This feature was first published in June 2023 in My Mensa Weekly, our exclusive newsletter for Mensa members. Find out more about becoming a Mensa member here.
Journalist Joan McFadden considers the enigma of prehistoric stones in the landscape and a growing trend for emulating these ancient practices.
Where have we come from? Where are we going? Questions that have been asked for thousands of years but without definitive answers… despite archaeology, religion, science and astronomy attempting to unravel them.
When contemplating standing stones or burial cairns, you can almost hear the voices whispering across the millennia, as you ponder your own place in history and wonder if you too will leave a mark on the fabric of time.
Linking the living and the dead
Nowhere do I feel closer to the past than at the two oldest stone circles in Britain, the ancient Neolithic Calanais Stone Circle in Lewis, and the Standing Stones of Stenness on the Orkney Islands. Stonehenge is perhaps the best-known stone circle – to the extent that there are over 80 modern-day replicas worldwide – but Calanais and Stenness, built around 5,000 years ago, were constructed with astronomical phenomena in mind.
Research from the University of Adelaide is particularly interesting in being so definitive, as normally archaeologists tend to agree on only one aspect of standing stones: they are one of the most difficult archaeological sites to understand or explain.
The Adelaide study used Ordnance Survey data and 3D mapping technology to examine the statistics behind the prehistoric stones’ alignment, and discovered that the stones were positioned to connect with the path of the sun and moon at different points in their cycle. The arrangement is so precise that they can even be used to measure the moon’s appearance at its most northerly position on the horizon – which only happens every 18.6 years.
Many mysteries still remain, however, as similar research is yet to be done on other stone circles across the UK to determine whether they’ve been built along the same lines. Archaeologists suggest that these amazing stone circles may well have been ceremonial, but were they for the local people themselves, such as for funerals, or to worship great mythological beings long before the advent of Christianity?
Some sites have yielded clues that they are potentially linked to funeral rituals, such as Pobull Fhinn’s stone circle in North Uist, just over a hill from the Neolithic chambered burial cairn, Barpa Langass.
Barrows back in fashion
Prehistoric barrows are also enduring monuments from more than 5,000 years ago, which match standing stones in their mystery and longevity. These sites, which keen eyes may see in a landscape (sometimes described as tumuli on early maps), are mounds of earth and/or stone of various shapes and sizes.
Rather unexpectedly, barrows are back in fashion, reintroduced to the UK in 2014 when the Long Barrow at All Cannings in Wiltshire, was commissioned by farmer and Stonehenge steward, Timothy Daw. It consists of stone chambers under an earthen mound containing 340 niches for cremation urns, which were sold for £1,000 each to pay for the construction of the barrow. Five more barrows have now been completed across the UK, with more planned.
Although the structure is based on a prehistoric monument, health and safety requirements need to be met – so these new barrows are fully accessible and well lit. They are opened for ceremonies and interments, for specific festivals, such as summer and winter solstice, and in many cases, for family visits.
Burial tends to ensure a more lasting monument than cremation, given the use of headstones to mark a site of interment. However, bearing in mind that the oldest remaining graveyards in Britain are medieval, burial sites may well be swept away at some point, whereas barrows have the potential to remain in the landscape for millennia.
And therein seems to lie the appeal – people find immense comfort in prehistoric ritual, which ties in perfectly with contemporary eco and green funerals. Being part of a lasting monument and a community of the dead appears to be providing the living with a sense of continuity, which many find comforting.
This fascinating throwback has also inspired research at Glasgow University into modern society, which no longer sees religion as important but is enchanted by spiritualism in many forms.
Doorway to another world
Perhaps the next step will be to recreate standing stone circles, in a more ceremonial guise than the Stonehenge replicas mentioned earlier. It’s enough for fans of the hugely popular Outlander books and TV series to view them as the doorway to time travel. This way into another world is almost tangible at Maeshowe, a Neolithic chambered cairn, also in Orkney. The entrance passage to the tomb was designed to align with the setting of the midwinter sun, lighting up the interior and conveying a strange sense of other worldliness to astounding effect.
Just as the last rays start to disappear, a shaft of light creeps down the entrance passageway, slips across the floor of the tomb and illustrates the back wall like a golden, glowing doorway. Maeshowe was designed with the alignment lying 20 days each side of the winter solstice, with a good chance of it being seen over this period no matter what the weather.
By midwinter, despite knowing that the shortest day (which falls on what we know as 21 December) marks the point where days begin to slowly lengthen, confirmation of this must have been vital to those enduring the dark winter days.
The sun flooding the dark tomb with light may have reassured them of the re-emergence of life on earth as they moved towards spring, and perhaps also the tantalising promise of eternal life on the other side of that golden doorway.
It may be almost impossible to understand these extraordinary works left to us by our prehistoric ancestors, but they offer a different reassurance. Perhaps it’s enough to look on them and find comfort in knowing that, hopefully, we too can achieve something that resonates through the years.
Image credit: Shutterstock
