How Stonehenge Works

Even as far back as the Roman invaders, people have had absolutely no idea just what the massive monument complex in England known as Stonehenge was built for. Join Josh and Chuck as they try to get to the bottom of this Neolithic mystery.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. It's a
brand new day, it is. It's a it's a Wednesday. Yeah,

(00:22):
we're welcome back, buddy from my vacation. Yes, you mean
I went to New Zealand and then to Okinawa. It
was pretty awesome. You want to say anything about it
or New Zealand is wonderful. Yeah, I always love Japan.
I've heard New Zealand is like America in the nineteen
fifties that it's like I've heard it described that way.
It's very pure still and like oh yes, friendly and

(00:45):
just sort of uncorrupted. So um, Apparently New Zealand ranks
fourth on the Global Peace Index, which is you know,
it takes into account like, yeah, you don't get the
impression that there's this nie a day or innocence necessarily.
It's more just like they are a thoroughly content, peaceful

(01:09):
people and it's not like, you know, it's not like
that manufactured like labored kind of like friendly contentedness that
you kind of run into sometimes this is the real
deal and it rubs off on you while you're there.
Like New Zealanders are a okay in my book. Everyone
we met, everyone was friendly, except for one truck driver

(01:31):
who I had an incident with, But in retrospect, I
look back and I'm wondering if he thought he was
trying to protect me by not letting me go around him.
But everybody else was just like totally friendly, neat, cool people.
And we were everywhere, Like we were in a little
spot town of Rhoda Rura, we were in Auckland, we
were in Wellington, we were in a little Napier, which

(01:53):
is like the Art Deco capital of the world. They
had an earthquake in and it just leveled the town
all the a or afterward leveled town. So they're like,
we need to rebuild. What kind of architectural movement is
hip right now? Art Deco? So they rebuilt the town
in Art Deco. It's really pretty that you would love Napier. Cool. Yeah,

(02:13):
So New Zealand awesome, great stuff. Lots of sheep, like,
no joke, they are probably more sheep than sheep than people. Yeah, um,
and it's a wonderful place. And then of course Okinawa
we Once we got there, we're like, okay, let's start eating. Yeah,
you're like a japan expert at this point, right, Uh,
except I can't speak Japanese, but yeah, everything, I'm an expert.

(02:37):
I'm learning. We hung out with with Humi's family, nice
and her little I guess second cousin or first cousin
once removed a little kid. Awesome, little precocious dude at
one point was trying to talk to me and he
liked just put his face in his hands and said
in Japanese, this communication in Japanese is not going very well,

(02:58):
that's adorable. Yeah it was, and you ate like a king. Yes,
I bet man, that sounds that sounds great. Thanks man,
Thanks for welcoming me back. You're still a little jet legs,
so in case I get a little weird, that's why. Uh. Well,
maybe one day we can hit up New Zealand on
a tour. I would love that. Yeah, and Australia too,

(03:20):
I know they love us over there. Well, we can't
go to one without the other. I just did well
first stuff you should know show Oh that would be
rude awesome. Well, welcome back, thanks um and now Stonehenge,
have you ever been No, I've been to London and
that's it as far as the UK goes. Yeah, same here. Um,

(03:42):
I would love to go to Stonehenge too. It sounds
like a very very cool place and I wanted to
go before I researched this, but now that I have them, like,
definitely want to go because it's not just Stonehenge. You
think it's just Stonehenge and you go and there's like
the rock formation, and sure, when you get in your
car and go home, you could do that, but you'd

(04:04):
be missing out on like a whole huge, rich tapestry
of weirdo earthen works that are totally mysterious to us
still to this day, in that whole area. Yeah, I
had no idea either. It's a hotbed of hinges. Yeah,
you know which technically a hinge, by the way, we
should say, is an earthworks that I didn't know that

(04:26):
dentil I studied this, I didn't either, But so it's
an earthwork that consists of a bank and a ditch,
and in most cases the high bank encloses a ditch
within it. But Stonehenge, which is which gives the name
hinge to other hinges, is the opposite it's a reverse hinge.
It has the ditch on the outside of the bank. Yeah.

(04:48):
And and you know it sort of looks when you
look at these images of hinges from above, um, sort
of like a crop circle with nothing in the middle, right,
just grass, just grass. Uh. And remember that's where the
home of crop circles started, was in that area, the
Salisbury Plain and outer space already Stonehenge. So, like we said, Chuckers,

(05:13):
the the whole reason for any of this stuff, for
building these things still defies understanding. But exploration has gone
back many, many, many centuries. You know, you don't just
walk past Stonehenge and say that's natural. It's clearly man made.

(05:34):
But the idea behind it has been lost. But study
of the whole thing has kind of has yielded some
pretty good stuff. Like, for example, we have a pretty
good idea of when Stonehenge was constructed and apparently, uh,
it was constructive of a period of less than two
hundred years. Yeah. We also have a pretty good idea
about where it is because it is where it is,

(05:57):
which is eight miles north of Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. Crop
Circles home of crop circles and where the Banshees live
and they do live well, the Banshees. Yeah, you're not
a spinal tap band. No, I've been having that song
Stonehenge in my head all day on a loop. They

(06:17):
talk about the Benshees. That's one of the lines where
the Banshees live and they do live well. I thought
they were from Ireland, the Banshees. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean they're talking about Druids and the song as well. Yeah,
it's spinal tap, which is a common, uh, a common
misconception that the Druids built Stonehenge, right, Yeah, they have
dated it and they were not there at the same time, correct. Yeah.

(06:40):
So back in the nineteenth century, some antiquarians which was
what they used to call historians and archaeologists and stuff
before there were such things, um, figured that Stonehenge was
some sort of Druidic temple, which made a lot of
sense because the Druids were a weird mystery cult that
um we're big on, like human sacrifice and all sorts

(07:02):
of like really interesting stuff. They were the priestly class
of the Celts, right. Um. The problem is is the
Druids were around from about till the first century c
E when the Romans suppressed them. H and Stone Inch
is way older than that, at least the whole earthworks

(07:22):
thing goes back at least five thousand years. Yeah, and
that's the earthworks, the actual large stones that it's most
famous for. UM. They date that between b c. E,
which is about the same time as the Great Pyramids
in Egypt. So UM, if you're wondering how they managed

(07:43):
to get these large stones, that's still a mystery. But um,
they were not as advanced as the Middle East at
the time. Right. So in the Middle East they know
they were well into I guess the Bronze Age UM,
while the I guess so well at the time Europe,
Western Europe at least was still in the Neolithic, the

(08:04):
New Stone Age UM. So yeah, the idea that there
was this massive public works UM is a huge mystery,
like why that happened, how it happened, how they got
the stones there. There's another um long held theory that
was recently discarded that the stones were moved there through

(08:25):
glacial activity, uh thousands, hundreds of thousands of years before UM.
And they've they've checked it out and they said, no,
these stones actually did come from quarries at a minimum,
I think of forty miles away. Yeah, they said that
even if um there was glacial evidence, then it would

(08:45):
not have been able to carry it that far. There's
just no way. Yea, So humans did again no idea
how because this is before the wheel was around in
Western Europe, which makes the whole thing that much more impressive. Yeah,
they've got some theories like um, basically things that sort
of acted as wheels before they were technical wheels, like
small rocks or stone ball bearings or the old log

(09:08):
roller trick, which makes sense because the largest of these
things can weigh up to fifty pounds. Yeah, and the
smallest ones are you know, about five thousand pounds two
to five tons, So the smallest ones get like the
strongest men to lift these things that you've got a
hundred strong men because they're you know, only so big.

(09:28):
You can't crowd that many dudes around and lift this
thing anyway. Exactly. There's just no way. It's a mystery.
It's a mystery. So let's talk about the stones themselves.
I mean, this is what people think of when they
when they talk about Stonehenge. But there's more too, and
we'll get into it. But the stones, um, they're the
upright stones are called um Sarsen's right, that's right, And

(09:49):
sarson it's a it's a kind of sandstone that's particularly
peculiar to the region. Uh. Yeah. And the closest um
they found this is the Marlborough Downs about twenty miles away. So, um, basically,
if you haven't picked up on it by now, what
we're saying is these stones weren't just laying around and
they decided to prop them up right. At the very least,

(10:11):
they were brought from twenty miles away and likely much
much further. Oh I thought it was forty miles away.
Twenty miles away. Well, they said the closest source of
this sandstone is twenty miles away. But there were there's
all different kinds of rocks, which we'll see. Yeah. Um,
so the Sarson's it's a type of stone. But when
you're talking about Stonehenge, if somebody points to a stone

(10:32):
and say, is that sarson there, they're talking about the
upright column, that's right. The Sarson's are topped in the
outer circle and in the inner circle of stones by
what are called lentils, that's right, which are also starsin stone,
I believe. But um, because they're horizontal on top of
the upright ones, they're called lintels, and the upright ones

(10:54):
are called Sarsen's right, Yes, pretty cool. And again these
are really heavy stones. And again we have no idea
how they got them there, how they erected him, and
how they got the heavy ones on top of the
upright ones. That's crazy because again we're talking about many
many tons stones right each. But as if just to
show off for the the people that followed, um, the

(11:18):
people who erected Stonehenge carved the Sarson's with a knob
knobs on top, and carved the lentils with grooves so
that they fitted and they were replicating a type of woodworking. Yeah,
mortis and tinnin um and I'll put together. These are
called the trilothon in the inner circle, the big ones. Yeah,

(11:38):
when you have the Sarson's and the lentils, it's called
the trilathon. And uh yeah, they they don't know why
they carved those because apparently when I heard that, I
was like, well, probably to make them fit together better,
But they said that it really has nothing to do
with it. Well, they said, it's totally unnecessary. Yeah, so
they think it may be symbolic. Um, which we'll get
too later. Um. So so you've got inside the inner

(12:02):
circle and I found, um this kind of thing. It's
like describing a yo yo e motion or something like that,
like a yo yo trick. It's just easier to go
see it yourself. There's a thousand, a million and a
thousand great pictures of stone Hings, yes, one million, one
thousand pures. You just gotta look at one of them.
So yeah, it'll help if you if you're checking this

(12:24):
out or we're describing it. But there's the inner circle
of Stonehenge, and those are made of trilothons, which are
two upright Sarsen's and a lintel, right, yeah, there's five
of those. And then and those are the big boys.
Those things are like thirty ft tall. I think it's
the tallest pine. Yeah, which is I didn't realize it
was that big. That's like ten Yeah, you have to

(12:44):
I would say, you probably have to go there and say, oh,
this is bigger than I thought. Right, unless you thought
it was bigger than you might say it was smaller
than you thought, you know, uh yeah, unless the opposite
is true Um. And then in the outer uh circle
it was apparently it was intended or it was at
one point to be a complete circle. And this is

(13:07):
made of lentils and sarson's, but they're not trial athons
because it's just basically, if you took a bunch of
um sarsen's, a bunch of upright columns and put them
a circle and then topped it with as few lentils
as it would make a complete circle, that's what you have.
So it made a ring. Yeah, And I think my
impression is that it was not ever completed because there

(13:27):
would probably be some evidence of the you know, falling
down sarsens or something. Um. Well, there's unless they were
taken away. That is the theory that when the Romans
came along, or then later on when the Church came
to power after the fall of the Roman Empire, that
um locals were like, well, that's some pagan weirdness. We

(13:48):
don't want to encourage paganism. Let's just take it and
build a church that'll show them. So it's possible that
some of those rocks are found in medieval churches in
the area. Interesting and that crazy, that is crazy. That's
gray uh and there are four more of the stars
and stones um that actually have names. The slaughter stone,
the heel stone, which is huge, uh, and then to

(14:10):
station stones and they're out of the outer Sarson circle
inside the circle, and then also outside the circle or
what are called blue stones. These are the smaller stones
that are between two and five tons. Still little guys,
but that's that's what they're calling. There's a bunch of
those guys too. Yeah, and they're called bluestones because when
they're cut or when they're wet, they look blue. Yes,

(14:33):
pretty neat. So that's the stones and um, but that's
just the bluestones. It's there's they're all different kinds of rock,
which proves that they came from different sources. It is
the key. It also might um, it might get to
the bottom of why Stonehenge was built, but we always
we just touched the tip of the iceberg here by
just talking about the rocks. We're gonna talk about the

(14:55):
larger hinge part and what was originally there right after
the Yeah, alright, chuckers, we're back. Yeah. I mentioned quickly

(15:16):
before we broke about the blue stones being uh coming
from different places. Um. One of the places they think
that eleven of these bad boys came from was in
western Wales and forty miles away Nuts, so that that's
probably the maximum some of these stones traveled, which it

(15:38):
kind of um gives a little bit of credence weirdly
to one of the old legends of where Stonehenge came from,
which was Merlin. Merlin and some of his boys stole
it from Ireland and the stones proved too heavy for
the uh, I guess Merlin's men to lift even fifteen
thousand of them, so he just uses magic to load

(16:01):
them onto the boats, which he should have done to
begin with. Yeah, they were like, why don't you try
this before, Like Jimmy broke his back, right, Jimmy the
U the night Um. That was from the Historia Regum Britagnier. Yeah,
the History of the Kings of Britain from Jeffrey of

(16:21):
Monmouth's name, and that was the one of the original
um Jeffrey of Monmouth. Yeah, with the g Geoffrey Geoffrey Um.
That was one of the original theories was that giants
built this and that to commemorate the death in the
battle against the Saxons. Was when Merlin was like, let's
steal this stuff. The giants dance, let's steal it. The

(16:44):
giants built it in Ireland, and Merlin was like, let's
go steal that because four Britons died. Al right, So
that was one of the theories. We'll get to a
few more of those in a bit. But jumping back
to the Salisbury Plain, what they do think it's true
is that they not giants. Not giants not Merlin was

(17:06):
that this was a good place for hunting. It was
a good hunting ground because there's a causeway from glacial
heaving and thawing. It formed what they call like an
avenue um which made of chalk apparently, so this avenue
coincides with the rising of the summer solstice and then
the setting eventually with the winter solstice um. And for

(17:30):
many years they thought this was like this meant something,
but now we think that it's just coincidence. Right. But
I mean, like if you're if you're you know, hunting
wooly mammoths and eating psychedelic mushrooms and that's your existence.
You see the sun come up and then go down,
and this crazy like the on the longest and the
shortest day of the year, and it's like a white

(17:53):
chalk line connecting the two. You gotta put a little
significance on this um. So they did. That's why they
think that they chose the site for um for Stonehenge,
like it was sacred and divinely inspired. Exactly. Again, you
were on a ton of mushrooms at the time, so
it made sense. Then, Okay, that's right. Don't judge. So

(18:14):
we mentioned the hinge earlier. That was these hinges, I
don't think we pointed out they're not natural formations. They
are designed and built by people. And so something like
three thousand years BC, so about five thousand years ago
on the nose almost some Neolithic uh Western Europeans in

(18:36):
the area of what is now the Salisbury Plain um
grab some deer antlers, turn them into pick axes and
started digging the circles that ended up becoming the ditches
that ended up becoming U. Stonehenge built the earthworks, they
dug the ditch, they made the bank, and then you

(18:57):
had this raised ground long four the stones ever showed up, Yeah,
about three d and thirty feet across. And like you
said earlier at the beginning, it is um a reverse
hinge because the high bank is on the inside and
not the outside. Right, Usually the ditches inside the bank,
that's right, rather than outside. I don't know why stone
Hinge is different. Who knows. Maybe they started to make him.

(19:19):
We're like, oh man, we made it backwards. Yeah, but
we've already done like a hundred feet. I'm not digging
another one. Uh. So they left a wider entrance on
one side, on the northeast end um, which is that's
like where the avenue runs into stone Hinge. Yeah, the
main entrance almost like a road to a roundabout or

(19:40):
cul the stack. Yeah, that's maybe that's what it was,
was sun temple called the stack um. And then there's
a narrow entrance on the south side. And um, that's
not all. That's not all that's there. They found all
these holes, the Aubrey holes, fifty six of them. Um,
basically where they think that they're or wooden post that

(20:00):
there were either totems or some kind of a structure
there previously. Yeah, that structure that's very significant. Something like
uh ten thousand years ago, I think about eight thousand BC,
somebody put up three pine posts. They think it was
probably pine Yeah, those are not the Aubrey holes. Those

(20:22):
are those are different? Right? They discovered those. They were
going to make a parking lot for Stonehenge in the sixties,
and while they were while they were excavating. Yeah, I
guess they should qualify that there would be a parking
lot in the sixties. Well, actually, I guess we do
know now there wouldn't be one. So in the nineteen
sixties they were going to put a parking lot, and um,

(20:43):
they discovered these three post holes and they were like,
these probably held totems of some sort. This is huge
because there's no other site like it. There's no evidence
of any other kind of monument building this far back
ten thousand years ago in Europe. It was a very
that's crazy. So at least as far back as that,

(21:05):
this site was considered somehow significant, if not sacred, by
the locals years ago. Yes, all right, but then again
we're fast forwarding to five thousand years ago, three thousand
b C. And that's when the earthworks have have been constructed,
the Henge is built. Now we're under the Aubrey holes

(21:26):
because I think they were deposited at the same time, right, yeah,
fifty six of them, and um, like I said, they
could have had Um, they could have held blue stones.
Maybe that was a structure. Maybe it was some sort
of a astrological or astronomal astronomy astronomical design or layout
or something. Uh. They didn't leave a book behind saying

(21:48):
what they were doing, so we don't know. It's all
the speculations. All we know is there is a circle
of holes that probably held something at some point. We
don't know what. But that was the original hence the
original stone henge. Yeah. Uh. And then um, that was
the first stage, right uh yeah. Basically at between is

(22:09):
when these starson the stars in Horseshoe came about. Yeah,
about three hundred or so years after the first construction
of the earthworks, the stones come in, that's right. Yeah. Um,
so they bring the stones in again, like you said,
from as far away as Whales. The nearest is twenty

(22:30):
miles away. There's definitely a quarry. Some stones came from
like forty miles away. Um. So they're coming from all
these different places and they're being brought in and erected. Um.
And then the that's the second phase. So the stonehenges
we know and love it today was built about then
about um b C. The last phase of construction as

(22:54):
far as anybody can tell as undertaken, and it's basically
like sprucing up the place. That's right. That's when they
dug their ditches and banks. Um, that's when the avenue
was cleared out, which is one point seven miles long
by the way. Yeah, that's significant. Using deer antler axe
picks they dug. They they made ditches on either side

(23:16):
of this avenue to to um clarify it, I guess
for two miles. Basically, it's pretty amazing. And they it
followed a route um to the river avon Um and
then over the next few hundred years, basically they would
reposition some of these stones, these blue stones um to.
I don't know why, to fit their whims maybe or

(23:38):
should they had reasons. That's another mystery too. Some of
this stuff would be moved around from one place to another. Yea, uh,
you said that it goes to the river Avon and
I think about two thousand there was a big archaeological
survey undertaken that uncovered another hinge called blue Stone hinge
that was at where the avenue hits the River Avon

(24:00):
and so at the far end of stonehenge Um that
they think that's where the bluestones came from. So apparently
originally they may have had another type of hinge closer
to the river and decided let's move it into Stonehenge proper. Yeah,
no idea. Why you know. I used to go camping

(24:20):
at a place called Sunfish Pond at the Delaware Water
Gap when I lived in New Jersey, and there was
at Sunfish Pond there was this there's this one big
rock bank basically with just tons of these huge, awesome rocks,
and people would build just things out of them. Yeah,
it looks a little like uh little totems or a

(24:43):
little little uh structures, and uh. I think everyone that
went there it was part of the ritual of camping
there was to like spend a day moving these rocks
around and doing stuff. And I think like this could
very well be what happened here. People would show up
hundreds of years later and be like, I kind of
like the look at that, but maybe this was better
over there. Yeah, like maybe it was. There wasn't some

(25:06):
grand reason other than artistic. I get that. You know.
My question is this, if you're talking about the smallest
stone weighing two tons, that's not like you know, some
hippie just going like, I've kind to move the stone,
Like you gotta get a bunch of hippies together to
move one of those, you know. So it's a community effort.

(25:28):
Every every stage of Stonehenge is a communal effort, which
is it's it's that's important. You know, they probably had
more significance than just artistic But what is that urge
that drove people out in the woods, you know, to
where it's sun fish gap, sunfish pond, some fish pond um,
that that drove them to move the rocks around? Like

(25:50):
what made you do it? Seeing other people doing it
and thinking I want to build my own? Yeah? Yeah,
Well like rock stacking is a thing too, right, Yeah,
I mean that's basically what we were doing, Okay, stack
in rock. Yeah. So it's an ancient prime orige um.
So we'll talk a little more about some of the
surrounding landscape in Um and Stonehenge right after this. So

(26:24):
Chuck Stonehenge isn't the only place the only Neolithic weirdness
in the area. Man that places there's a lot of
wicker man stuff going on. Yeah, there was, you know, Uh,
there's something like a thousand barrows which are um like tombs,
mound tombs. Um. There's uh some other hinges that don't
have stones necessarily. There's one called Woodhenge, but probably the

(26:47):
most important other site around there is called Durrington Walls. Yes,
it is also a hinge and it's on the other
side of the River Avon. And one of the very
significant things about during Tom Walls is that it is
it has an avenue as well that's aligned with the
sun on certain days and they just happen to be
the opposite days of the Stonehenge avenue or the same day,

(27:11):
but the opposite position, that's right. Uh. It had a
couple of timber circles. Um. It's about the same size
as Stonehenge roughly. And they think that this could have
been like a staging area for what Stonehenge would become,
which doesn't make sense to me. Like they're saying like
this is possibly the builders camp for Stonehenge two miles away.
That's not a convenient camp, No, No, it's good point plus. Also,

(27:36):
so you've got Stonehenge, right, and then you have the
River Avon, and then a little further up the River
Avon you have but across the other side you have
during ton Walls and on the summer solstice, Stonehenge hosts
the sun the summer sunrise, right, But on that same
day during ton Walls, that avenue features the summer sunset.

(27:57):
So they're aligned. It's clearly they have something to do
with one another, at least in the Neolithic mind. That's right.
So it's not just this, it's not just Stoneheng's. This
whole site allows you with him. But why, Yeah, I mean,
I guess that's we should look at some of the
older theories first that have sort of been debunked. We
already talked about the um the Giants dance and Merlin

(28:20):
the Wizard, which we don't believe anymore because we're modern
thinking guys. Uh. King James the First in the seventeenth
century did an uh excavation of the site and they
found a bunch of animal bones and burnt coals, um,
which I was just learning about him. He was a
scholar king. Yeah, he was pretty interesting. Well, he had

(28:42):
like the King James Bible, sure he had that translated, um.
But he also was like an early essayist, which is
a new thing at the time. He was just a
smart dude as far as kings went. He wasn't just
like the fat, drunk, turkey leg eating kind, you know
what I'm saying, Like he actually was. Well, if he
commissioned an excavation, that means he probably had a little

(29:04):
bit of interest in things like this. And this is
before archaeology even. Yeah, he could have just said people
beheaded and you know it is turkey. It's good for him.
We're done with King James. Is that what you're saying?
All right? Um? So I don't think we mentioned either
yet that there have been a lot of um, body
well not body parts, but bones found. Yeah, human cremines,

(29:32):
cremated remains. I think why was that defensive? Yeah? I
remember funeral directors don't like to call him cremaines. They
they said that that's just too shorthand r. It sounds
like a McDonald's I got in my burger. Um, But
there have been a lot of they think it. One
possibility was that it was a burial ground um for

(29:56):
maybe royalty. They've mostly been men, so maybe important people. Yeah,
which is another reason why what was it called Mortis
and tennin um? That woodworking, and we didn't mention that
with the outer circle where everything fits together. Um. They
used a woodworking technique called dovetailing, so that the lentils

(30:18):
fit together to form like a well tongue in group. Yes, um, exactly.
So there's all this kind of woodworking simulation that's totally unnecessary.
So they're thinking maybe that they were replicating a monument
to a human dwelling, which could suggest that basically a

(30:40):
mausoleum of sorts. Yeah, and that that ties in with
the theory that Durrington Walls was, um a place of
the living. Stonehenge was a place of the dead, and
that's how they are connected. Yeah, and Durrington Walls they
call it a place of living because there's evidence of settlement,
like human habitation, lots of um animal bones like from food,

(31:01):
food waste. Um. So yeah, it's clear that people lived
in in during exactly. Um. There's another theory that, uh,
it's possible Stonehenge was a place of healing. There's something
called the Amesbury Archer who was discovered and he was
contemporaneous to Stonehenge. He had a knee injury and they thought, well,

(31:22):
maybe he was on his way to Stonehenge or something. Uh.
They did a survey of the injuries and illness. Evidence
of illness of the remains at Stonehengen found that it
was about the same as other contemporary sites. UM, so
they don't think that it was a place of healing,
not like a spa. Well, it's probably a place of

(31:46):
the dead probably, So in a lot of this new
way of thinking has come about since the two thousand's
started with UM. A guy named Mike Parker Pearson UM
lead the Stonehenge river Side Project, and they've kind of
brought like debunked a lot of these older theories that
it was maybe a a monument for astronomy or you know,

(32:08):
some of the other things we talked about. Yeah, apparently,
like if you're a Stonehenge expert, you say, yes, stoneheng
was clearly constructed and in some way related to the
summer solstice and the winter solstice the sun. Yeah, but
they kind of draw the line at they used it
to predict solar eclipses and stuff like that. They're saying

(32:29):
there's no evidence of that, although it could be true,
but they just don't know. I just haven't figured it
out yet. Another theory that I like, UM, that's one
of the more modern theories is that it was a
monument to unification just kind of neat which makes sense,
Um that the Britons at the time, we're from all
sorts of tribes and that they blended together there and

(32:49):
they that's why they might have brought stones from all
over the place as a symbol of our unification, like
here's some stones from whales, here, some from here, here's
some from there, and here's a big monument to us
all coming together to one day rule the world. And well, significantly,
the Stonehenge site is at the area where three different
chiefdoms territories came together. Um, so it is possible that

(33:13):
is a if not a monument to a monument from
cooperation from these groups. Remember we talked about the Upper
Paleolithic warlessness. Um, it's supposedly these these chiefdoms were they
peacefully coexisted, which also could explain, um, that why Stonehenge

(33:35):
came about. You know, one of the things you do
to keep your populations occupied and busy is creating massive
public um structures projects or like pyramids or something like that.
You know, and uh, Stonehenge could have been the result
of that of clever chiefs saying I need to do
something to keep everybody busy. Let's make Stonehenge my money.

(33:58):
I mean, there's there's so many people buried there in
and around Stonehenge. They say like maybe thousands of people
have been buried there, so I think it was probably
just some sort of final resting place that looked nice
and uh they dressed it up. Yeah, and it's probable
that the people there were part of the elite ruling class.
There's like they found incense burner, polished mace head, some

(34:22):
other evidence that the people there had some sort of
political religious power that kind of stuff. And like we said,
they're mostly men, which at the time, of course that
that would have been the people in power. Yeah, you
know yeah at the time, that's right, not like these
days when women could do anything they want. We need

(34:42):
to do an episode on the Equal Rights Amendment. Man,
is just mind blowing to me. Yeah, let's do it, Okay.
I would inspire that Petri Shark at the facetiousness about
um men being in power, yeah or not being in power. Yeah,
let's do that one. Okay. Patricia are cat inspired me.
I'm like Meryl Streep here, Yeah, she was digging it. Um,

(35:07):
you got anything else? I'm sure we could go on
about this for a while, but why you know? Um? Oh,
there was one theory that they erected Stonehenge to create
this piper's illusion. Did you hear about that? Oh yeah,
like two pipers in a field or playing in certain

(35:28):
places that they will cancel each other out. Yeah, which
is weird. It's a weird acoustic phenomenon, and apparently in
Stonehenge the phenomenon is replicated. And there is also an
old legend that Stonehenge was the result of pipers leading
maidens into a field and then turning them to stone.
Well there's this um acoustic archaeologist who believes that like

(35:51):
a lot more archaeological sites than we realized were dedicated
to sound um and he has this theory about Stonehenge
may or may not be right. I get the imperson.
And it was also postulating it to get attention to theories. Yeah,
well there's definitely some weird acoustic features at Stonehenge. Um,
so you can't discount that. Yeah. Was it a byproduct

(36:14):
or was it international? Yeah? Who knows. We don't even
know why they built it in the first place. Well,
we're gonna have to visit it if we ever go
to England for a live show for sure. Maybe we'll
do a live show at Stonehenge. Pink Floyd they did
something at them, yeah, which I've been there and it's amazing,
not just because Pompei, because Pink Floyd played there. You know,

(36:35):
we'll do our live thing at Stonehenge. I think, if
I'm not mistaken, Pink Floyd Live at POMPEII was a
concert in front of nobody. Yeah, well on the on
the Echoes video, they're not playing in front of anybody else.
The deal so cool. I've got one more thing. There
was a horrible police brutality incident at Stonehenge. Yeah. There

(36:59):
was this hippie movement called the New Age Travelers from
the sixties, seventies into the eighties and then they were
gonna have they were going to celebrate the summer Solstice
at Stonehenge and they had the year before, but a
hundred thousand people showed up and like just trashed the place,
like dug into the ground to build bread ovens and
like toilets and like just just totally laid waste to

(37:20):
the place. Um, And so the the locals were like,
you can't go to Stonehenge again. So the cops tried
to barricade it. The hippies tried to break through. The
cops club the hippies including pregnant women and women holding children.
There were eyewitnesses. It was a horrible scene. Um. And
it was later called the Battle of the bean Field. Uh.
And after that, for like the next fifteen years, there

(37:43):
was no You weren't allowed to go celebrate the Summer Solstice,
which is a big thing for neo druids and stuff
at Stonehenge. And then finally in two thousand, the English
Heritage Group I can't remember what the full name is,
English Heritage, Um, they're in charge of Stonehenge. They opened
it back up. So now I think the most recent
summer Solstice solstice had like thirty thousand or so people

(38:07):
peacefully celebrating it. I think if you dig there, though
you're in big trouble, still appropriate. Imagine it's pretty Uh
that's a secure location. You can't just back into it
like Clark Roswald. Okay, now I really don't have anything else. Okay, Okay,
if you want to learn more about Stonehenge, you can
type that word into the search bar at house to

(38:27):
works dot com. And since I said search bar, its
time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this ice cream email.
And speaking of ice cream, we should thank uh a
local ice creamery here, High Road Creamery. Yeah, high Road
here in UH in Atlanta, well just outside of Atlanta.
They got in touch with us. Two people did and

(38:48):
one person said, hey, I don't know if you've heard
of us, but you should um try your ice cream.
And another person emailed from high Road. It was like, yeah,
you should. I said, we'll send you ice cream. I
was like, I like you better. Yeah. So they sent
us some ice cream and it's delicious, and we just
want to say things and nutritious. I don't know about
that because rhymes and rhymes, but this is about ice

(39:11):
cream from Nathan. Hey, guys and Jerry, just listen to
your How ice Cream Works episode and thought your tuna
gelato story reminded me of my own terrible gelato story.
I want to refresh people about tuna gelato. Yeah, if
you go to Plaza Fiesta, the Latin American mall in
Atlanta on Buford Highway, there's a gelato place there that,
at least a year or two ago sold raw tuna

(39:34):
flavored gelato. Is dead on the taste. Uh. So we
lived in Naples, Italy for two years, guys, and fell
in love with real Italian gelato. Uh and it's safe
to say my wife and daughter would get it at
least three times a week all year round. We took
our summer holiday one year to a city called Tropea
in the Calabria region. The city is famous for red onions,

(39:56):
so much so that red onions in Italy are all
called h chipola. As we were walking through the city,
we saw a place that had onion gelato. Though decided
to try it. I don't know, I know. Luckily, my
wife is smart and suggested I try it before I
ordered a whole cone of the stuff. Let me tell you,
it was awful. It tasted like a spoonful of onion

(40:18):
powder and had the consistency of snot oh gone and
was cold. Uh if. It was all I could do
to choke it down without throwing up. Even after eating
tasty strawberry and lemon gelato, the taste still lingered to
make it worse. Every time I burnt. The rest of
the night, I got to relive the taste. Man. So
that's my story, guys, will still I will steer clear

(40:39):
of the tuna gelato if you stay away from the
onion gelato. I will stay away from the onion gelato,
but I think you should try the tuna gelato. That's
the deal. Nathan Chow, he says, Chow Bella and all that.
I would taste any of those, the small spoonful. Yeah,
like he's the very tip of my tongue. You're like

(41:01):
the onion on the tuna was I mean, it was weird.
It wasn't bad, it was just it was really surprising
that like you could get that taste. Yeah, it's probably
just ground up, tuned yogurt, Like it's not hard, dummy. Uh.
If you want to get in touch with us for

(41:21):
any reason whatsoever, you can tweet to us at s
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(41:45):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
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