Stonehenge and its enigma are solved as a study of the monument revealed the construction was no accident but intentional.
Analysis of the ancient monument shows each stone was a marker for a specific time of the year. Amazingly, it allowed the ancient people to know when the solstices were to come and calculated 365.25 days a year.
Ancient Calendar
Archeologist Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University; conducted a study to analyze and understand the nature of the monument, reported the Express UK.
What was found out the Henge predicted the solstices per year from when it was built, as it had included calculations where the Earth would be tilting at the most in its axis from the sun. Thus, looking at where the shadows were, those alive at that time depended on it to indicate the longest and shortest days.
From antiquarian William Stukeley, people have suggested that Stonehenge featured some type of calendar owing to its apparent solstitial synchronization. Discoveries have shown that the year embedded in the alignments of the stones is tropical.
The Sarsens
According to Live Science, Prof. Darvill and his data had pointed to the heavy stone slabs or Sarsens that were transported and built to where they are now in 2500 BC. But in one phase, not several as discovered.
Analysis of the large slabs shows they are from the Marlborough Downs about 15 miles at the north side of the Salisbury Plain. All the stones were placed simultaneously as a single unit when Stonehenge was built.
Using the new data, the archeologist further examined if there is more to the layout of the henge in comparison to other calendar systems of the later Neolithic era.
Incorporated in the circular formation is the solar calendar that marked all phases in a year that ancient people of Wiltshire would plan their yearly activities from, and it was a straightforward calendar, too, Darvill noted.
A Measure of Time
The structure works as a calendar that each sarsen slab, 30 of them, represents a day in a month, in a sub number of three weeks every ten days. The beginning of each week is marked by a distinct stone found inside the sarsen circle.
More sophisticated functions of the ancient monument are tracking the solar year with a supplementary or intercalary of five days, representing a leap day, factored into the formation.
Per Ancient-Wisdom, the five Trilithons, which are two stones with one straddling the tops in the center formation, represent an intercalary month dedicated to the site's gods. The four 'Station Stones' not in the circle of sarsens marked the progression to a leap day.
The professor would say the progress to summer and the stone per year easily marked the winter solstices. The addition of the trilithons would help notice a winter solstice that would be close to a new year of the ancient calendar.
Depending on the solar calendar more complex than a more straightforward Gregorian calendar, ancients are vastly different. More than one culture in the stone age used the henge to determine days of the year. He added the solar calendar would find its way to the eastern Mediterranean after 3000 BC. It was used by the Egyptians as its civil calendar in 2700 and later in the Old Kingdom by 2600 BC.
The Stonehenge and its calendar system would find their way to others societies and add to the culture of societies with an element of time. It was more than a ring of sarsens as the professor.
