An “interconnected world” 4,500 years ago? Stonehenge unveils mysteries for a “unique” exhibition

United Kingdom (AFP) .- Imagine hundreds of workers who arrived to build a solar temple 4,500 years ago in an “interconnected” Europe, proposes archaeologist Susan Greaney among the stones of Stonehenge, an English Neolithic complex willing to unveil mysteries in an exhibition ” Unique” from the British Museum.

“It is a temple aligned with the movements of the sun”explains this person in charge of English Heritage, a British organization that manages the monument, 140 km west of London, formed by the remains of two concentric circles of enormous stones carved to form columns and lintels at a time when there were no metal utensils.

With what could have been an altar in the center, the two main doors are aligned so that the sun rises through one on the longest day of the year, June 21, and through the opposite it sets on the shortest, December 21. .

“These people were farmers, they had crops, they had animals” and “the cycle of the year would be an essential part of their way of life,” adds Greaney as the sun rises over the horizon of the vast prairie in a frigid dawn.

Adding more mystery to a place that has spawned countless legends, experts recently determined that many of these stones come from a site more than 250 km away.

They could have been brought with them by the builders, who migrated looking for more fertile land, for their symbolic value.perhaps related to their ancestors since cremation remains were also found, explains Neil Wilkin, curator of the exhibition the world of stonehengeorganized from February 17 to July 17 by the British Museum in London.

With it, he says, he hopes to “bring new light” -thanks to recent discoveries through DNA and materials analysis- and to dismantle the myth of the primitive cavemen, presenting these skillful builders who, around the year 2,500 BC, showed sophisticated knowledge and practices.

“Volunteers” come from afar

Declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, Stonehenge was not, Greaney argues, built by slaves but by “volunteers” moved on a kind of spiritual pilgrimage.

“Maybe once in your life, you were going to spend a year helping with the great communal religious project, which had to resolve (…) the relationship with the gods,” he explains.

In 2004, 3 km from here, in Durrington Walls, the remains of small houses were found, made of intertwined branches and covered with plaster, where hundreds of workers from faraway places could stay, dressed in natural fiber fabrics and wearing leather slippers. stuffed with grass against the cold.

In the exhibition, Wilkin also seeks to establish the links of these peoples with the European continent in an “interconnected world” by great migrations.

To begin with, “the idea of ​​becoming farmers came from the continent,” he says. “So we tracked that movement through the objects that moved with them.”

Like an ax head made from green jadeite mined 1,300 km from here, in the Italian Alps, and brought to the region 6,000 years ago. It is held at the Wiltshire Museum along with other pieces from local prehistory, including a red glass bead from the Mediterranean, which demonstrate these extensive European connections.

“Many” Stonehenges

To put Stonehenge in perspective, the British Museum will bring together 430 objects on loan from 35 collections. “It’s a unique opportunity to see all this material together,” says Adrian Green, director of the Salisbury Museum, which is contributing to the show.

In fact, this entire area of ​​south-west England is dotted with Neolithic monuments, such as Woodhenge -remains of a circular structure formed by trunks-, West Kennet Long Barrow -five stone funerary chambers- or Avebury Stone Circle -three times bigger than Stonehenge- with stones weighing up to 100 tons and a moat 9 meters deep.

The region hopes to take advantage of the media boost from the exhibition to attract visitors again -1 million came annually to Stonehenge before the pandemic- with a tourist route named Great West Way.

Because if only 100 years after its construction Stonehenge lost its original use, with the arrival of peoples who brought mastery of metals from the continent and with it a revolutionary cultural change, the place never ceased to fascinate and each generation has given its mystical use.

Thus, “there is not one Stonehenge, but many”, says Wilkin.

Many centuries later, the Celtic Druids still gather thousands of people here at each winter and summer solstice.