Few ancient monuments are shrouded in as much mystery as Stonehenge, the eerie prehistoric temple in southern England that began construction almost 5,000 years ago. The builders and designers left no written words to explain its meaning to them, nor do we know what it was used for all those years ago.
Modern analysis has taught us that the British extracted these megaliths – many of which weighed more than 20 tons – from quarries somewhere far away from the Stonehenge site.
We also know that the structure aligns with the sun during summer and winter solstices. But the meaning of this for the people themselves is largely lost.
The only thing experts were Real The question, at least until now, was whether Stonehenge was built to align not only with the sun – an impressive feat for a society that had yet to invent the wheel – but also with the moon.
On June 21, 2024, a team of experts hopes to provide just that answer as the once-in-a-generation lunar standstill begins.
Its meaning? Prof. Michael Parker Pearson, an expert on British later prehistory at University College London, explains BBC Science Focus that if Stonehenge were to be aligned with this event, it would show that its builders “tied the movements of the sun and moon together in a kind of Neolithic, grand, unified theory.”
“With all of Stonehenge’s stones brought from far away (unique among the 900 stone circles in Britain and Ireland) and with so many people buried at Stonehenge, this would have been a monumental attempt to unite people, ancestors, land and cosmos.”
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What is a major lunar standstill?
During a major lunar standstill, which occurs only once every 18.6 years, the Moon reaches its most extreme northern and southern positions in the night sky. Imagine the moon rising and setting much further north and south than normal, making a wider arc across the night sky.
This may resemble the way the sun’s path changes throughout the year, reaching its northernmost and southernmost points during the summer and winter solstices. The word ‘solstice’ is derived from the Latin words ‘sol’ and ‘stice’, which literally means ‘solstice’.
However, there is an important difference between the lunar standstill and that of the sun. The tilt of the Earth relative to the sun ensures that the solstices occur at more or less the same points every year.
The moon’s orbit, on the other hand, also has a tilt, but this tilt changes slightly over time. That’s why the Moon’s most extreme northern and southern positions shift over 18.6-year cycles, creating this dramatic Great Lunar Standstill effect that will occur within the next year or so.
During the great lunar standstill, the moon’s highest point in the sky each month may be higher than the summer sun’s peak, and its low point may be lower than the winter sun’s low point.
- You can watch the southernmost moonrise of the great lunar standstill at Stonehenge on English Heritage’s YouTube channel, where it will be streamed June 21 at 9:30 PM BST (4:30 PM EDT in New York City, 1:30 PM PDT in Los Angeles).
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What does Stonehenge have to do with it?
Stonehenge’s alignment with the summer and winter solstices is well known, with crowds gathering each year to mark the events at the site. But the connection to the harder-to-track lunar cycles is less well understood by experts.
Research shows that burials and cremations took place there between 3000 and 2500 BC, before the large stones were brought to the site.
Many of them were located towards the southernmost rising position of the Moon during major standstills, and at this position three wooden stakes were placed in the bank.
Later, four so-called ‘Station Stones’ were brought to the site, forming a rectangle in the middle.
“The four Station Stones align with the moon’s extreme positions, and researchers have debated for years whether this was intentional, and – if so – how this was achieved and what its purpose might have been,” says Prof. Clive Ruggles , emeritus professor of archaeoastronomy. at the University of Leicester.
The Station Stones themselves were probably used to measure out the iconic ‘sarsen circle’, which was added around 500 years after the first burials at the site, says English Heritage.
Thus, if they are related to the lunar standstill, this would suggest a more fundamental role for the moon in Stonehenge’s architecture than previously thought.
To find out whether the lunar standstill was indeed at the heart of the conception of Stonehenge, academics from the universities of Oxford, Leicester and Bournemouth plan to study the event from now until its end in 2025.
“Unlike the sun, tracking the moon’s extremes is not easy as it requires specific timing and weather conditions,” said Dr Amanda Chadburn, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford.
“We want to understand something of what it was like to experience these extreme moonrises and sunsets and to witness their visual effects on the stones (e.g. patterns of light and shadow), and to consider modern influences such as traffic and trees, and to to document all this through photography for future research.”
About our experts
Mike Parker Pearson is Professor of British Later Prehistory at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL). After obtaining a BA in European archeology from the University of Southampton in 1979, he obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1985. Until 1990 he worked as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments for English Heritage. From then on he taught in the Department of Archeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield, where he was appointed professor in 2005, which he held until moving to UCL in 2012. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
Clive Ruggles is Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the University of Leicester. From 2008 to 2018, Ruggles coordinated the IAU’s Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative with UNESCO and continues to advise governments on potential World Heritage nominations related to astronomy. In 2017 he received the Agnes Mary Clerke Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society for “a lifetime of outstanding work in the overlapping areas of archaeological astronomy and the history of science”.
Amanda Chadburn is a professional archaeologist and historical environmental consultant. She began her professional career in local government and joined English Heritage in 1987, where she worked in a variety of business and policy roles. She has lectured in archeology and heritage management at the Universities of Bristol, UCL and Oxford, and co-supervised PhD students at the Universities of Bristol and Huddersfield.
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