Purpose of Stonehenge

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sun passing through a trilith at Stomehenge

Stonehenge, the famous group of 4500-yearo-ld standing stones in England, is believed to have been a calendar, or possibly a religious center. It consists of rocks organized into two main circles and two horseshoes, that were in turn are surrounded by a circular mound of earth 300 feet in diameter. A henge refers to a particular type of earthwork of the Neolithic period, typically consisting of a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area of more than 20 meters in diameter.

In its day Stonehenge was at the center of the largest ceremonial center in Europe. The belief that the structure was a calendar or some kind of astronomical observatory is based on the fact that one stone is aligned with summer solstice and others appear to predict solar and lunar eclipses and line up with the sun's position on other important solar days. Yet other stones are oriented toward cycles of the moon, the four station stones seemed to be lined up with the extremes of the midsummer moonrise. During the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, when the sun's reaches it highest point in the sky, sunlight passes directly over a pointer rock outside the stone circle and sunbeams shine straight down a track called The Avenue onto the "altar stone" in the center.

Ed Caesar wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: “The joys and frustrations of all archaeological study—perhaps all historical inquiry—come into particularly sharp relief at Stonehenge. Even to the most casual observer, the monument is deeply significant. Those vast stones, standing in concentric rings in the middle of a basin on Salisbury Plain, carefully placed by who-knows-who thousands of years ago, must mean something. But nobody can tell us what. Not exactly. The clues that remain will always prove insufficient to our curiosity. Each archaeological advance yields more questions, and more theories to be tested. Our ignorance shrinks by fractions. What we know is always dwarfed by what we can never know. Take the big question: Was Stonehenge predominantly a temple, a parliament or a graveyard? Was it a healing ground? We don’t know, for sure. We know that people were buried there, and that the stones are aligned in astronomically important ways. We also understand, because of the chemical composition of animal bones found nearby and the provenance of the stones, that people traveled hundreds of miles to visit Stonehenge. But we cannot say, with certainty, why. [Source: Ed Caesar, Smithsonian Magazine, September 2014]

David Nash, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, told Business Insider that Stonehenge might have been a ground for burials and cremation, or perhaps a place of ancient healing. Matt Leivers, an archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, thinks Stonehenge was the ceremonial center of southern England, a place of spiritual and political power. “Think of Washington DC with a big dollop of religion," he said. “That's likely why the Beaker people [people named after the beakers they buried with] wanted to be buried there, Leivers added: "By the Beaker period, it had been a place of importance for many many centuries and its fame meant that people wanted to visit it." [Source: Aylin Woodward, Business Insider, February 13, 2021]

Advanced metal detectors, sensors and lasers, have helped archaeologists find Neolithic-age wood and stone temples and shrines near Stonehenge. Associated Press reported: “An extraordinary hidden complex of archaeological monuments has been uncovered around Stonehenge using new methods of subterranean scanning. The finds, dating back 6,000 years, include evidence of 17 previously unknown wooden or stone shrines and temples as well as dozens of burial mounds which have been mapped in minute detail. Most of the monuments are merged into the landscape and invisible to the casual eye. [Source: Associated Press, September 9, 2014]

Good Websites Archaeology News Report archaeologynewsreport.blogspot.com ; Anthropology.net anthropology.net : archaeologica.org archaeologica.org ; Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com ; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org ; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com; Livescience livescience.com/ ; British Archaeology magazine british-archaeology-magazine ; Current Archaeology magazine archaeology.co.uk

Book: “Stonehenge” by John North

Theories and Stories Regarding Stonehenge's Purpose

Stonehenge in 1645

There are a number of theories regarding the main purpose of Stonehenge, which include an astronomical observatory, a religious temple of healing, a burial ground and the end of a procession route. Maev Kennedy wrote in The Guardian: “Archaeologists have argued for centuries about what Stonehenge really meant to the people who gave hundreds of thousands of hours to constructing circles of bluestones shipped from Wales, and sarsens the size of double-decker buses dragged across Salisbury plain. Druids and New Age followers still claim the site as their sacred place. Others have judged it a temple, an observatory, a solar calendar, a site for fairs or ritual feasting or – one of the most recent theories – a centre for healing, a sort of Stone Age Lourdes.” [Source: Maev Kennedy, The Guardian, March 9, 2013]

Thea Chard wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Over the years, Stonehenge's legends have been many. Some said the devil bought the stones from a woman in Ireland; another story suggests they were placed on the plain by the wizard Merlin; others have sworn that aliens built the monument and left it as a place for worship, or that Druids built it as a temple for sacrificial ceremonies. "You could put 10 archaeologists in a room, and you'd get at least 11 theories," said Dr. Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology, a private company which manages Stonehenge. "I think the one thing everybody would agree on is that Stonehenge is a temple, which is easy to lose sight of in the kind of to-ing and fro-ing of ideas."[Source: Thea Chard, Los Angeles Times, Sunday, May 11, 2008]

David Keys wrote in The Independent: “It’s known that, when the main phase of the monument was initially built in the middle of the third millennium B.C., it was designed primarily as a solar temple, aligned on the mid-winter and mid-summer solstices. But, as Stonehenge evolved over subsequent centuries, the extent to which other religious functions were added is not yet known. Certainly, in the period 1800-1500 B.C., vast numbers of individual monumental tombs were constructed in the landscape around Stonehenge and additional features (various circles of ritual pits) were laid out around the monument.” [Source: David Keys, The Independent, October 9, 2012 |~|]

Examinations of the stone surfaces show they were finely worked and the entire temple was constructed to be viewed primarily from the north-east. “That’s the side of the monument which is approached by what archaeologists have long believed to be a processional way, aligned with the solstices. Because, it now seems that Stonehenge was built to be viewed from that direction, it suggests that some sort of religious procession made its way towards the monument, along that route, probably on mid-winter’s and mid-summer’s day.

Detailed analysis of the data also shows that one of the stones at the now ruinous south-west side of the monument was also very deliberately worked and shaped to allow a line of sight through to the setting sun on mid-winter’s day. This, along with other new evidence, suggests that the south-west side of the monument was once fully functional – and will reduce support for those who have, up till now, argued that Stonehenge was never completed. The implication therefore is that at some stage in its history there was a deliberate attempt at its destruction.

Stonehenge Surrounded by Temples and Shrines

Stonehenge, midsummer 1700

“The four-year study, the largest geophysical survey ever undertaken, covered an area of 12 square kilometres and penetrated to a depth of three metres. British project leader Professor Vincent Gaffney, from the University of Birmingham, said: ''New monuments have been revealed, as well as new types of monument that have previously never been seen by archaeologists. All of this information has been placed within a single digital map, which will guide how Stonehenge and its landscape are studied in the future.

“The investigators used a battery of state-of-the-art instruments including magnetometers - essentially advanced metal detectors - ground-penetrating radar arrays, electromagnetic sensors and lasers. Among the new discoveries are massive prehistoric pits, some of which appear to form astronomical alignments. New information has also come to light about known monuments, including the Durrington Walls ''super-henge'' situated a short distance from Stonehenge. The survey showed that Durrington Walls, which has a circumference of nearly a mile, was once flanked by as many as 60 massive posts or stones up to three metres high. Among the many burial mounds is a striking long barrow 33 metres long within which signs of a massive timber building were found. Evidence suggests this was the site of complex rituals involving the dead, including the removal of flesh and limbs.

“Prof Gaffney said the new work showed that Stonehenge was not an isolated structure on the edge of Salisbury Plain, but the centre of a complex widespread arrangement of ritualistic monuments that had grown and expanded over time. ''The presence of monuments generates activity which generates more monuments,'' he told a press conference at the British Science Festival at the University of Birmingham. ''What we're seeing is this unconscious elaboration of the Stonehenge landscape.''You've got Stonehenge which is clearly a very large ritual structure which is attracting people from large parts of the country. But around it people are creating their own shrines and temples. We can see the whole landscape is being used in very complex ways.''

“The way Stonehenge and its surroundings were laid out was a ''highly theatrical arrangement,'' he said. As one approached the monument via an ancient procession route, it gradually emerged from the landscape. ''It's truly impressive, and you get some feeling for how processional activities affected people,'' said Prof Gaffney. Colleague Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Austria, described Stonehenge as being ''more or less in the bottom of a really big national arena''. He added: ''You have all these burial mounds along the horizon looking down at the stones.''

Was Stonehenge a Health Center?

Some scholars think the bluestones were believed to have therapeutic value and that is why they were moved to central England from Wales. Thea Chard wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Tim Darvill, a professor at the University of Bournemouth, and Geoff Wainwright, president of the Society of Antiquaries of London, have spent the last six years researching Stonehenge and the rocky outcrop Carn Menyn, thought to be the exact site in the Preseli Hills from which the bluestones were taken. Darvill and Wainwright found the Welsh site to be a center for ceremony and burials, where the springs that flowed below the rocks were regarded by ancients as having medicinal powers. [Source: Thea Chard, Los Angeles Times, Sunday, May 11, 2008 */]

Once the bluestones arrive here, “this monument becomes very different from any other kind of monument in the British Isles. ... And when they come here they elevate this monument into something rather special," Darvill said. "You can make the analogy with a medieval cathedral - it's a bog-standard Paris church until they get those relics, and at that point it becomes a beautiful, marvelous building," he said. "It changes its purpose at about that time from a fairly standard henge to a temple of really European renown." */

“This theory, first proposed in a book about Stonehenge by Darvill himself is one of the two most widely accepted theories about the origins of Stonehenge now competing for support in the archaeological world. Now that researchers have come to believe the bluestones come from Wales, the question is why? If the bluestones were just ordinary rocks, surely prehistoric peoples would not have bothered to move them so far. */

One clue may lie in the ancient burial mounds that surround the site: Are they commemorations of the dead, or evidence of attempts to heal the living? "There's people in the landscape buried here who have come here perhaps like pilgrims, in order to benefit from the things here," Darvill said. "You can imagine a big temple like this is going to have shamans, it's going to have witch doctors, it's going to have all the sorts of people who in prehistoric terms would look after those who were ill."

“Many of the remains uncovered during previous excavations show signs of ailments and, in some cases, prehistoric surgery. "One, for example, has a trepanation taken out of the top of the skull, a circular piece of bone taken out to relieve pressure on the brain. You've got to be feeling pretty unwell to let somebody get a flint blade and cut the top of your head off," Darvill said.

Stonehenge May Have Begun as Been Burial Site for Stone Age Elite

Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, who uncovered evidence of a village in Durrington Walls, a few kilometers away from the Stonehenge “believes that Stonehenge's true significance is in its relationship to a sister temple found at Durrington Walls. Together, he believes, the temples served as meccas for religious observance - Durrington Walls a site of feasts for the living, Stonehenge a series of statues of the dead.” [Source: Thea Chard, Los Angeles Times, Sunday, May 11, 2008]

Parker Pearson believes that Stonehenge may have served as a giant burial ground long before the first massive sarsen stone was put in place at Stonehenge. After examining 50,000 cremated bone fragments from 63 individuals buried at Stonehenge, Parker Pearson believes the earliest burials long predate the monument in its current form and provide the reason why is was built. Pearson’s team includes scientists from the universities of Southampton, Manchester, Bournemouth, Sheffield, London, York and Durham. Their work was revealed in a documentary on Channel 4 — “Secrets of the Stonehenge Skeletons”.[Source: Maev Kennedy, The Guardian, March 9, 2013]

“Maev Kennedy wrote in The Guardian: “The first bluestones, the smaller standing stones, were brought from Wales and placed as grave markers around 3,000 B.C., and it remained a giant circular graveyard for at least 200 years, with sporadic burials after that, he claims. It had been thought that almost all the Stonehenge burials, many originally excavated almost a century ago, but discarded as unimportant, were of adult men. However, new techniques have revealed for the first time that they include almost equal numbers of men and women, and children including a newborn baby. "At the moment the answer is no to extracting DNA, which might tell us more about these individuals and what the relationship was between them – but who knows in the future? Clearly these were special people in some way," Parker Pearson said. A mace head, a high-status object comparable to a sceptre, and a little bowl burnt on one side, which he believes may have held incense, suggest the dead could have been religious and political leaders and their immediate families.

“The latest theory is based on the first analysis of more than 50,000 fragments of cremated human remains from one of the Aubrey holes, a ring of pits from the earliest phase of the monument, which some have believed held wooden posts. Crushed chalk in the bottom of the pit was also revealed, suggesting it once supported the weight of one of the bluestones. Dating the bones has pushed back the date of earliest stone circle at the site from 2500 B.C. to 3000 B.C.

“Mike Pitts, an archaeologist, blogger and editor of the British Archaeology journal, who has excavated some of the cremated human remains from Stonehenge, says: "I have now come to believe that there are hundreds, maybe many times that, of burials at Stonehenge, and that some predate the earliest phase of the monument," Pitts said. "The whole history of the monument is inseparably linked to death and burial – but I believe that there are hundreds more burials to be found across the site, which will tell us more of the story."Almost all the prehistoric human remains come from the eastern side of the circle, and many had been excavated by earlier archaeologists including William Hawley in the 1920s, who regarding them as unimportant compared with the giant stones, reburied them jumbled together using one of the Aubrey holes as a convenient pit. "There must be more, in the western quadrant, or buried outside the enclosure ditch. A new excavation could clinch it," Pitts said.

computer-generated rendering of what Stonehenge was like in 2500 BC

Proof That Stonehenge Was a Full Circle Built on the Solstice Axis

Parker Pearson believes the excavations of manmade ditches along the ancient processional route to Stonehenge have confirmed a theory that Stonehenge was built along an ice age landform that happened to be on the solstice axis. Dalya Alberge wrote in The Guardian: “The Avenue was an earthwork route that extended 1.5 miles from the north-eastern entrance to Wiltshire's standing stones to the River Avon at West Amesbury. Following the closure of the A344 road, which cut across the route, archaeologists have been able to excavate there for the first time.[Source: Dalya Alberge, The Guardian, September 8, 2013]

Dr Heather Sebire, English Heritage's Stonehenge curator, said of the discovery of the manmade ditches: "The part of the Avenue that was cut through by the road has obviously been destroyed forever, but we were hopeful that archaeology below the road would survive. And here we have it: the missing piece in the jigsaw. It is very exciting to find a piece of physical evidence that officially makes the connection which we were hoping for."

“Just below the tarmac, Parker Pearson has found naturally occurring fissures that once lay between ridges against which prehistoric builders dug ditches to create the Avenue. The ridges were created by Ice Age meltwater that happen to point directly at the mid-winter sunset in one direction and the mid-summer sunrise in the other. Parker Pearson said: "It's hugely significant because it tells us a lot about why Stonehenge was located where it is and why they [prehistoric people] were so interested in the solstices. It's not to do with worshipping the sun, some kind of calendar or astronomical observatory; it's about how this place was special to prehistoric people.

"This natural landform happens to be on the solstice axis, which brings heaven and earth into one. So the reason that Stonehenge is all about the solstices, we think, is because they actually saw this in the land." Parker Pearson said the findings backed theories that emerged in 2008 following exploration of a narrow trench across the Avenue. "This is the confirmation. It's being able to see the big picture." The excavation was conducted by Wessex Archaeology for English Heritage.

Archaeologists have also identified three holes where missing stones would have stood on the outer sarsen circle - evidence, it is believed, that the circle was indeed once complete. Surprisingly, even the most sophisticated surveys failed to spot them. Two members of staff noticed dry areas of grass, or parchmarks. Susan Greaney, an English Heritage historian, said: "The discovery … has certainly strengthened the case for it being a full circle."

Asked why no one noticed them until now, Parker Pearson said: "The problem is we've not had a decent dry summer in many years. Stonehenge is always regularly watered, and the only reason these have shown up is because – for some reason this year – their hose was too short … So we're very lucky."

In Its Original Form Stonehenge Trapped and Resonated Sound

According to a 2021 study even though it lacked a roof, the original Stonehenge circle — comprised of 157 standing stones rather than 63 complete stones today — trapped sounded and and acted like a sound chamber. Richard Grant wrote in Smithsonian magazine: For people in the inner sanctum 4,000 years ago, the placement of stones would have amplified and enhanced human voices and music in a way that must have been spellbinding. If you were outside the circle, though, the sounds were muffled and indistinct. This finding has added credence to the growing consensus that rituals at Stonehenge were for a small elite. [Source: Richard Grant, Smithsonian magazine, July 2021]

The study was conceived by Trevor Cox, an acoustical engineer at the University of Salford. “Some acoustical research had already been done at Stonehenge, but it was all based on what’s there now,” Cox says. “I wanted to know how it sounded in 2200 B.C., when all the stones were in place.” To find out, he borrowed a standard technique from architectural acoustics and built a scaled-down model. The tallest replica stones are approximately two feet high. Cox and his co-workers based the model on laser scans of Stonehenge that were provided by Historic England, the government agency responsible for preserving historic sites, as well as the latest archaeological thinking about the different construction phases and configuration of the original stones.

To create replicas, he 3-D-printed 27 of the stones. Then he made silicon molds of them and cast the other 130 stones. Some of the model stones were hollow plastic; cavities were filled with aggregate and plaster mix. The others were cast using a plaster-polymer-water mix. Gaps were filled with children’s modeling clay. All the replica stones were sealed with a cellulose car spray paint to prevent sound from being absorbed. Once the model was complete, he began experimenting with microphones and speakers, and measuring sound waves with a computer.

“We expected to lose a lot of sound vertically, because there’s no roof,” he says. “But what we found instead was thousands upon thousands of reflections as the sound waves bounced around horizontally.” These reflections would have produced “significant amplification—four decibels,” Cox says, as well as a powerful reverberation effect, meaning that the sounds would have boomed and lingered before fading away. “You can compare it to singing outside, and then singing in a tiled bathroom: Your voice sounds better in the bathroom.”

As modern people living in sound-reflective rooms and concrete cities, we are so accustomed to amplified, reverberating sounds that we barely notice them. In Neolithic Britain, however, people rarely heard them unless they entered a cave or a narrow rocky gorge. “It must have been magical to build Stonehenge, to make that massive community effort, to align it to the solstice, and then walk inside the circle and hear reverberating sounds,” says Cox.

He thinks it’s extremely unlikely that these acoustic properties were there by design, but once they were discovered, people surely would have exploited them. “Human ceremonies nearly always have speeches, singing or chanting,” he says. “We know there were musical instruments around—bone flutes, pipes, drums, horns—and they would have sounded amazing inside the circle. If you were important, you’d definitely want to be in there. If you were on the outside, not only was your view obscured, you couldn’t hear what was going on either.”

The next stage of research is to place scale replicas of people inside the henge, and find out how much sound they absorb. Cox has also been approached by a number of musicians who are eager to replicate the same precise reverberation in their recordings. “It’s an exciting thought for them,” he says. “Through a mathematical process called convolution, they can record their instruments to sound like they’re playing at ancient Stonehenge.”

Stonehenge: the Destination of a Ceremonial Procession?

The Avenue, 300 meters or so from Stonehenge, is an ancient route along which, according to one theory, the stones were first dragged from the River Avon. For centuries, this was the formal path to the great henge. Today the only hint of its existence are indentations in the tall grass. On walking on the Avenue, Ed Caesar wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: “In the distance a string of barrows gleamed like opals. Gaffney’s idea was not to focus on Stonehenge itself, but on “processionality” within the whole landscape. He imagined people moving around the area like Roman Catholics processing through the Stations of the Cross. He recalled an Easter Friday ritual he saw in Croatia, in which a “bloke with a cross” led fellow barefoot celebrants on a miles-long trip. In Gaffney’s view, the building of the great stone circle was a “monumentalizing” of a similar, if heathen, procession. [Source: Ed Caesar, Smithsonian Magazine, September 2014 /+] /+\

“As we walked downhill through the fields, Gaffney stopped from time to time to point out the hillocks in which “the illustrious dead” were buried. He also noted how the Avenue was not a straight line between the Avon and Stonehenge, but rather a series of tacks that brought the visitor to the Stonehenge site in a “theatrical” way, along the line of sunrise on the summer solstice. /+\

“He thrust himself into the mind of a Bronze Age visitor to the site. “You will have seen nothing like it,” he said. “It would have been massively impressive.” Soon we descended into a valley called Stonehenge Bottom, only a hundred yards or so from the great stones. “They’re disappearing....Watch, just watch!” he said. ithin a few yards, the monument became invisible. When you picture Stonehenge in your mind’s eye, you imagine the concentric rings of vast stones standing in a desolate open landscape, visible for miles around. But now, here we were, a hundred yards away, and the thing had gone. /+\

“We stood in a field, watched by some lethargic cows, and savored the strangeness of the moment. Then, as we stepped uphill, Stonehenge re-emerged on the horizon. It happened fast. The lintels, then the great sarsens, then the smaller bluestones were suddenly before us. Gaffney’s voice lifted. He spoke about Jerusalem Syndrome: the feeling of intense emotion experienced by pilgrims on their first sighting of the Holy City. In the prehistoric world, there was no conception of God as he was understood by the later Abrahamic faiths. But, said Gaffney, as Stonehenge reappeared before us, “whatever the ancient version of Jerusalem Syndrome is, that’s what you’re feeling now.” /+\

Cursus Pits: Proof of Stonhenge’s Role in Processions?

Ed Caesar wrote in Smithsonian Magazine: “He saved his greatest enthusiasm for the discoveries that had been made in the Cursus. This feature, said Gaffney, had always been thought of as a “bloody great barrier to the north of Stonehenge.” Nobody knew quite what it was for. Because the Cursus runs east to west, archaeologists have always believed that its presence owes something to the passage of the sun. The monument must be significant: It was dug in the fourth millennium B.C. using antler picks—hundreds of thousands of man-hours went into its construction. [Source: Ed Caesar, Smithsonian Magazine, September 2014 /+]

“The Hidden Landscapes Project’s instruments discovered several new clues. First of all, they found gaps in the ditch, in particular a very large break in the northern side, to allow people to enter and exit the Cursus. Now, instead of seeing the Cursus exclusively as a monument that encouraged movement along the path of the sun, east to west, Gaffney began to consider these gaps as “channels through the landscape” to guide the movement of people north to south. /+\

“A bigger discovery, Gaffney says, was a “bloody huge” pit about five yards in diameter at the eastern end of the Cursus. Today it lies buried at least three feet below the surface of the ground. Such a pit was much too large for a practical use—for instance, burying trash—because of the labor involved in digging it. In the archaeologists’ minds it could only have ritual implications, as “a marker of some kind,” Gaffney said. What’s more, if you drew a straight line between the pit and the heelstone at Stonehenge, it ran directly along the final section of the Avenue, on the path of the sunrise on the summer solstice. “We thought, That’s a bit of a coincidence!” Gaffney recalled. “That was the point at which we thought, What’s at the other end? And there’s another pit! Two pits, marking the midsummer sunrise and the midsummer solstice, set within a monument that’s meant to be something to do with the passage of the sun.” /+\

Gaffney showed how—on the longest days of the year—the pits formed a triangle with Stonehenge marking sunrise and sunset. “Nobody had ever seen these pits before,” he continued. “But they link the area of Stonehenge with the Cursus directly. Either these things have been put inside the Cursus to mark these points, or the Cursus has been wrapped around them.” /+\

“What was so interesting about the Cursus pits was that they told a story about the landscape. The “sunrise” pit was visible from Stonehenge, but the “sunset” pit was not—it was nestled behind a ridge, and could have been seen only if there had been fire and smoke coming from it. (At some point the pits will have to be excavated for evidence of such activity.) These discoveries fed into a larger understanding of Stonehenge as “diachronic”—operating in light and dark, sunrise and sunset, day and night. “The point I think we’re coming to,” said Gaffney, “is that increasingly we can see the area around Stonehenge as providing extensive evidence for complex liturgical movement—which we can now understand, largely because we know where things are.” /+\

“Parker Pearson, for his part, takes a cautious view of the new research. “Until you dig holes, you just don’t know what you’ve got,” he told me in his office at University College London. “What date it is, how significant it is. [There are] extraordinary new features coming up, and we’re thinking well, what are they?” To be sure, he said the data from the Hidden Landscapes Project “backs up the pattern we’ve already been seeing for some years. We have an excessive number of solstice-aligned monuments in that landscape. Nowhere in the rest of Europe comes even close.” He added, “This is fantastic stuff that’s been done, and it’s raised a whole series of new questions,” he said. “It’s going to take years.” /+\

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2024