Stonehenge Solved Its Three Observatories, Who built them, How and Why

Over recent years much of my free time has been spent in seeking to discover the answer to the puzzle of Stonehenge and I like to think I have solved it. On hearing this, people almost immediately ask "What was it for?" A one sentence reply is inevitably greeted with scepticism simply because in logic the answer must fall beyond the bounds of conventional thinking, otherwise somebody cleverer than me would have discovered it long ago. Following some discussion, the usual second question is "Who built it?" After all, our ancestors at the time – notionally 2000 years before the birth of Christ – were only just beginning to enter the Bronze Age from the Neolithic, when stone and flint axes, with animal bones for implements, were all they had.

I asked a few people what they thought Stonehenge was used for; the responses were mostly mentions of a temple, sacrifices, feasts, rituals, sun worship, and druids. As to who built it they didn't know; some guessed druids, or if not them, some unknown earlier people. My respondents seem to have gained these ideas from archaeologists in television programmes. In addition there are individuals who, in books and papers, have devised a particular theory to fit the stones, and some of the holes of the monument. Many of these have to do with recording astronomical movements, for example those of the Sun and Moon. For one reason or another, none of the concepts has gained general acceptance; each has a significant weakness which at root stems from their being imposed on the ruins. This leads to approximations of aspects such as dimensions, and alignments of the stones, most of which are in a decrepit state. It also results in concepts which fall outside the context of the times, for example, in fashioning, raising and assembling huge stones, this at a time when stone axes represented the limit of technology. Furthermore, all this largely ignores many holes in the ground, of different shapes and sizes, now unseen, and banks of chalk and earth now just slight undulations in the turf. Altogether, these outnumber the visible stones by far.

This scenario contrasts with the many efforts of archaeologists and others down the years, meticulously measuring and recording details of the monument, both above and below ground, and assessing dates using the latest available science. Only a few stones have escaped restoration but all the others have been made upright and repositioned with exactness. Holes have been carefully excavated and refilled. About half the surface of the monument remains undisturbed for possible future investigations. The sources of stones have been pinpointed. We have available: excavation reports, maps, plans, photographs, learned treatises, papers and books.

The contrast between this wealth of detailed knowledge, and a lack of understanding, is stark. It is an unresolved paradox which has seen decades of attempts to solve it come to a standstill. Recent efforts have included studies of various wider contexts (i). Now it is projected that greater detailed attention be afforded to the whole World Heritage Site (ii). That we are at the point of exhaustion is evidenced by an archaeologist being on the record as saying he enjoys the mystery of Stonehenge so much, its solution would make him feel sad.

In me, this situation stirs an opposite emotion: 'I must be overlooking the obvious and I will pursue it until I succeed'. Perhaps the blockage is within ourselves; we have failed as problem solvers. I am not an archaeologist, or an astronomer, or a civil engineer, and have no relevant background. Perversely, this gives me an enormous advantage. I can address the problem with an open mind, uninfluenced by past pronouncements on the subject, and have nothing to lose. I can even change my mind! I am retired, which helps!! My nature is such that when I find a view I have been holding is erroneous, I rapidly change it. Some say to me, with aggravation, "You're always right!" But as someone once asked: 'When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do?

I believe we need, still, to concentrate on the monument and not get sidetracked. I learned three problem solving 'attitudes of mind', not skills, as a child at the hands of my mother. Once or twice, when I couldn't find my socks after washing day, and I called downstairs "Where are my socks?" the reply was "Whistle for them and they'll come!" When I could not find them in the airing cupboard I searched my chest of drawers, my bedroom, the clothes horse and the whole house, sometimes, ultimately to find them in the airing cupboard! I learned that if I am going to search, do it thoroughly. Secondly, as soon as I start looking in the same place twice, I know I'm failing. Thirdly, immediately that happens, I must sit down quietly, think, and review the situation: where have I not looked?

There is also the aspect of not understanding the object of one's attention. In this respect I well remember a senior level General Manager who could not make a decision and was ultimately discharged for incompetence. He had lost his self confidence, and at every meeting called for more facts. He could not see the implications of those he already had.

Brainstorming technique, whether one uses it in a group of people, or as a mind-set in one's head, is a crucial element of problem solving. This is because it breaks down constraints to our thinking, erected subconsciously, and therefore unwittingly. Two examples will suffice. One can present a paperclip on a piece of paper to a circle of people and ask each to write a list of possible uses for it. With this done, one distorts the clip into misshapen wire and asks the group to spontaneously call out ideas as they enter their heads. The difference in width of thinking is dramatic. The second example is that of asking an intelligent person, ignorant of the context of a problem, to join a group and contribute in an uninhibited way. Again, the width of emergent possibilities is widened. In both examples ideas arise which are strange and appear to be daft until debated and developed, taking creativity into new directions. This process encourages people to suspend judgement, which is to say: do not criticise, or reject an idea at the outset, but tuck it away until some point when it seems worthwhile to re-examine its potential, or abandon it.

A crucial aspect emerges from these examples. Would it be possible for a senior person, say two levels higher in status than the group, to join its deliberations and leave them producing a level of creativity just as high? Clearly, that would depend upon the senior's personality and how the group perceived his or her values. Another question is that of whether or not members of the group can achieve empathy with one another. All these thoughts have nothing to do with the adequacy or otherwise of the facts of the case, nor of knowledge and professional competence; they have to do with mind-sets. Are we the problem, not the monument? Perhaps the greatest stumbling block of all is in the old adage 'There are none so blind as those who won't see'.

We can now address basic questions about our approach to the challenge of Stonehenge. What facts are there which we have failed to notice? Of those we have noticed, have we overlooked their full significance? Indeed, have we wrongly interpreted their significance? What limitations have we erected around our creative thinking? Can we still focus our thoughts on the monument itself, without succumbing to competing distractions? Can we strike empathy with others in our group? If not, it is unlikely we will be able to empathise with the monument's builders.

The foregoing has informed my research but it would be a mistake to assume that at the outset I decided to address Stonehenge head-on, rather did I drift towards it. I am summarising this journey of 'drift' because it demonstrates some of the mindset necessary for problem solving, although upon reflection it also reveals curiosity and doggedness, if not obsession! I hope my reflections will help and encourage would-be fundamental thinkers, especially those contemplating studying my work and conclusions with a view to improving them.

What caused me to think about Stonehenge at the outset? This has some similarity with the way Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin: chance! He left a specimen of material in his laboratory for a while and on returning, to his surprise noticed an unexpected mould on it. Curious about this, he investigated with the result we all know. I read of a stone axe being discovered many, many miles from Cornwall, the source of its material, and it set me wondering how mankind made long journeys through virgin forest and managed to return to base. I conceived the notion of dead straight pedestrian footpaths, regardless of the terrain, these being distinguishable through the seasons because there is no such thing as a straight line in Nature. In other words I invented a problem and set about solving it. If it was true, how could it have been done? Such is the nature of fundamental research. One does not know where it will lead, if anywhere. It is an act of faith. It often needs luck.

During the course of this thinking, Albert Watkin's 'ley lines' came to my attention (iii) and because they are also straight, regardless of the terrain, I studied them. My investigations included field walking locally, and plotting accurate, fine lines on 1:25000 1^st Series Ordnance Survey sheets, I concluded, rightly or wrongly, that leys were not paths for pedestrians because they passed through man-made obstacles, and not round them. When I was about to consign my papers to a refuse sack, an ineffable feeling deterred me as I shuffled a straight- edge around on one of the sheets. While doing this I noticed a sub-circular ditch and bank surrounding the crest of a hill. Its perimeter followed the contours except for one segment which was dead straight. I idly aligned my straight- edge on this and was surprised to find it accurately coincided with the straight length of another distant earthwork. That was how I discovered Straight Ways.

During my enquiries into 'ley lines' I had purchased The Ley Hunters Companion (iv)and on page 123 noticed a way was made to pass across the sarsen circle of Stonehenge and alongside the Avenue's northwest ditch. The seeming incongruity of this compelled my interest in Stonehenge. I soon forgot what I was doing and threw myself into attempting to solve the mystery of it! I felt increasing hopelessness and returned to the comfort of thinking about straight ways!

Each straight way I identified seemed to be spontaneously created without regard to others already established. Theoretically this could lead to situations where to get from one established location to another, traffic would have to use two or more intersecting ways. If they could only strike a way directly between the two locations they would save themselves much time and effort. But they could not have seen through the forest to do this, so I invented what I called an Area Reference Site for a district. Here, I thought, they could align a small log placed between two upright poles, secured in holes at a distance from each end of it. The log was then impaled with arrows. The Sun's shadows of these would have a relationship with the poles. The 'surveyors' could then carry the log about as a means of determining their orientation, although it could only be useful for a few days at most, because of the Sun's changing paths. They could then return to the Area Reference Site for a 'reset'.

At this point I felt I could take the idea no further in the absence of excavated evidence and gave it up. However, I then heard of henges at Dorchester, Oxfordshire, not far from home, and a speculative visit to the Ashmolean Museum, enabled me to acquire the last but one available copy of R J C Atkinson's First Report of excavations there in 1947. This fortuitously enabled me fully to confirm the existence of ways. It also provided evidence of waymarks, together with how ways represented inviolate boundaries for spoil thrown up from pits and ditches dug nearby. I interpreted the henges as having clear skyward connotations, seemingly encouraging for the idea of Area Reference Sites, but I could find no evidence of two poles. Also, it appeared possible the object of interest for the creators, was the Moon on strange paths, and certainly nothing to do with the Sun.

At this stage I resolved to analyse other excavation sites in the British Isles, more or less randomly chosen, with two questions in mind: did they reveal evidence of more straight ways, and did they display a skyward connation which involved the Moon? It was when I had worked my way through several of these sites, with the skyward connotation and the reality of ways becoming ever clearer, that I felt I must return to Stonehenge with these in mind. I also realised I would have to take a different approach towards it.

It is a great irony that I had forgotten all about page 123 of The Ley Hunters Companion (iv) until writing this introduction more than two decades later. On opening that page once more, I realised my way designated SU 0435-1 virtually coincides with the 'ley line' that held my attention. But of far greater moment is the old adage which says solving a problem only serves to create another. After much research, the way Stonehenge worked, who designed the stone element of it and supervised its construction, now appear to me to be beyond reasonable doubt. But there is plenty of scope for further thinking about my ideas concerning why the monument was built, and even more so about the cause of that in turn. To my mind these latter aspects have even greater interest and significance than Stonehenge itself: the old adage that solving a problem serves to create another, still applies. Although, as will be seen, the last aspect naturally and finally, closes a train of terrestrial events naturally started, there remains outstanding the problem of persuading people to address the most fascinating prehistory event of all.

In this attempted summary of my findings I have sought to meet the needs of two readerships, and in so doing may have fallen between two stools. There are specialists, such as archaeologists associated with the monument, and general readers with more than just a passing interest in Stonehenge, but who do not wish to get embroiled in technical detail. I need to explain how I have courted this danger, firstly by referring to the way I happened to record my research. I did this as I progressed, and when I thought I had finished, divided it into six typescripts for ease of handling, entitling them The Meaning of Stonehenge: an Exploration, with an introduction to Euthyology (v) Thereafter, I realised there were aspects of matters I had overlooked, or which needed further development, and I produced a series of occasional papers each with a title appropriate to its content. This makes a total of 14 typescripts in all when including this summary. Throughout the work (but not in this summary) there are instances of proceeding down blind alleys, of me changing an interpretation, sometimes more than once, and of discontinuity of thinking; such is the nature of fundamental research. The sequence of tackling aspects of the monument and related matters was always governed by ease and expediency.

Two important consequences flow from all of this and which have to be taken into account by the specialist reader. Firstly, the last interpretation of a particular aspect in the work is always superior to any earlier interpretation (this summary over rides all earlier work). The second, obvious, potential difficulty is accessing the early research, this not withstanding the provision of detailed contents lists, lists of illustrations (which subsume diagrams and tables), and the useful innovation of each illustration bearing the page number(s) where it is used.

The difficulty of access is resolved by this summary which describes the history of Stonehenge in chronological order, and the nature of Straight Ways, some of which determined its location. Lower case Roman numerals refer an enquirer to reference works and to the mentions of a particular aspect in typescripts, as shown in the Notes and References for each chapter. The illustrations, or figures, in this summary are confined to those necessary for comprehending the text. The summary does not embrace aspects of the research which are of secondary relevance to Stonehenge and straight ways, but the references do include leads to these. Public access to the typescripts will be found in the Introduction of Notes and References.

It is intended that the employment of unobtrusive Roman numerals, and the avoidance of extraneous material, results in an uncluttered presentation for the general reader. The chapters most likely to be found torrid by such readers concern aspects of the Stone henge construction sequence, included expediently to remedy shortfalls in the typescripts. While this intrusion is for the benefit of specialist readers, I think it may add intriguing background colour for others.

My last explanation concerns dates. Rather than quoting many of these, I have provided only three indications, instead paying close attention to the spatial relationships of stones and holes in the ground. Doing otherwise courts the danger of distracting and unprofitable argument, for reasons succinctly stated by English Heritage's Archaeological Adviser (vi). Furthermore, there is sometimes ambiguity, if not error in the provenancing of the objects used for the process of dating. To complicate matters, the AD dates we all unquestioningly use, are based on the work of Bede (c673-735). His correlation of events and dates prior to his lifetime, are open to doubt, perhaps by as much as 150 years (vii), but see the data of tree rings [dendrochronology] (viii).

With these caveats made clear, the next chapter commences our enquiries by questioning an almost universal assumption, and also by providing a context for the monument as it did not exist in a vacuum. But it would be remiss of me to overlook its spiritual dimension and the following poem meets my need.

A Poem by Lisa Saunders, September 1990