Nope, Stonehenge wasn’t used as a setting for sun-worshipping or sacrifices, as much as we wish it had been. Archaeologists have just unearthed a missing “piece of the jigsaw” to shed light on the real purpose of England’s greatest prehistoric site.

Following the closure of the A344 road, which cut across an ancient processional route to the monument, English Heritage archaeologists have been able to excavate there for the first time and confirm the theory that it was built along an ice-age landform that happened to be on the solstice axis.

Below the tarmac, they found ditches dug by our prehistoric cousins to form a 2.5km “avenue” that points directly at the mid-winter sunset in one direction and the mid-summer sunrise in the other. Not only that, they found naturally occurring fissures between these ridges, which were caused by ice-age melt water. Professor Mike Parker Pearson, a leading expert on Stonehenge, said:

It’s hugely significant because it tells us a lot about why Stonehenge was located where it is and why [prehistoric people] were so interested in the solstices. It’s not to do with worshipping the sun, some kind of calendar or astronomical observatory; it’s about how this place was special to prehistoric people. This natural landform happens to be on the solstice axis, which brings heaven and earth into one. So the reason that Stonehenge is all about the solstices, we think, is because they actually saw this in the land.

Here’s a picture to help explain a bit better:

Archeologists have also identified three holes where missing stones could have stood to complete the circle. They found the holes, luckily enough, because the hose was too short to water the area this summer.

[Source : The Guardian, Daily Mail, The Raw Story]