megaliths
Construction boom of places of worship – the last gasp of Stone Age people
The finds were recovered 50 years ago, but only now dated.
© University Cardiff / Commons
The places of worship with their megaliths did not have to be built for centuries. A mega system was completed in just 35 years. Researchers believe the places of worship were meant to stop invaders and the end of Stone Age culture.
The people of the Neolithic built gigantic places of worship from megaliths. The most famous is Stonehenge, used for burials and rituals by many generations. Until now it was assumed that these sites were built for many centuries. It seemed more plausible that such construction would take a long time for a society with few free resources. Especially since the movement and processing of the large stones with the means of that time bordered on a miracle.
New dating
Now there is clear evidence that Neolithic builders worked much faster. A study published by the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society suggests that a structure like Mount Pleasant Henge near Dorchester was constructed in a timeframe of just 35 to 125 years. The investigation is based on radiocarbon dating of finds that were found there around 50 years ago but have not yet been accurately dated.
The Mount Pleasant complex originally had a wood and stone monument at its center, the “henge” – a circular enclosure – was protected on the outside by a palisade of large felled trees. Thousands of trees had to be felled, transported and processed. The ditches outside the palisade were ten meters wide and five meters deep. The enclosures separated the cult site from the human world. The facility is one of the five well-known mega-henges, it is as big as nine football pitches.
Chopping from antlers
The workers used antler picks to dig the trenches. The remains of their tools can be dated very precisely with today’s means. There must have been hectic activity on the construction site. The entire complex was essentially built in just 35 years, a total of 125 years of work. “The construction of Mount Pleasant required huge numbers of people digging these trenches with simple tools like antler picks,” says lead author Susan Greaney, an archaeologist in Cardiff.
The concentration of construction over such a short period of time has far-reaching implications for understanding Neolithic society. This effort of building can hardly have been accomplished alongside the rest of life. A lot of workers must have gathered at this place and you must have been able to take care of these people on the construction site.
The end of a long age
The construction boom of Mount Pleasant Henge took place on an epochal threshold. It was the last heyday of Neolithic man, shortly after which the original inhabitants were supplanted by newcomers. “That’s at the very end of the Neolithic, at the very end of the Stone Age. What comes immediately after that is the arrival of people from the continent,” Greaney said. “They own the first metals that come like this to Britain and they have different, new ways of doing things – new types of pottery, probably new religious beliefs. They treat their dead in different ways. There’s a shift on a really big scale .”
rearing up before the end
The researchers assume that in southern Britain around 2,500 BC. A frantic building program was underway just before mainland people arrived on the island. “The picture we’re seeing is an explosion of construction activity, with large and labor intensive monuments being erected across southern England and perhaps even further afield.” For the people of the Stone Age culture it was a time of distress and fear of what was to come. “You could think of it as the last gasp of the Stone Age. They saw the changes coming and chose to resist them – maybe they thought, ‘We don’t need these innovations. We’re going to build bigger and better monuments to our gods. We will stick to what we know.”
Whatever the Stone Age people hoped for in building the gigantic places of worship, they could not stop the invasion of the newcomers from the continent. It is also conceivable that their society became more exhausted due to the stresses of the construction program and thus more susceptible to external threats.
Sources: GuardiansPRoceedings of the Prehistoric Society
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