Formation of England’s Stonehenge reveals a permanent Solar Calendar

The sheer size and magnitude of Stonehenge built between 3000 BC and 2000 BC makes it enigmatic. Yet it was not merely for show, for scientists always believed it to be an ancient calendar because of its alignment with the solstices of summer and winter.

Till now how the calendar worked was not known but a recent study shows that it performed like the ones used in ancient Egypt with 365.25 days in a year, as per a report in newscientist.com. Each of the stones present in the large sarsen circle denotes a day of the month.

Sharing details about it, Tim Darvill of United Kingdom’s Bournemouth University who did the study said: “It’s a perpetual calendar that recalibrates every winter solstice sunset.” The details of the research were published in the academic journal Antiquity.

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The structure would have enabled the people of ancient times living in the area of what is today Wiltshire, UK, to keep count of the days and months of the year.

When in 2020 it was uncovered that most of the sarsen stones were extracted from the same location which is 25 kilometres from Stonehenge, and placed there almost around the same time, it provided clues to finding out how the calendar worked. “All except two of the sarsens at Stonehenge come from that single source, so the message to me was that they’ve got a unity to them,” observed Darvill.

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