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

Questions about what the monument did and who built it are not quite appropriate because they imply the monument is an entity of one age. The questions ought to be 'what did they do?' and 'who built them?' because in fact there were three circular installations created several centuries apart, Fig 1. They were arranged about a common centre, or virtually so. All three were for the same purpose: observing the Moon in apparent paths strange to us, but using different methods of doing so. For convenience I call them the Early, Stone and Final henges (i).The only practical way of making an explanation of the monument readily comprehensible is to present each part in chronological order. This is because sometimes the nature of developments is affected by what occurred beforehand. One may have concluded, correctly, that the Early henge determined the location of the Stone henge, Figs 2 and 3, and this in turn, that of the Final henge, which leaves the question of what influenced the location of the Early henge in the first place. The story follows.

A few thousand years prior to the Early henge our ancestors were hunter gatherers confined to our shores, hemmed in by the sea on one side and dense forest on the other, the density of the forest deriving from the climate being much hotter and damper than today. Their diet was limited to molluscs and whatever else could be found on the shore such as fish and birds, together with what could be gleaned from the margin of the forest, both there and in estuaries. If they ventured into the forest beyond the sound of the sea they courted the danger of losing themselves. Total disorientation could prove fatal, not least because of wild animals fiercer then than we are accustomed to in the British Isles today; possibly wildcat, wolf, bear and boar.

But the day arrived when a few people from Gaul landed and immediately hacked their way into the forest and moved through it without difficulty. They were able to do this because of two key attributes: they not only had flint axes but also Extra Sensory Perception (ESP). With these they dowsed and hacked dead straight footpaths through the forest and unerringly returned on them, regardless of their possibly different appearance as a consequence of a change in weather, or season. These paths, or Straight Ways, were unique in an environment totally devoid of straightness, hence their utility, and inevitably they passed over all sorts of terrains except the impassable (ii). They were waymarked at intervals with small pits, the rims of which had the way's margin as a tangent, the spoil being thrown to the far side. Sighting these provided users with confirmation of being on the way when there was doubt.

Points of hazard, for example animal tracks crossing at an acute angle, were safeguarded with a flanking trench, again with its long edge and the way margin coincident. Like animals these people could sense a sudden absence of ground and never fell into these depressions. These techniques ensured the unerring return journeys. Terminals were created with ramped pits, alternatively by obstructing ring- trenches. When ways were created, obstructing smaller growth was hacked down, large trees had their lower limbs and roots severed on one side until they fell, the residual hole being filled. When digging the pits and trenches, inevitably the subsoil, or rock, was being sampled. Examples of what was discovered: clay, essential for making pots, and chalk which could lead to flint for tools such as axes.

The range of vision in the forest was a few metres at most, not that it was all densely wooded. However, if a tall tree was climbed, all the observer could see was a sea of green, the rolling tree canopy; therefore choosing a direction when striking a way was speculative. Lack of use soon saw the way overgrown and its disappearance. With the passage of centuries this scenario gradually changed, on one hand the terrain became increasingly more varied with settlements, patchy agriculture, grassland, scrub etc, and on the other, the sophistication of waymarking evolved. In places the normal width equivalent to a man's shoulders was at least doubled, to be two-way. The use of ways persisted until well into Saxon times by which time heavy horses and carts had created winding tracks and lanes following the contours. Earlier the Romans had utilised ways for accessing the construction lines of their own doglegged, but nearly straight roads, paved for fast moving gigs and foot soldiers. Often, parallel outlying ditches enabled cattle to be moved along beside them without obstructing the traffic. Roman roads were their equivalent of our primary roads and motorways, the ways fulfilling the role of our minor roads. The employment of ways persisted for so long because it was habitual and unquestioned, in much the same way as most of our tracks and roads have been two-way, with passage on the left, since the days of right handed jousting knights.

In districts of several settlements, for example, inevitably there would arise areas of the terrain where the density of ways, both operational and those redundant, was high, and in these not only was the traditional sanctity of 'live' waymarks respected, but their sophistication reached high levels. The high densities could arise not only because a district was busy, but also because the creation of a way was a spontaneous reaction to a felt need, not withstanding the existence of any nearby way, be it extant or defunct. When identifying or studying ways on maps, it must be borne in mind that potentially, some, all, or none were contemporaneous (iii). The identification of ways is founded only upon sharp downward changes of ground level (holes, pits, ditches, the crests of straight banks, etc), found on early1:25000 Ordnance Survey maps and /or by field work, Fig 60. They are not to be confused with so-called Ley lines conceived by Albert Watkins in 1921, and mentioned in chapter 1. (It is suspected that in his vision Albert correctly 'saw' spirits moving across the countryside in straight lines but thereafter, having regained normal consciousness, wrongly guessed the basis of these.)

So strong and profound is the prima facie case for straight ways, that a foundation has been laid for a new body of knowledge, or discipline, here assigned the name Euthyology. Derived from the Greek, it conveniently and aptly indicates the 'study of directness'. Every way is assigned an identity number comprised of the Ordnance Survey grid reference square of a prehistoric monument on its line, followed by a digit; the latter because some monuments are associated with more than one way (eg SU0340-1, deriving from Yarnbury Castle). This system facilitates the tabulation of relevant features on a way's line, as well as the design of future computer records. It is within this context of ways, as they were notionally c2700BC, on the south of Salisbury Plain,12km (7.5m) north of Salisbury, that the Early henge is now considered, Fig 4.