Callum Jones
A team of researchers are said to have 'solved' the mystery behind the iconic UK landmark that is Stonehenge after making some astonishing new discoveries.
Stonehenge is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Britain, with the Wiltshire landmark attracting 1.3 million visitors every single year.
Visitor numbers increased by a whopping 36 percent in 2023 - partly in thanks to the huge mystery that surrounds the landmark.
Well, a lack of explanation may be a thing of the past after researchers found new evidence that suggests the creation of Stonehenge was to unify people across the UK.
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They believe folks from the Neolithic era may have reconstructed part of the World Heritage Site to unite all in the country, as many Europeans settled in the UK between 2620 and 2480 BC.
As per CNN, Mike Parker Pearson, UCL’s Institute of Archaeology professor, said: "They would have taken significant coordination across Britain — people were literally pulling together — in a time before telephones and email to organize such an effort.
"Moreover, if you look at the layouts of some of the houses at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge, there’s a striking similarity in their architecture to those found far north in the Orkney Islands, but rarely anywhere in between."
Researchers discovered that thousands of other stones dotted across the UK share similar characteristics to that of Stonehenge.
As such, it can help historians establish the relationship between different parts of British civilisation at a time where common knowledge is a little hazy.
"These new insights have significantly expanded our understanding as to what the original purpose of Stonehenge might have been," Parker Pearson added.
"It shows that this site on Salisbury Plain was important to the people not just living nearby, but across Britain, so much so that they brought massive monoliths across sometimes hundreds of miles to this one location."
It's been discovered over half of the Neolithic people who resided near the area Stonehenge were not even from the area.
This suggests the importance of the site, according to researchers.
Parker Pearson added: "The fact that all of its stones originated from distant regions, making it unique among over 900 stone circles in Britain, suggests that the stone circle may have had a political as well as a religious purpose — as a monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos."