Stonehenge mystery has been one that has kept historians, scientists and archeologists intrigued for over centuries; but now, a group of researchers has pointed out that it could have been a calendar rather than a place where rituals and ceremonies took place.
A new study by Timothy Darvill, a professor of archeology at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom, has concluded that the different stones and locations served as a solar calendar that kept track of days and weeks.
Experts found that there are two types of stones in Stonehenge: the larger sarsen stones and smaller bluestone monoliths from Wales.
According to the study, the 30 larger upright stones that support 30 horizontal lintels represent the days within a month; and within these, there are stones in the circle that mark the start of three 10-day weeks.
“Finding a solar calendar represented in the architecture of Stonehenge opens up a whole new way of seeing the monument as a place for the living,” Darvill said in a statement.
The study also points out that the civilization that laid the calendar used smaller stones outside the horseshoe arrangement to keep track of leap years. This could have been a way to regularise festivals and ceremonies according to the study.
Darvill claims that this theory underlines a possible influence of other civilizations like the Egyptian or those in the Mediterranean mainly because it is well-known that they used solar calendars; therefore, Stonehenge functioning as a way to keep track of the sun movement will mean that the ones who build it were part of a more interconnected world than what we thought.
The findings of the study will be published in the journal Antiquity, however, they will remain as a possible explanation of the purpose of Stonehenge.