On the eve of the day of the summer solstice at Stonehenge gathered large crowds of people, although there is an assumption that the winter solstice 5 thousand years ago was much more important than the summer. Members of the British universities concluded that Stonehenge was built as a monument to unite the country after a long period of disagreement.

Massive stones of Stonehenge, in accordance with the new interpretation of researchers, embodied the ancestors of the various communities that were brought from different places - from the South of England, up from West Wales, informs Internet portal shef.ac.uk.

The staff of the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Southampton and Bournemouth and University College London, who worked in the framework of the project Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP), investigated not only Stonehenge and the surrounding landscape, but also socio-economic context of the era, which were the main stages in the construction of this megalithic monument (3000-2500 years BC).

According to the Professor at the University of Sheffield Mike Parker Pearson (Mike Parker Pearson)the construction of Stonehenge marked by the establishment of a common throughout the island culture.

"On the territory from the Orkney Islands to the South coast were built identical dwellings were of the same ceramic products, used the same production materials, " says Professor Parker Pearson. - It is very different from the provincialism of the preceding centuries. Stonehenge was very large-scale enterprise, demanding efforts of thousands of people to move and to install multi-ton blocks. Truly the work, which required cohesion in the literal sense, was the act of manifestation of the unity of the whole country".

Stonehenge may have been built in a place that had a special meaning for the primitive inhabitants of the British Isles. Studying the megalith, the researchers drew attention to the fact that its main alley oriented point solstice, formed by the natural landscape - has turned the axis, one end of which indicates the sunrise at the summer solstice, and the other is the sunset at the winter solstice.

Professor Parker Pearson said that the ancient inhabitants, most likely, honored this place as "the navel of the earth" center of the universe. For this reason, at Stonehenge whole there are eight monuments - the number, unmatched for the whole of Britain.

About, 5-4,5 thousand years ago the winter solstice venerated more years, scientists said... the remains of pigs, eaten on prehistoric feasts found in the nearby village of Darrington-the chief (Durrington Walls). It turned out that in winter pigs ate much more than in summer. In addition, the vast majority of the monuments in the Stonehenge area aimed at sunrise and sunset at the winter solstice, and again not summer. In the Stonehenge main axis, marked a giant trilithon (massive stone on two huge block), indicates the day of the summer solstice, and not to rise.

The project strongly reject assumptions about borrowing the idea of the monument from Ancient Egypt or on the impact of extraterrestrial civilizations on its builders. "All the architectural features that could be affected during the construction of Stonehenge, you may find within the UK and also in Wales and Scotland, - says Parker Pearson. - During the Neolithic inhabitants of the island were isolated from the rest of Europe for several centuries. Stonehenge, it seems, was the last gasp of this culture before in Britain began to penetrate new technologies in the form of metal tools and wheel".

On this and many other says a new book of Professor Mike Parker Pearson "Stonehenge: a study of the great mystery of the stone age" (Stonehenge: exploring the greatest Stone Age mystery).

Recall that the project participants SRP was responsible for opening the settlement Darrington-the chief and the first stone circle - Bluestonehenge (Bluestonehenge), they also revised the Dating of the Stonehenge. These same researchers refuted a number of hypotheses on the possible purpose of the monument - in particular, that the stone circle of Stonehenge was used as an ancient Observatory, as the Sun temple, the place of work of the healers or the temple of the druids.