Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery (8 page)

Figure 5.
Type IIA henge

It was once thought that all circular earthworks on the British landscape that had banks and ditches were defensive structures, but such a notion was eventually dismissed when it was realized that the majority of true henges have the ditch, from which the banks were raised, on the inside of the circle. This would make absolutely no sense defensively because if one wished to keep people out of such an earthwork the ditch would clearly be on the outside of the bank. Such an arrangement would allow defenders to stand on the top of the bank hurling missiles and presumably insults on the attackers as they attempted to cross the ditch. With the ditch on the inside the attackers would have the advantage of elevation and the fortification would be useless.

Current archaeological thinking is that henges were places of worship for some unknown deity. In our opinion such a wild guess is as pointless as suggesting that they were some kind of sports ground for proto-cricket or tossing the caber. Had these massive henges been simply places of worship they could each have comfortably held a congregation of over 100,000 people – probably the entire population of northern England at the time!

Thornborough central henge with St Paul’s Cathedral,
London, superimposed upon it, in order to give some
impression of the physical dimensions of these structures.

Figure 6.
Thornborough central henge

Although the Thornborough henges are not well known, even in Britain, they have been studied to some extent by archaeologists. It is known from objects discovered in the ditches and within the circles themselves that they date back to circa 3,500
BC
, a period that is significantly older than any known stone circle. Of the three henges, the northernmost example is in the best condition – but that is because it is now heavily wooded and seems to have been this way for a very long period of time. The presence of the trees and shrubbery has prevented some of the erosion that has taken place in the case of the middle and southern henges. Unfortunately such dense undergrowth makes accurate measuring of the northernmost henge difficult. Meanwhile the middle henge is in fair condition, with some of its banks still reaching to 3 m or more, whilst the southernmost henge is much more weathered and is now not nearly as impressive as its companions.

According to archaeological data there had been a previous central henge with a diameter of 240 m – which gives a circumference of 366 Megalithic Rods. At some point soon after its creation this was removed in favour of the present henge with a circumference of 732 MY. (Remember, there are 2.5 Megalithic Yards to a Megalithic Rod.)

Here were three gigantic exercises in earthmoving that had been planned and dug before any stone circle was created in the British Isles. They had eluded Alexander Thom’s relentless gaze because they contained no stones. To him they would probably mean little or nothing, but to us they were the first tangible proof that what we had been suggesting for nearly a decade was the absolute truth. We had spent years looking at the measurements of every stone circle we could find in order to see our theories regarding the number 366 borne out on the ground, and as it turned out the truth of the matter had been on our own doorstep all along.

With a renewed zeal we began to cast around Britain to see if any of the other known giant henges were also of Megalithic proportions. We found one almost immediately that was. It was in Northern Ireland and was known as the Giant’s Ring. Unfortunately this particular henge might not stand as proof of our theories because archaeologists suggested it had been substantially altered across the many thousands of years of its existence. We knew there were a number of type IIA henges not far from Thornborough itself; though these interested us greatly and would come to be very important to us, many of them were badly eroded, so that although it was highly likely they had been the same size of the Thorn-borough henges we could not be specific.

It wasn’t long before we discovered another type IIA giant henge, this time at some considerable distance from Yorkshire. It was located in a place called Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire – or at least it had been. We were stunned to discover that it had been destroyed some decades ago in the relentless extraction of gravel that was taking place in the area. Fortunately for us it had survived long enough to be fairly accurately measured and there isn’t any doubt that it was exactly the same size as the henges at Thornborough.

Ultimately we turned our attention to that most famous of megalithic monuments – Stonehenge. True, Stonehenge is now famous for being a complex series of stone circles, but the site has a long history and before any stone had been raised there it had originally been nothing more than a henge. It differed from the henges at Thornborough and Dorchester in that it had its ditch on the outside of the bank and it was much smaller. But what made it so significant (and we could have kicked ourselves for not realizing the fact before) is that it had a circumference of 366 MY.

Suddenly, after being in the realms of theories and speculation for so long, we now had a wealth of hard-and-fast archaeological evidence that could not be dismissed. What made the whole situation even more exciting was that it was obvious that the builders of the Thornborough complex had first created one henge built on Megalithic proportions, only to replace it with another henge that also reflected Megalithic measures. In addition, because the slightly later henge had a circumference of 732 MY, it had a diameter of 233 MY. In our book
Civilization One
we had predicted that our megalithic ancestors would almost certainly have been drawn to such a size of circle because to them it must have seemed magical because it is very rare to find circles that have an even number of units for their diameters and also an even number of the same units for their circumference. The number 233 happens to be one of those infrequently occurring numbers that when put through the mill of pi comes out at the other end as an almost perfect 732. (In fact it comes out at 731.99.)

On a number of occasions we stood on the bank tops of the central henge at Thornborough, or within the trees and thickets of the northern henge, where the banks are still at their original height and in better condition. We constantly marvelled at the careful planning and then the scale of the work that went into creating these three gigantic masterpieces. This may not have included quarrying and moving large stones, as had been the case for the later circles, but the demands of the project had been just as great, and in fact much greater. Many thousands of tonnes of earth and gravel were dug from the landscape alongside the river Ure to create the henges, and what made the whole business even more incredible is that those who created them had changed their mind about the dimensions early on, and so had therefore gone through the whole procedure not once, but twice. What is more, archaeologists were sure that the banks of all the henges at Thornborough had once been covered with white gypsum, a stone that must have been visible from miles off when the Sun shone upon it.

The whole task would have been arduous enough using modern machinery but the people in question had no mechanical excavators, not even any metal for picks and shovels. Their picks were deer antlers and their shovels were the shoulder blades of cattle. Every part of the task they had chosen to undertake would have been tremendously complicated and time-consuming and it is generally accepted by archaeologists that the population of Britain at the time (3500
BC
) was extremely small.

We know precious little about the lives of the late Stone Age people of Western Europe. Certainly by the time Thornborough was completed the population was composed, in the main, of farmers. Much of the dense forest that had once covered nearly all of Britain had, by this period, been felled. The climate was probably warmer then than it is now, and it may not have been all that difficult for people to cultivate the crops they needed to sustain themselves and their families, though even farming would have been extremely time-consuming. The late Stone Age farmers had only the most rudimentary of ploughs and, even if they enjoyed better summers and warmer winters that we presently do, they still had to cope with the vicissitudes of an island climate of the sort Britain has always enjoyed.

These people also kept livestock. This would include cattle and sheep, and they would have supplemented their home-produced meat with the odd wild animal, such as boar; with fish from the river and with wild birds and their eggs.

Overcrowding of the landscape doesn’t seem to have been the problem in late Stone Age Britain that it would become by the Bronze Age. As a result, life was probably relatively peaceful, though here we are in the realms of conjecture because so little is known about a people who have left almost no tangible evidence of the times in which they lived. Almost everything they used was organic in nature, such as wood, plant fibres or leather, and in the damp climate of Britain, with its acid soils, little that is so perishable survives the ravages of time. Stone artefacts do exist, such as exquisitely crafted hand axes and flint implements of one sort or another, but they can throw little light on the thoughts, aspirations or religious imperatives of people so long ago.

Only a few scant burials and the ephemeral echoes of post holes where huts once stood offer evidence of the ordinary lives of people who, when we look at their achievements in the form of huge structures such as the henges, must have been complex and very capable. If the later Britain of the Iron Age can be used as a model for late Stone Age life, family groups probably formed a part of clans, which were ultimately components of a large tribal system. However it has to be admitted that this is speculation because although we have fairly good evidence for the Iron Age, thanks to the Roman invasions of Britain, we have no such testimonies for a period as early as 5,500 years ago.

One thing is certain; the people of Britain during this early period may not have been on the same level as we are in a technological sense, but they were certainly no less bright. What is more, their achievements on the landscape, especially at sites such as Thornborough, which was probably by no means unique, show that they had good organizational skills and sufficient free time to create structures that must have taken many years to complete.

We now had the evidence we so badly needed and we knew it would be difficult from this point on to dismiss Alexander Thom’s rediscovery of megalithic measures out of hand. From our own point of view the giant henges of Yorkshire and other parts of the British Isles were so significant to our research that we simply had to understand how they had been created. We also needed to know why such a fantastic exercise in community effort obviously seemed necessary to an apparently simple farming community.

Our next task was to examine the henges more closely to find out why they are laid out as they are (including the dogleg), and try and understand what those using these sites could have achieved from using their remarkable observatories.

•

It would be fair to suggest that archaeologists have always found themselves in something of a quandary when it comes to explaining the purpose of the ancient henges dotted about the British landscape. There may once have been many hundreds or thousands of these structures and, if those that remain are anything to go by, they differed greatly in scale.

A small henge, of which there are still many examples, could quite reasonably be suggested as a simple ‘meeting place’ for a local community. Such a notion could easily make sense, and thus the henge might be seen as a very early form of the later ‘thing’ or ‘ting’. This was the name given to an open-air meeting place used by the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples who came to occupy Britain at a much later date. It was in such locations that local laws were made, where justice was meted out and disputes were settled.

In the case of the Thornborough henges such a usage, as any primary purpose, can be ruled out immediately. The three Thornborough henges are so large that any local or even regional meeting that took place within any one of them would seem like the proverbial pea on a drum. It is worth pointing out once again that the measurement across each of the Thornborough henges is 233 MY, which is 193 m. Anyone who, like us, has stood at the centre of such a henge, immediately becomes aware that such an area can easily swallow a cathedral-sized building, which would make it far too big for any conceivable gathering of people.

It has also been suggested that the henges at Thornborough might have had a defensive role to play, but such a suggestion is, in our estimation, just as absurd as the concept of a meeting place. As we have already noted, the ditches at Thornborough were ‘inside’ the banks. Only a fool would build a castle in which the moat existed inside the castle walls. Even if this were not the case, defending such large structures with the manpower that was available to any community in the late Stone Age would have been impossible.