We just discovered it five kilometers from the one everyone knows

On June 21 and as is tradition, thousands of people they met Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice. Meanwhile, a short distance away, an ancient structure discovered in an excavation less than a decade ago He passed the change of season alone: ​​a sort of “primordial Stonehenge” 500 years older than the famous one and which probably served as the first prototype of the solar alignment of the well-known Cromlech.

The discovery. The Bulford site, in Wiltshire, is just five kilometers from Stonehenge. The Wessex Archeology team carried out the excavation between 2015 and 2017 and, after analyzing the materials, they will publish the academic paper at the end of this year. There they found 48 pits that have been dated by radiocarbon: they date back to approximately 2950 BC. In the center of the site, the holes of two enormous wooden posts (which have not survived the passage of time) that were driven into the ground, 120 meters apart and precisely aligned towards where the sun rises on the summer solstice and where it sets on the winter solstice.

Why is it important. As says Phil Hardingdirector of research at Wessex Archaeology, what makes this structure so relevant is how early it is: “Until now, our knowledge of this achievement of ancient astronomy was based on Stonehenge and other monuments of a similar period, but what we have discovered at Bulford is 500 years older than the famous stones we all know.” This discovery shows that this tradition came from before, that the Neolithic communities already knew and marked the solar cycles centuries before Stonehenge. In other words, Stonehenge did not invent the relationship with the sun: it inherited it and made it the monument that everyone knows.

He Dr. Fabio Silva contextualizes itputting Stonehenge in its place: “This discovery helps us understand Stonehenge not as a singular creation, but as part of a much longer conversation between people, land and sky. The alignment shows that communities were already relating to the summer and winter solstices in the Stonehenge landscape, centuries before the sarsen stones were raised.”

Context. The Bulford site was discovered because the British Ministry of Defense needed to build housing for soldiers returning from Germany and, by law, it is mandatory to apply preventive archeology before any work. Among the recovered materials Grooved Ware style potteryanimal bones, flint and charcoal, suggesting that large groups of people gathered there for short periods of time, probably to celebrate the solar cycle. Come on, like now. A curiosity: this type of ceramic is native to the Scottish Orkney Islands, and its presence shows that at that time there were already cultural contacts within a radius of hundreds of kilometers.

In detail. One of the graves, which could have been part of an observation station, contained a very rare disc-shaped flint knife. Its location is not random: it was probably placed as a symbolic reference to the sun. Dr. Fabio Silva, of Stone x Sky and Skyscape Academy, confirmed the alignment of the two poles: through digital reconstructions of the sky and horizon of the time, he determined that it coincides with the solstices with an accuracy of one degree.

The team also suggests that a similar structure existed in the earliest phase of Stonehenge, but that later work probably erased it. A true paradox: Stonehenge, by growing and improving, was able to destroy its own origin.

Yes, but. In the absence of the academic paper and its review to have a more exhaustive analysis on the table, there is a central limitation: the alignment is based on only two posts. As warns for National Geographic Jim Leary of York University: “two post holes does not make a particularly compelling alignment.” In this sense, he explains that he would expect a longer row to support that interpretation. Vince Gaffney, landscape archaeologist at the University of Bradford and lead scientist on the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, matches in that it is difficult to say with certainty whether it was a deliberate alignment: “It is only two points, but it is not impossible.”

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Cover | Priyank V