Engineers have explained how the four-ton bluestones of Stonehenge were transported to the Salisbury Plain from the Preseli hills of south Wales. Why they were transported has been the subject of intense research and speculation over thousands of years. Professors Geoff Wainwright and Timothy Darvill have come up with a new and compelling theory: Stonehenge was a hospital.

Stonehenge was distinct among British henges - in its scale and spacious setting, and in the exceptional number of burial mounds round it. As Darvill says, it was “constantly being remodelled and changed over a period of perhaps a thousand years … getting larger, more grand and more complicated”. True its architecture is dominated by astronomical calculations, implying a priesthood and time-related rituals. But this would have meant nothing to ordinary mortals. What drew them to Stonehenge from across Europe must have been specific, a reputation for relief from disease and disability.

What makes this theory so convincing is the deformities in the skeletons in burial mounds that surround Stonehenge. I’ve read many of the theories about Stonehenge over the course of my life, but this one makes the most sense. Click on the Guardian Unlimited article link below to read a more indepth and fascinating account of this latest theory.

Source: Guardian Unlimited