Monumental mystery
Dan Snow sets out to excavate the truth about Stonehenge
Stonehenge: The Discovery with Dan Snow Easter Sunday, 9pm, Channel 5
Across the millennia since the construction of prehistoric monument Stonehenge, much of the history relating to the origins of the stone circle on Salisbury
Plain have been lost.
Now, historian Dan Snow is exploring centuries of investigations into this iconic attraction, and finding out what today’s technology can tell us about its backstory.
‘Stonehenge is unique,’ says Snow. ‘There’s nothing like this ring of colossal stone arches anywhere else in the world. But who built it?
And why? And how did ancient builders construct this extraordinary structure?’
Snow consults various Stonehenge experts, starting at the Ancient Technology Centre in Dorset. There, he learns that, 900 years ago, it was thought the henge had been constructed by a giant in Ireland, before being magically transported to England by the wizard Merlin. He also road-tests a more plausible explanation of how the giant stones might have been moved using a large sled.
‘It showed that it was possible to move a big stone over some distance using that,’ he says. ‘Archaeologists are now pretty certain that’s how ancient builders moved them.’
Snow also learns what the burial mounds that surround Stonehenge can tell us about pagan Britain, and he is shown how modern technology has helped to indicate where the monolithic stones actually came from.
Theories about what Stonehenge was for have included a Viking camp and a temple built by the Druids. However, in the 18th century, antiquarian William Stukeley suggested that the layout of the monument, and the surrounding ditch and bank, was related to the movement of the sun.
With the help of ‘skyscape archaeologist’ Fabio Silva, Snow confirms what Stukeley discovered by recreating what the wintersolstice night sky would have looked like all those centuries ago, and seeing how the sunset would have aligned with the henge.
‘They were master builders,’ he says. ‘They knew their maths and their astronomy and they encoded everything into this one place. That’s why Stonehenge is unique.’