voltaic calendar, serving to individuals hold observe of the times of the 12 months.
The Italian and Spanish specialists argue that this declare is “completely baseless” and primarily based on “stretched interpretations, numerology and unsupported analogies”.
The British researcher behind the speculation thinks that Stonehenge’s giant sandstone slabs, known as sarsens, every represented a single day in a month, making all the website one big timekeeping machine.
He reacted to contemporary criticism of his idea, calling it “a basic piece of rant with no conclusion” that’s “misinformed” and “picks corners.”
The brand new article was written by Dr. Giulio Magli of the Milan Polytechnic and by Professor Juan Antonio Belmonte of the College of La Laguna in Tenerife.
“Stonehenge is a surprisingly advanced monument, which might solely be understood by taking into consideration its panorama and the chronology of its totally different phases over the centuries,” they are saying.
‘In a latest article, the creator proposed that Stonehenge’s sarsen part design was designed to characterize a calendar 12 months of 365.25 days.
“The aim of this letter is to point out that this concept is with out basis, being primarily based as it’s on a variety of strained interpretations, numerology and unsupported analogies with different cultures.”
The calendar idea was proposed final 12 months by Professor Timothy Darvill, who thinks Stonehenge would have allowed historical locals to plot a 365.25-day photo voltaic 12 months calibrated by solstice alignment, taking inspiration from historical Egypt.
Professor Darvill known as the newly revealed evaluation ‘a basic piece of rant and not using a conclusion’.
“Their fundamental drawback just isn’t actually with my concepts however slightly the consensus of Egyptologists that I quote in my authentic article,” the British researcher instructed MailOnline.
‘It is easy to argue that somebody is mistaken, however what’s their proof? And the way precisely do they interpret the association of the stones at Stonehenge?’
For his studio revealed in Antiquities a 12 months in the past, Professor Darvillanalyzed the quantity and placement of Stonehenge’s giant sandstone slabs, known as sarsens.
The Sarsens type all 15 stones of Stonehenge’s central horseshoe, the posts and lintels of the outer circle, in addition to peripheral stones such because the Heel Stone, Slaughter Stone and Station Stones.
Stonehenge, Professor Darvill stated, was a “easy and chic” perpetual calendar primarily based on a tropical photo voltaic 12 months of 365.25 days.
The whole website was the bodily illustration of 1 month (lasting 30 days) and the 30 stones within the sarsen circle every represented at some point throughout the month.
Folks at Stonehenge seemingly marked the times of the month every represented by a stone, maybe utilizing a small stone or wood peg, he instructed MailOnline on the time.
However the Italian and Spanish duo, each astronomers, wholeheartedly reject this idea by calling it “numerology” (the pseudo-scientific research of the hidden relationships between numbers and ideas).
Additionally they level out that just about half of the stones within the circle have been misplaced and it’s “doable that they have been additionally small, thus breaking the magic of the speculation”.
It’s already recognized that all the Stonehenge plan is positioned in relation to the solstices, i.e. the acute limits of the motion of the suns.
English Heritage explains: ‘At Stonehenge on the summer time solstice, the solar rises behind the Heel Stone within the north-east of the horizon and its first rays shine into the center of Stonehenge.
“Observers at Stonehenge on the winter solstice, standing on the entrance to the enclosure and going through the middle of the stones, can watch the solar set within the southwestern a part of the horizon.”
Professor Darvill thinks that the inhabitants of the well-known henge not solely used to maintain observe of the occasions of the 12 months, but additionally the times of the month.
“I feel what they did was simply to mark the times represented by the stone,” he instructed MailOnline.
“We now have some later prehistoric calendars the place they checklist the times and have a gap subsequent to every one to allow them to mark them with a peg.”
“I feel one thing related would have occurred at Stonehenge, perhaps utilizing a small stone or a wood peg.”
Professor Darvill additionally thinks the calendar may mark the 12 month-to-month cycles of 30 days every which add as much as a 12 months.
However astronomers countered by calling the machine “unknown” and stating that the 12 months should not represented by the monument.
Professor Darvill in the end thinks the brand new paper ‘pinches corners with a variety of claims supported solely by the content material of their earlier publications’.
“Additionally they fall into the entice that made many archaeo-astronomers consider that prehistoric individuals labored with a excessive degree of precision,” he instructed MailOnline.
“They did not do this. They used observations and poles and bits of string. The theodolite and the compass have been but to be invented.”
Whereas nobody may be sure why Stonehenge was constructed, there has lengthy been a faculty of thought that served as an historical calendar, however the British skilled pinpointed the way it most likely labored.
Different theories embrace that it was a cult heart for therapeutic, a temple, a spot the place ancestors have been worshiped, or perhaps a cemetery.
MailOnline has reached out to Dr Magli and Professor Belmonte about any theories they could have concerning the goal of Stonehenge.
Dr. Magli replied: “We predict the present archaeological/archaeoastronomical interpretation of Stonehenge as a spot symbolically associated to ancestors and the winter solstice is appropriate, so we have no new theories of our personal.”
‘Curiously, Darwill credit us with exaggerating the accuracy of the alignment when it is fairly the other; let’s simply say it wasn’t correct sufficient to work as a tuning for the calendar, as he proposed.’
Their new article has been revealed within the journal Antiquity.
