Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. In our last episode, we
Speaker 1: were talking about the construction of Stonehenge, about all the
Speaker 1: work called the effort, all the Neolithic engineering and physics
Speaker 1: that went into figuring out how to construct this, uh,
Speaker 1: this amazing of five thousand year old circle of stones
Speaker 1: and uh and just and all the multigenerational effort that
Speaker 1: went into its completion. Yes, and this episode is all
Speaker 1: about the four Why Why would such an expenditure of
Speaker 1: labor on such a grand scale be carried out for
Speaker 1: so long? In the last episode we we mentioned the
Speaker 1: comparison that the very strong comparison to be made between
Speaker 1: the construction of Stonehenge and modern day space programs. This
Speaker 1: was essentially the Neolithic space program. Now, for that makes sense,
Speaker 1: you have to think in terms of mega projects, Okay,
Speaker 1: now we h We've spoken to neotographs types in a
Speaker 1: couple of times on this podcast, and one of the
Speaker 1: times we talked to him, he compared the space program,
Speaker 1: the modern human space program to megaprojects of the past,
Speaker 1: the construction of the Pyramids, construction of the Great Wall,
Speaker 1: of the construction of Stonehenge. These are projects that require
Speaker 1: vast amounts of energy and effort, and ultimately you have
Speaker 1: to have a lot of UH of communal energy behind it.
Speaker 1: You know. There there's a lot of talk to be made,
Speaker 1: and certainly Neograss Tyson speaks a lot about the uh
Speaker 1: the waning power of the idea of the space program,
Speaker 1: like there's not enough just public interest in it and
Speaker 1: public power to put into the the the realization of
Speaker 1: some of our space streams. What's interesting about this, and
Speaker 1: we'll tie this all up in a neat little bow
Speaker 1: at the end, is that that space program, the decline
Speaker 1: of it, could actually have parallels with the decline of Stonehenge.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into that. But a lot of this
Speaker 1: story here about Stonehenge has to do with community, as
Speaker 1: you say, and there have been many, many theories that
Speaker 1: have abounded for hundreds of years as to why it
Speaker 1: was built. Um, we're talking about twelve century myths crediting
Speaker 1: the wizard Merlin with constructing the site. Uh. More recently,
Speaker 1: UFO believers have thought that this is perhaps some sort
Speaker 1: of ancient alien and spacecraft landing pad. But I've also
Speaker 1: read that that it might have been the totally about
Speaker 1: the acoustics. That may be because it turns out I
Speaker 1: think it's the blue stones to actually have some really
Speaker 1: nice acoustic values to them. So, but that that actually
Speaker 1: plays out in this idea of the site really hosting
Speaker 1: a ton of people were talking about a tenth of
Speaker 1: the population and b C. This pilgrimage, the side of
Speaker 1: of of festivals and the site of the living and
Speaker 1: the dead that we're all going to get into, and
Speaker 1: all of these more recent theories about its purpose had
Speaker 1: kind of dovetailed together for the sort of unified theory
Speaker 1: as Stonehenge being a place where one could observe the
Speaker 1: passing of seasons but also the passing of souls. Yeah, because,
Speaker 1: as as Neutocrost Tyson pointed out, there basically three ways,
Speaker 1: three things that motivate us to build things like this
Speaker 1: and do things like the space program, ETCeteras. One of
Speaker 1: them is war. Now, that's the idea that the whole
Speaker 1: space race in our modern times was in a large
Speaker 1: part of product of the Cold War. There was a
Speaker 1: war motivation to really push the envelope. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: could have war as ego you could make the argument
Speaker 1: that war is just an embodiment of ego, and certainly
Speaker 1: Stonehenge could embody a certain aristocratic family or families in
Speaker 1: their ego and be a monument to them. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: of course though it's it would be hard to argue that,
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody as far as I know, has ever
Speaker 1: argued that Stonehenge was any kind of a fortification. It's
Speaker 1: just obviously not. Like, clearly it has some other purpose
Speaker 1: in mind. So that the so the two other motivation
Speaker 1: and on de grass his list um would be, uh,
Speaker 1: you're creating something out of obligation to a god or
Speaker 1: or you know, some sort of religious strong religious reason,
Speaker 1: or it's out of devotion to some sort of a
Speaker 1: some sort of a keen. So those ideas hold a
Speaker 1: whole lot more weight when we're talking about the more
Speaker 1: prominent theories regarding the constructions. The stories must have been
Speaker 1: so robust that they would compel people to work for
Speaker 1: that long over that those many thousands of years to
Speaker 1: see something come to fruition. So that part, I think,
Speaker 1: will always be a mystery to us. But we can
Speaker 1: at least look at the site, look at the information
Speaker 1: we have today, and try to figure out some of
Speaker 1: the reasons why people would have congregated here. Yes, So
Speaker 1: one of the big ideas that's often pushed around and
Speaker 1: is the idea that, oh, well, Stonehenge is an astronomical observatory.
Speaker 1: Ancient man built this so they could look at the
Speaker 1: sky and figure out how the seasons work and and
Speaker 1: and chart the heaven. Now, it's an idea that became
Speaker 1: a little more popular than it should have been in
Speaker 1: the sixties just because you know, the sort of nineties
Speaker 1: feel goody was abounding this and there's a the idea
Speaker 1: that that ancient man would build an observatory is it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a romantic notion. But uh, as as
Speaker 1: we know today, it really doesn't hold the much water.
Speaker 1: There's like one core astronomical bit of awesomeness to Stonehinge
Speaker 1: and that's really about it. Yeah, I mean, it really
Speaker 1: is a rudimentary, celestial little observatory. Maybe that's even giving
Speaker 1: it too much credit, but we're talking about is something
Speaker 1: that Professor Clive Ruggles, he's a professor of archao astronomy.
Speaker 1: He says there's really only one alignment, the main access
Speaker 1: that runs through it on the summer solstice and on
Speaker 1: the opposite end during the winter solstice sunset. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's important, it's an important part of the design. But
Speaker 1: saying that it's that saying a stone hinge is an
Speaker 1: observatory because of it is it's like saying that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this house that was designed for a passive solar energy
Speaker 1: is an observatory. No, it's just it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not the same thing at all. And actually the
Speaker 1: placement of Stonehenge is not random at all, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it has to do actually with the landscape itself.
Speaker 1: And Professor Parker Pearson thinks that the site was chosen
Speaker 1: because of a pair of naturally occurring parallel ridges in
Speaker 1: the landscape, and this would have been the result of
Speaker 1: ice age melt water, which coincidentally points directly at the
Speaker 1: midwinter sunset in one direction and in the mid summer
Speaker 1: sunrise in the other. So if on the winter solstice
Speaker 1: your I followed these natural channels in the earth thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago, you would have seen the sun appearing
Speaker 1: to sit on the land as it was sitting there
Speaker 1: on the horizon and lining up perfectly with these channels
Speaker 1: in the ground. And that would have probably appeared as
Speaker 1: some sort of auspicious sign to you that this was
Speaker 1: a place that was important and perhaps we should erect
Speaker 1: something here. Yeah, you kind of have to, you know,
Speaker 1: we can we can never really fully put on the
Speaker 1: Neolithic mindset, but it's kind of in the dna of
Speaker 1: our existing beliefs, in our existing worldviews. So to to
Speaker 1: an extent, we can just sort of we can understand
Speaker 1: like the power of you know, winter and summer, and
Speaker 1: you know, spring is the return of life, winter fall
Speaker 1: and winter is the the advent of death. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that uh and that and night and day as well
Speaker 1: like these uh, these these these opposites are I have
Speaker 1: always been a powerful part of virtually any myth building,
Speaker 1: any kind of worldview that we've constructed for ourselves throughout
Speaker 1: human history. And as we've discussed before, cyclical time seasonal
Speaker 1: time would have been far more important than linear time.
Speaker 1: And we take that for granted today that everybody has
Speaker 1: been on some sort of clock or calendar, but really
Speaker 1: the cyclical time, the season's would have been important and marking,
Speaker 1: observing and and really honoring. Yeah, one of the crazy
Speaker 1: things about a stonehenge that has really come to mind
Speaker 1: and researching this is that you know, we'll we'll take
Speaker 1: the observatory explanation, will will paste that over it from
Speaker 1: our modern perspective, or will paste aliens over it for
Speaker 1: a modern perspective. And but but in a way, we're
Speaker 1: kind of trying to take our modern cosmological wanderings, you know,
Speaker 1: who are we in one of our place in the universe,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to to put those on an object
Speaker 1: that was constructed for a Neolithic uh cosmology, for Neolithic
Speaker 1: questions and answers regarding their place in the universe. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So if your only experience is the land in the
Speaker 1: seasons and it's not our modern understanding of buildings in technology,
Speaker 1: then you're going to come at it in a very
Speaker 1: different way. That being said, I would I would wager
Speaker 1: Tibet that everybody has that same question, no matter what
Speaker 1: period they were born in, is why am I here? Um?
Speaker 1: How did I get here? What was sort of story?
Speaker 1: Can I cobble together to make my existence make sense
Speaker 1: to me? Right? And so that's the really interesting part
Speaker 1: when you start to look at Stonehenge in terms of burial,
Speaker 1: because it turns out that there are crew mains inside
Speaker 1: of Stonehenge. That gives us a little bit of a
Speaker 1: different idea of how it might have been used, not
Speaker 1: just as a burial ground, but but perhaps these cream
Speaker 1: mains point to the kind of people who were buried
Speaker 1: there in what sort of prominence they had. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a British team led by Professor Parker Perison we've mentioned already,
Speaker 1: and he in his group analyzed the remains of sixty
Speaker 1: three bodies buried around Stonehenge and their findings seem to
Speaker 1: suggest that the first minding it was originally a graveyard
Speaker 1: for a community of elite families, uh, and their remains
Speaker 1: would have been brought to Stonehenge and buried for over
Speaker 1: a period of for a period of more than two
Speaker 1: hundred years. And that you know, Okay, that's interesting in
Speaker 1: and of itself, right, So you have this idea that
Speaker 1: there's an important play because it lines up on a
Speaker 1: certain access and that people who were honored within the community,
Speaker 1: perhaps you know, we're royalty of some kind, would have
Speaker 1: been honored by being buried there. But that is only
Speaker 1: part of the story. And we're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we get down we are going to
Speaker 1: sort of expand on this idea and uh, check it up.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So we're talking about stone hinge.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the meaning of stone hinge. Why did
Speaker 1: did men and women put so much effort in Theolithic
Speaker 1: times to be creating this structure that still, for the
Speaker 1: most part, stands with us today. It's it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's fallen here and there, but it is still a
Speaker 1: destination and it has remained so for five thousand years
Speaker 1: of human history. Well, and the cool thing about this
Speaker 1: next section that we're going to talk about durington Walls
Speaker 1: is that the existence of something else can often bring
Speaker 1: light into the thing that you're examining. Right, So for
Speaker 1: a long time, it was just thought, Okay, the pile
Speaker 1: of rocks, that's all there is to it. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: dig up around it. Let's who we can come up with.
Speaker 1: And so for the longest we didn't have any additional answers.
Speaker 1: You know, it kind of brings you back to the
Speaker 1: cock snowflake, right that you can you can examine one
Speaker 1: side all you want, but there's only so many answers
Speaker 1: to be gleaned from that particular site. But if you
Speaker 1: can bring in another side, a connected site, then suddenly
Speaker 1: you have a number of different answers that can present themselves.
Speaker 1: And that's what has happened in the form of a
Speaker 1: Neolithic settlement just two miles away from Stonehenge. This is
Speaker 1: called Durrington Walls, and it is notable because it actually
Speaker 1: has evidence of timber post holes arranged in a nearly
Speaker 1: identical circular pattern, constructed around the same time as Stonehenge. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's that's key, the wood, because chances are no
Speaker 1: one has ever had a poster of Durrington Walls on
Speaker 1: their wall and their of their dorm room. You know.
Speaker 1: Stonehenge is, you know, has to the test of time.
Speaker 1: There's still stone portions of it visible, drinking walls made
Speaker 1: of wood. So all we have is archaeological evidence that
Speaker 1: this site existed. Yeah, and in some ways it's kind
Speaker 1: of the mirror image of Stonehenge or the twin It's
Speaker 1: also aligned with the solstices. But on the morning of
Speaker 1: the winter solstice, the timber circle will point at the
Speaker 1: rising sun and at the end of the day Stonehenge
Speaker 1: will be framed with the setting sun. So and if
Speaker 1: you think about summer solstice, Stonehenge would be aligned with
Speaker 1: the sunrise, but Durington Walls would be aligned with the sunset.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of it's neat because it kind of
Speaker 1: encompasses this idea of light and dark, these two different
Speaker 1: places serving two different purposes. And we think this because
Speaker 1: there's this archaeologist by the name of Ramlas and Nina
Speaker 1: and he visited Stonehenge and he thought this, there's an
Speaker 1: interesting similarity going on here with Stonehenge and Madagascar because
Speaker 1: in Madagascar you have the use of stone imburial sights only,
Speaker 1: and this is thought of as the realm of the dead,
Speaker 1: right and you would use um ephemeral uh sorts of
Speaker 1: materials for the realm of the living. The villages would
Speaker 1: be constructed out of timber, for instance. And so he
Speaker 1: began to look at this idea of Durrington Walls and
Speaker 1: Stonehenge is perhaps being interlinked in the same way in
Speaker 1: the same sort of symbolic relationship between life and death.
Speaker 1: And there's this idea that that Parker Pierson actually runs
Speaker 1: with a little bit more is that Drington Walls could
Speaker 1: have been this place for weary travelers to stop off
Speaker 1: before observing the solstice, and Stonehenge, which also would have
Speaker 1: been a time to observe the passing of souls and
Speaker 1: lo and behold. Um, it even has a body of
Speaker 1: water that is connected into this scenario because we always
Speaker 1: need this, right when we're talking about passing between the
Speaker 1: realm of living in the realm of the dead, there's
Speaker 1: gotta be a body of water to help the passageway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta pass the river. You've gotta go down the river.
Speaker 1: I mean you find it and everything from his Inferno
Speaker 1: to to American spiritual hymns. Uh, the river is a
Speaker 1: powerful symbol just throughout human history. Yes, and so in
Speaker 1: this case we have the river Avon. And so what's
Speaker 1: really interesting about this is the Parker Pearson said, Okay,
Speaker 1: well we think this is the theory, but we don't
Speaker 1: know unless we actually can find some evidence of a
Speaker 1: pathway from both Durrington Walls and a pathway from Stonehenge
Speaker 1: to the river. Because if if the river is connected
Speaker 1: in this story, then obviously people would have made those
Speaker 1: pathways and made it a part of ritual. Lo and
Speaker 1: behold they found it. Yes, Yes, there's plenty of evidence
Speaker 1: to show that there was a path both from Stonehenge
Speaker 1: to Avon and from Durrington to Avon. Yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a thirty foot avenue that was uncovered between this
Speaker 1: realm of the living and the water, and also evidence
Speaker 1: of eight small Neolithic houses that coincided during the same
Speaker 1: time the Sarson's were erected at Stonehenge. I think you
Speaker 1: really nailed it on the head earlier when you were
Speaker 1: talking about um the Durrington as a is a reflect
Speaker 1: of Stonehenge as it's opposite, because you also see that
Speaker 1: in the evidence of things found there. For so, we
Speaker 1: found remnants of the dead at Stonehenge and found cremains.
Speaker 1: We've also found some remains at Durrington, but most of
Speaker 1: those remains are animal remains, pig remains that evidence of
Speaker 1: massive feast, massive barbecues. They'll find the bones, for instance,
Speaker 1: will still have uh will will still be together in
Speaker 1: a way that represents that they were buried discarded when
Speaker 1: the soft material was still attached the bone. So it's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty obvious that what happened here is some
Speaker 1: people had a massive feast. Yeah, we're talking about testing
Speaker 1: the cattle teeth from eighty thousand animal bones that were
Speaker 1: excavated in in the complex Stonehenge complex, and the team
Speaker 1: found that around that would have been the site of
Speaker 1: those vast communal feasts, and more importantly, they found that
Speaker 1: the animals would have been slaughtered in the winter, nine
Speaker 1: months after their spring birth, pointing to the midwinter solticem gathering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the ideas people are making a long pilgrimage to
Speaker 1: this during Concide, to this uh, this place of the living,
Speaker 1: this place instructed of wood, this impermanent place in which
Speaker 1: we can live and play and feast and enjoy ourselves.
Speaker 1: And then once you have you've you've you've taken care
Speaker 1: of those needs, then you can go down the river
Speaker 1: avon a bit. You can you can disembark at this
Speaker 1: other path, and you can go up to a place
Speaker 1: that is made of stone, a silent place, a place
Speaker 1: where no one's living, a place that that that stands
Speaker 1: between life and death, where the perhaps the spirits of
Speaker 1: the dead are are contacted or at least remember this.
Speaker 1: And this is what is the interesting part of this
Speaker 1: is again this is based on community. This is talking
Speaker 1: about people who are unified in this one story to
Speaker 1: observe this thing about the seasons and about what it
Speaker 1: means to be a human being and passing through on
Speaker 1: Earth at that time, and I wanted to read this
Speaker 1: quote from Professor Parker Pearson. He said that it was
Speaker 1: a monument soon as it was a monument that brought
Speaker 1: ancient Britain together. What we found is that people came
Speaker 1: with their animals to feast Stonehenge from all corners of Britain,
Speaker 1: as far afield as Scotland. It was built soon after
Speaker 1: the appearance of the first Pan British culture, the only
Speaker 1: time in prehistory that the people of Britain were unified.
Speaker 1: So in a way you could, you know, not to
Speaker 1: make this all sort of rosy colored um time period,
Speaker 1: but you could say that this was perhaps a peaceful
Speaker 1: time in which people really were on the same page here.
Speaker 1: And certainly if you read anything about the history of Britain,
Speaker 1: you know that that there has been plenty of strife
Speaker 1: since those days, just pretty much almost constant strife. I
Speaker 1: guess we're more or less in recent times where it's
Speaker 1: a little calmer they're in the British Isles, but but
Speaker 1: still there's plenty to argue about there as well. Strife
Speaker 1: has abounded. Uh. Professor Parker Pearson believes the decline is
Speaker 1: explained by the culture of the Beaker people known to
Speaker 1: have arrived in these areas, these the aisles around the time.
Speaker 1: He believes that they're greater individualism and new material goods,
Speaker 1: including the first metal goods scene in Britain, put an
Speaker 1: end to the communal culture for which the monument had
Speaker 1: originally been created. So what he's talking about is that
Speaker 1: people were no longer interested in being buried in a
Speaker 1: more communal sense. But now we're talking about really the
Speaker 1: sort of uh focus on material goods and metals and
Speaker 1: wanting to be buried with your stuff. Individual exceptionalism sort
Speaker 1: of taking over. So they essentially crash the the ancient
Speaker 1: hippie party U in Britain. These these jerk show up
Speaker 1: who are self obsessed, who are carrying metal instruments of
Speaker 1: death with them, and uh so suddenly they they make
Speaker 1: a quick work of the existing populations. Now is that
Speaker 1: a perfect parallel to the Space Program. Perhaps not, But
Speaker 1: there is this idea that there is more of a
Speaker 1: turning towards individualism and away from community. Yeah, yeah, yes, certainly,
Speaker 1: because with the Space Program, you know, it was anything
Speaker 1: on that scale, like people have to believe in it
Speaker 1: or in the case of the Pyramids, enough people have
Speaker 1: to believe in it to enslave other people to do
Speaker 1: the work for them. And that's why this is ultimately
Speaker 1: much are under as far as our understanding Stonehage goes,
Speaker 1: it's it's a much happier megaproject than than than pretty
Speaker 1: much anyone I can think of, you know, because like
Speaker 1: I said, there's not really a war angle here, there's
Speaker 1: not a slavery angle here. There are people working to
Speaker 1: build this thing that is the physical manifestation of their belief,
Speaker 1: of their idea, of their view. Uh. And there's there's
Speaker 1: something just infinitely beautiful about that. Like they form this
Speaker 1: idea of what life is and how it works, about
Speaker 1: the importance of community, about the importance of their ancestors,
Speaker 1: and they made a physical sight that empowers that, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it continues right, It's extant, and that's pretty amazing. UM.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to mention if I haven't already, that
Speaker 1: Stonehenge pretty eights the Pyramids in Egypt. So um, again,
Speaker 1: this is a huge undertaking. Um. And I would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you guys if you have been to Stonehenge,
Speaker 1: because I hear tale hold of I think twice a
Speaker 1: year summer soltists, in which are solsists in which people
Speaker 1: are actually able to walk through Stonehenge. Otherwise it's something
Speaker 1: like you're roped off thirty yards away. Yeah. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: when you touch that is, do you do you feel something?
Speaker 1: Not because there's you know, ancient alien energy resonating through it,
Speaker 1: but more in terms of like the stin doll syndrome
Speaker 1: that we've discussed before, bringing all of your ideas about
Speaker 1: Stonehenge with you, Like what kind of experience do you
Speaker 1: have there. I haven't looked at any any of the data,
Speaker 1: but I I wonder if there is a Stonehenge syndrome
Speaker 1: that takes place. That would be fascinating to find out
Speaker 1: if someone felt crushed by the weight of history and man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know you're getting some cookie people show up
Speaker 1: for that. You know, there's some some alien hunters showing up.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some some very mystical individuals showing up.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you bring that mindset of miss
Speaker 1: stism if with you, if you bring that mindset of
Speaker 1: alien visitations with you, then then it can be an
Speaker 1: overpowering situation to actually touch those stones. Yeah, and I've
Speaker 1: read that um it is a place of worship for druids.
Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is is that Stoneheench
Speaker 1: was erected two thousand years before uh Druid people begin
Speaker 1: to actually really worship and form their ideas. All right.
Speaker 1: So there you have it, Stonehenge. So we tackled it
Speaker 1: in two parts again because we felt you really need
Speaker 1: to needed to understand the challenges of building Stonehenge and
Speaker 1: the mysteries that we've had to tackle regarding how Neolithic
Speaker 1: man built it, to fully understand the mysteries regarding why
Speaker 1: they built it. Yeah. And Uh, if you ever have
Speaker 1: anything that seems terribly difficult or prolonged in front of
Speaker 1: you that you need to do, just think about Stonehenge. Yea,
Speaker 1: it's not Stonehengch. If this is something I can do
Speaker 1: in my lifetime exactly, all right. We would love for
Speaker 1: you to get in touch with us. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: you want to do so, you can find us at
Speaker 1: all the usual places. Our main hunt is stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind dot com. Uh. It is the stone
Speaker 1: Hinge of our world, constructed over the course of a month. Yeah,
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