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8/13. An even larger henge and stone circle, the Ring of Brodgar, went up at
about the same time. These monuments on remote Orkney are the first of
their kind anywhere. [CREDIT: Doug Houghton/Alamy] |
For millennia, people have been fascinated by ancient British monuments
like Stonehenge, with their circles of gigantic standing stones. Now, a
flurry of discoveries offers a new perspective on the monuments’ meaning
and origins. These great rings of earth and stone served as social glue
to bring far-flung ancient communities together in ritual,
archaeologists say, and building the monuments may have been as
important as the grand final product. Surprisingly, new evidence
suggests that this ancient tradition arose in the remote Orkney Islands
in far northern Scotland, and only later spread south to Stonehenge and
Avebury in southern England. Read more at
Monumental Roots (subscriber only).
sciencemag.org/
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