THE SIGNIFICANCE OF STONEHENGE
A lecture with illustrations contributed to the symposium 'Fact or Fiction', at the Architectural Association School of Architecture Students' Union, Bedford Square, London W.C.1., on Friday 8th March 1968.
It is said that architecture is the marriage of the scale of Man to the scale of a building. Stonehenge, in its development through 500 years from a simple beginning, was the marriage of a culture progressing in scale, to concepts progressing in scale, which were expressed as a functional architecture. The climax represented by the final form of the building was doubtless the work of a single master-mind, or genius in the field of human relationships.
The whole thing may represent a mirror of the ebb and flow of human progress in less complex terms than the antics of Man in modern times present. On the other hand, it may not. Basic Man may have changed little. Cats, dogs and monkeys, all animals in fact, accept their existence without question, not having the means to do otherwise. The quirk of fickle Chance and the inexorable passage of Time fall upon their consciousness in the absence of any philosophy with which to fight back. They die and done with it. Only Man wrestles with Chance and Time. He builds temples dedicated to keeping him alive as comfortably as possible, and to preserving him for as long as possible after he is dead. All societies appear to build such temples. I will but mention the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Westminster Abbey and the Lenin Mausoleum.
In the case of Stonehenge, any competent attempt at describing its function must first overcome several impediments. There was no native contemporary writing, nor as yet has any foreign description been found. Consequently, speculation and bizarre flights of fancy about the monument are legion. The most difficult to overcome is the legend, dating only from the eighteenth century, which connects Stonehenge with the Druids. There is in fact no evidence at all which connects Stonehenge with the Druids in any way.* It was much earlier than the Druids, and was probably already in ruins when the invading Celts, who had the Druidical religion, came to Britain. In addition, the anachronism is kept going by modern gentlemen dressed in long white nightshirts who insist upon making appearances at Stonehenge during the times of Celtic festivals.
Stonehenge was the work of Neolithic people, that is to say people of the New Stone Age, who came to Britain in the wake of the Neolithic Revolution. The Neolithic Revolution started about 8000 B.C., probably in Palestine, the earliest evidence of it having been found on sites at Jericho. It represents the passage of Man from cave-living, supported by hunting and fishing, to building and living in houses, the cultivation of land for food crops, the herding of domesticated animals, the weaving of cloth and the making of pottery. Man’s anxieties in the modern sense probably also started about this lime. For the fear implied in hunting, in pitting one’s human skill against a savage animal for its life, that is, had been a known fear, and therefore a healthy fear. There will have been exhilaration in victory. But the cultivation of land risks unforeseen disaster with likelihood of territorial conflict; while the herding of domestic animals implies property squabbles as well as catastrophe.
The Middle East Neolithic Revolution led eventually to the Egyptian, Hebrew, Minoan, Mycenaean, Assyrian, and other great civilisations, whose cultural expressions were to echo in Britain, the island on the edge of the world, in an indigenous way.
While however the Neolithic Revolution was going on in the Middle East, cave-dwelling Britons were being evicted by glacial ice, which moved over almost the whole country, making living conditions impossible. They emigrated to the Iberian Peninsula, i.e. mid-France, Spain, etc., and set up in an improved form of cave life there. The knowledge of the Neolithic Revolution seeped slowly, very slowly through to them.
But already for centuries, men had been burying their dead as if anticipating that they are going to come to life again. This is important to our subject; we need to pursue it a bit as ideas of the immortality of Man are not popular today. What made Man think his death was not permanent? When a man is born, he at first issues apparently lifeless. Then he breathes - or sometimes he does not. To unsophisticated Man, life entered into the body - or it did not. Further, for unaccountable reasons, and at any time, a man suddenly stops breathing and becomes inanimate. In some parts of the world his body then decays to a skeleton, in other parts it does not. However, it can be seen that trees lose their leaves and become skeletons. But later they are again covered with foliage and are living anew. Why then should not a human skeleton take flesh again? It is doubtless no more than a question of Time. Further still, a man who is asleep may in a dream walk and talk with a man who is dead. It may be easily concluded from this that there is a plane of human existence other than that of the immediate consciousness. There may be a spiritual entity which can reside in, or leave the physical body at will. In the dream also, a man often docs things beyond his normal powers. Therefore, the spirit state could be viewed as being the more powerful state.
It took then but a few steps to the conception of powerful supernatural spirits behind the giant forces of nature to which Man is terribly subject. Man ought to identify the places where these powerful spirits dwell. He might be able to get them on his side against Chance and Time, which are his bugbears. I will be discussing the locations which were chosen, later, in detail.
Firstly, to return to our Iberian cave-men, these eventually became Neolithic farmers. However, by around 3000 B.C., the great Middle East cultures were progressing towards some of the nastier features of civilisation. Perhaps as a result of pressures from slave raiders, or perhaps simply due to a desire for better living conditions, numbers of Iberian Neolithic farmers moved northwards to re-occupy the island on the edge of the world, - Britain. The island was now free of ice, and covered with rich forests full of game, and marshlands well stocked with fish and waterfowl. A famous settlement was on Windmill Hill in County Wiltshire. These people built a Sanctuary on ground below the hill. It performed the socio-religious function of unifying people with differing interests, such as nomadic herdsmen and farmers dwelling in villages. The Sanctuary had the form of a stone circle, the largest in the world, having two subsidiary circles inside it. It was the precursor of Stonehenge. What ideas and functions centred upon a building of this nature such that would satisfy human needs, and what were these needs? Do these needs exist today? Let us consider what influences were seeping through from the rising civilisations of the Middle East to see how some of Man’s ideas were being interpreted and manifested in the island of Britain on the edge of the world. An early written text which deals with Man’s first groping towards an understanding of his situation is that of the Hebrew bible. It preserves and echoes many of the concepts of pre-history. Universal trends are reflected because the Hebrews came into contact with all the Middle East civilisations. Coupled with evidence from these, we can achieve a picture of Man’s emerging thoughts, and the ways in which he reacted to them.
A conviction that Earth is the Womb as well as the Tomb of all men, seems to have led universally to a conception which viewed the Earth as the dwelling of a Great Mother. And she was believed to give rebirth in addition to birth. It is likely there was a considerable belief that all births were in fact re-births, i.e., that Existence proceeded on a basis of continual Reincarnation. I have already used the analogy of the autumn denuded tree and the human skeleton as one phenomenon which led Man to look for rebirth after his death. The Great Mother was represented in clay figures with breasts and pubis enhanced; or in a state of pregnancy; or about to give birth. These, together with corresponding male figure symbols, lead to the conclusion that early Man saw his prosperity and survival to be dependent upon the formula: Fecundity + Fertility = Survival + expectation of rebirth after death. The Great or Earth Mother was associated with the snake or serpent. This reptile was accredited with sagacious wisdom, and the faculty of immortalising itself, as it was seen to slough its strangely marked skin. In the Hebrew bible, the ‘Mother of all living’ is called: Chayah = Eve. The word means ‘life’, mostly in the family or group sense. Adam = Mankind is created out of Adamah = Earth. The story of Woman being born from the Male in the Hebrew narrative seems to go contrary to the concept of the Great Mother. This however points to a male reaction, which manifested itself in all cultures, against the female desire to keep their offspring forever children and thereby retain permanent control over them. There appeared universally as a consequence various forms of puberty rite designed to cut the tie, and carry the adolescent over into independent adulthood. The form most commonly met with contains the idea of a symbolic death, or killing of the child, followed by a symbolic rebirth as an adult. The Jews, who really know about possessive women, developed a rite of passage which centres on the acceptance of precepts for living in a civilised and just manner in human society. The precepts accepted were believed to have been of supernatural origin and authority. There is evidence, as we shall see, which indicates that variations of these ideas appeared at Stonehenge.
It might be added that socio-religious thought frequently shows strong influence of an ancient idea that originally there was only one undivided sex.
The locations where the powerful spirits behind the great forces of nature resided were believed to be Trees, Springs, Rocks, Stones, Mountains and Hills principally. Many such appear in the Hebrew text. One of the names of God was ‘EL = Almighty. ‘ELLON then, not surprisingly, was the oak or durable tree of a Tree Sanctuary, a place of ‘EL. I shall later refer to evidence of a great Tree Sanctuary influencing Stonehenge.
All rocks and stones were held to contain spirits, a belief which occupied Man very greatly and underwent considerable development. In the book of Genesis, Jacob sleeps with his head on a stone and dreams of a stairway between earth and the dwelling of ‘EL. When he awoke, he set the stone up on end as a pillar. For, as he said, the place must be a ‘gateway to heaven’. Later, Joshua set a witness stone up in a Sanctuary of ‘EL and told the people of Israel ‘‘This Stone has heard all the words of God which were spoken to you. It will witness against you if you break His Covenant’’. Eben = a rock, stone, figured at many an important shrine. Ebenezer = Stone of Help was a famous one. The practice of burying people of importance in or near a Sanctuary, with a stone pillar to mark the spot, led to the identification of that pillar with the spirit of the dead person in ways which varied in different cultures. At first it was held that any working of a sacred stone would drive out the spirit from it. Later, very much carving was done by men often for the purpose of influencing or impressing other men. Great power has been wielded through the shaping of stones. We may note in all seriousness that in the Nelson column we have a modern hero-ancestor stone put up as a shrine of national unity. Like the sacred Tree or Stone pillar of aeons gone by, it is garlanded once a year, and the people assembled seek reconfirmation through the hero’s spirit of the conviction that the nation is under supernatural protection and patronage. I would point yet again to the ever recurring elemental concern with immortality and re-birth; in time of national danger, a reappearance of the spirit of Founding-Father and Hero ancestors is looked for.
The enclosure or precinct of a Sanctuary was considered to be Kadosh = holy, separate, taboo. This made the shrine a place of Awe, which could only be approached after special conditions, usually of a ‘purifying’ nature, had been complied with.
Late development of pre-historic thought turned towards the sky as the abode of a power outside the earth, upon which the function of nature on the earth was seen to be dependent. God the Sun, it was held, woke the Earth Mother to life.
We can now proceed to consider first the precursor of Stonehenge. It is known today as Avebury. The main circle of great unhewn stones has a diameter of 400 yards. Alternately, the great uprights arc flat and round, bringing to mind immediately the old belief that a round stone contained a male spirit, while a flat stone was believed to contain a female spirit. It is very likely that the great Circle, symbolic itself of the continuity of life, was set up as a guardian enclosure of Founding ancestor spirits. These will have been the reliable, competent parental and patronal spirit powers, for the two concepts have ever run inevitably together.
The ‘tyranny’ of parental restriction, like supernatural edict, has been resented. But the ‘Old Folks’ took responsibility for children. Life is much easier when there is someone or something to cushion the blasts of Chance and Time and personal inadequacies.
The main circle at Avebury has an approach avenue of upright stones which winds over the downs, finishing at a coven of stones. This has been seen plainly to be a symbolic serpent. We may well detect in it the motif of mundane know-how and rebirth, adjunct of the Earth Mother. One function ascribable to the Avenue will have been in connection with a puberty rite, of the style already mentioned. Boys can be imagined entering the coven of stones which represented the ‘head’ of the ‘serpent’, then to proceed along the Avenue towards ceremonies within the main circles of the Sanctuary. These may have included tests of prowess of a peaceful nature; there are no indications that bloodthirsty practices indigenous to some societies had any place at early Avebury. The two inner circles show features which might be connected with the double-stone pottery wheel of the Middle East. It was called in Hebrew: AVINOAM, and the name was also applied to a stool used for childbirth. The notion that living things, including Man, were once formed from clay or mud, later to be associated with the potter’s wheel – was universal and persistent.
However, Man, unlike any animal, is an innovator. Change is the keynote of Man’s progression, but this fact has to be seen in the face of his dwelling upon notions of Golden Ages in the past, for reasons I have mentioned. Consequently, there is strife between the impulse to progress and the fear of unforeseen results which Change might bring with it. Further, as time passes, strong advocates of Change notoriously turn into strong advocates of the status quo. An ideal society would give full rein to the advocates of Change while at the same time achieving a stability which would satisfy all classes, factions, interests and age-groups. This virtually states the impossible, but it has to be attempted if humanity is to survive. A homogeneous group can be held in check by despotic rule or by majority decision. The ordering of a heterogeneous society however, especially where the constituent groups are independent and powerful, presents a challenge to the utmost ingenuity of Man. Those attempts which have achieved any success in this direction have always called on the supernatural in some form.
It is likely that the early Neolithic people in Britain enjoyed for long the advantages of island security and an absence of sophisticated weapons. Also, personal needs may well have remained for long greatly utilitarian. But travellers and immigrants who had been in contact with advanced ideas in the Middle East began to arrive in Britain as a result of the invention of the sailing ship. They will have brought mixed blessings, as is usually the case, especially when people of land-continent experience enter an isolated, secure feeling society. Ideas, customs, possessions conferring status in the place of utility, all these things, when introduced from outside, present a threat. A society has to fight back, absorb, or give way and be taken over. What happened in Britain? In Britain, it would seem that a multitude of little kingdoms arose where previously had been pastoral village and wandering communities. Some sixteen miles away from Avebury, a Sanctuary was being developed which reflected advancing ideas and needs. A man given to strut girded with metal sword and status adornments was all the same, like every one of his fellows, highly conscious of Chance and Time. The new Sanctuary began as a circle of small pits containing human ashes, inside of which was erected a circle of not very large upright stones, of a kind not found anywhere in the surrounding country. A centre Stone and internal Avenue lined up with certain external stones approximately on the midsummer sunrise. This was the first form of Stonehenge. We may see in the Circle of Ashes the idea that rendered to dust and put into a pit in the earth, the dead are likely to reach the Womb of Earth all the quicker; the quicker to be reborn. Historically, Man has gone from burial to cremation and back again as thought about his personal immortality varied. At early Stonehenge it is likely that the Circle of Pits contained the ashes of Sages and Heroes, persons who in life having contributed to the well-being of the community, might, because of the evident greater than normal size of their spirits, still afford it patronage and protection. We can see this Circle also as an armature of high calibre spirit-power, capable of inducing the spur to high-minded effort into youth and others when within the Sanctuary.
This ‘armature’ may well have been designed to affect its potential in backing up the significance of the inner Stone Circle and Avenue. It was not discovered until recently that these ‘foreign’ stones had been brought from a mountain site in Wales. This fact may be taken to throw light on their function at Stonehenge. I have already said that the dwellings of Spirits, Gods indeed, were held to be on the tops of mountains and hills, as well as in Trees, Stones and Springs. The idea that supernatural Powers revealed Law and Precept to specially selected men while on the top of a holy or magic mountain became widespread. The Precepts were associated with stones. Great authority was ascribed to prescriptions for human conduct believed to have supernatural backing. The existence of a Cosmic Morality would solve for Man some of the problems of his subjection to Chance and Time - if not all of them. Difficulties of interpretation would arise; some factions might well use the belief to support vested interests. But all the same, the notion of an extramundane Authority has proved attractive to all conditions of men. I think it very likely therefore, that the Inner Circle of Stones at Stonehenge represented a system of Community Precepts, charged with supernatural backing, but to which older ideas stuck inevitably. Boys going through their puberty rite probably had to perform a ‘slalom’ run around the Circle as a symbolic binding to the Laws.
The passage of Time, however, brought the ever recurring influx of new ideas, and old ideas dressed up anew, good ones and bad ones, to threaten the unifying, stabilising religion of Stonehenge. For whether we like to admit it or not, Man on this globe is of diverse nature despite the features all have in common. Man is by this proof not an animal, he alone possesses the faculty of original thought.
Yet notably in Britain, the island on the edge of the world, a remarkable freedom from the sort of holocaust which plagues land-continents has been achieved for long periods at a time. And this has been together with standards of personal liberty unknown elsewhere. Was this achieved by the final form of Stonehenge, whose construction was plainly the large-scale response to a large-scale need? I think it was. A genius carried it out who used foreign achievements to uphold British society. He may have travelled widely or been a foreigner himself. Geniuses who advance British institutions in Britain usually are. In the Middle East, at Mycenae and in Egypt, he had seen Architecture. Great gates, marvellous temples held up by giant pillars astounded the people. Priests in Egyptian temples predicted accurately the times that natural phenomena vital to the national economy would occur. Temples had built-in measuring chambers connected by pipe to the river Nile, enabling the times of the vital flooding to be known. Religion backed Science. But also the supernatural was put on show. At Abu Simbel, a temple cut far into the rock of a cliff-face, the rays of the sun every morning penetrated the innermost sanctum to light up the image of Hermachis, god of the rising sun.** The people were astonished.
So in the island of Britain, on the edge of the world, the marriage of Religion, Law and Science was put in hand; the old Stone Circle was enclosed within a continuous ring of great gates, their lintels joined by tongue and groove to each other, pinned on to tooled uprights by mortise and tenon. Inside, five massive paired columns, lintel capped, towered over the Circle of Precepts and a central upright flat Stone. The Sun’s rays entered to mark out Time and Season, for this was a Cosmic Clock. It might tell the time of Man’s return from death as it told the time of Nature’s rebirth. Man had constructed a scientific instrument worked by God, where God could be seen working it.
If, however, the concept of Stonehenge succeeded in meeting the needs of men in the island of Britain, unifying them in the face of Chance and Time and their own conflicting interests, Time certainly overtook it. We do not know whether it disintegrated of itself, or whether the massive invasion of warlike Celts obliterated it with their own socio-religious ideas. However, the many mounds under which sleepers awaited the Cosmic Alarm Clock to ring remained little disturbed; few men are disrespectful of that state all must experience. There is one mound towering far above all the others. Men thought perhaps at the centre of this, in a magnificent tomb, lay the builder of Great Stonehenge. In the eighteenth century, a Duke and a Colonel tunnelled in to the centre from different points of entry. All they found was the remains of an oaken post set in a chalk base, as if it had been a Sanctuary of ‘EL, the Almighty Power ruling the Universe. This leads me to the feeling that the significance of Stonehenge is that it poses a question for our own time. We achieve marvels by our science while at the same time failing to solve the ancient human problems. In fact, we are at risk of a holocaust which could destroy civilisation. Can we unify angry men while respecting diverse personalities, using purely secular terms? Or must we, like the builder of Stonehenge, yet look for a supernatural Power to back us?
Norman Maggs, 1968
*[Ed. It was John Aubrey, in the 17th century, who seems to have been the first to suggest the involvement of Druids with Stonehenge]
**[Ed. Actually, the alignment only happens twice per year]
A copy of this essay is held in the British Library, shelfmark X.419/7438
Postscript by Peter Maggs
While I applaud the scholarship my father demonstrates in this essay, I must confess that the aspect of Stonehenge that most exercises me, is the ‘How?’ Not in the sense of the method of construction – of which many theories have been put forward, with some tested in front of TV cameras – but the way the whole process was organized.
Estimates vary wildly, but given the effort needed to quarry the sarsen stones, dress them to shape using stone mauls – including constructing the mortice and tenon joints that secured the lintels, and their tongue and groove joining together – erect the uprights and then haul the lintels up on top of the uprights, hundreds of labourers would have been needed over a period of many years. Given the state of agriculture at the time, most people must have had to work the land most of the time just in order to generate sufficient food for subsistence. How then was it possible to feed a workforce of hundreds for years on end engaged in a ‘non-productive’ activity?
Clearly only a very sophisticated society with strong leadership and compliant citizens could achieve such a result. Essential also, would be an architect/engineering genius capable of conceiving, designing and managing the work. Add to this, the requirement that the Bluestones had to be sourced from the Preseli mountains in Wales, 140 miles away as the crow flies, and one is left wondering how such an advanced civilization could manage the process without leaving behind any kind of evidence – apart from a few antler pickaxes and stone mauls – and vanish without trace.
March 2017
For anyone interested in the latest archeological knowledge about Stonehenge, it is difficult to recommend too highly Mike Parker Pearson's book 'Stonehenge', published in 2012.
A lecture with illustrations contributed to the symposium 'Fact or Fiction', at the Architectural Association School of Architecture Students' Union, Bedford Square, London W.C.1., on Friday 8th March 1968.
It is said that architecture is the marriage of the scale of Man to the scale of a building. Stonehenge, in its development through 500 years from a simple beginning, was the marriage of a culture progressing in scale, to concepts progressing in scale, which were expressed as a functional architecture. The climax represented by the final form of the building was doubtless the work of a single master-mind, or genius in the field of human relationships.
The whole thing may represent a mirror of the ebb and flow of human progress in less complex terms than the antics of Man in modern times present. On the other hand, it may not. Basic Man may have changed little. Cats, dogs and monkeys, all animals in fact, accept their existence without question, not having the means to do otherwise. The quirk of fickle Chance and the inexorable passage of Time fall upon their consciousness in the absence of any philosophy with which to fight back. They die and done with it. Only Man wrestles with Chance and Time. He builds temples dedicated to keeping him alive as comfortably as possible, and to preserving him for as long as possible after he is dead. All societies appear to build such temples. I will but mention the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Westminster Abbey and the Lenin Mausoleum.
In the case of Stonehenge, any competent attempt at describing its function must first overcome several impediments. There was no native contemporary writing, nor as yet has any foreign description been found. Consequently, speculation and bizarre flights of fancy about the monument are legion. The most difficult to overcome is the legend, dating only from the eighteenth century, which connects Stonehenge with the Druids. There is in fact no evidence at all which connects Stonehenge with the Druids in any way.* It was much earlier than the Druids, and was probably already in ruins when the invading Celts, who had the Druidical religion, came to Britain. In addition, the anachronism is kept going by modern gentlemen dressed in long white nightshirts who insist upon making appearances at Stonehenge during the times of Celtic festivals.
Stonehenge was the work of Neolithic people, that is to say people of the New Stone Age, who came to Britain in the wake of the Neolithic Revolution. The Neolithic Revolution started about 8000 B.C., probably in Palestine, the earliest evidence of it having been found on sites at Jericho. It represents the passage of Man from cave-living, supported by hunting and fishing, to building and living in houses, the cultivation of land for food crops, the herding of domesticated animals, the weaving of cloth and the making of pottery. Man’s anxieties in the modern sense probably also started about this lime. For the fear implied in hunting, in pitting one’s human skill against a savage animal for its life, that is, had been a known fear, and therefore a healthy fear. There will have been exhilaration in victory. But the cultivation of land risks unforeseen disaster with likelihood of territorial conflict; while the herding of domestic animals implies property squabbles as well as catastrophe.
The Middle East Neolithic Revolution led eventually to the Egyptian, Hebrew, Minoan, Mycenaean, Assyrian, and other great civilisations, whose cultural expressions were to echo in Britain, the island on the edge of the world, in an indigenous way.
While however the Neolithic Revolution was going on in the Middle East, cave-dwelling Britons were being evicted by glacial ice, which moved over almost the whole country, making living conditions impossible. They emigrated to the Iberian Peninsula, i.e. mid-France, Spain, etc., and set up in an improved form of cave life there. The knowledge of the Neolithic Revolution seeped slowly, very slowly through to them.
But already for centuries, men had been burying their dead as if anticipating that they are going to come to life again. This is important to our subject; we need to pursue it a bit as ideas of the immortality of Man are not popular today. What made Man think his death was not permanent? When a man is born, he at first issues apparently lifeless. Then he breathes - or sometimes he does not. To unsophisticated Man, life entered into the body - or it did not. Further, for unaccountable reasons, and at any time, a man suddenly stops breathing and becomes inanimate. In some parts of the world his body then decays to a skeleton, in other parts it does not. However, it can be seen that trees lose their leaves and become skeletons. But later they are again covered with foliage and are living anew. Why then should not a human skeleton take flesh again? It is doubtless no more than a question of Time. Further still, a man who is asleep may in a dream walk and talk with a man who is dead. It may be easily concluded from this that there is a plane of human existence other than that of the immediate consciousness. There may be a spiritual entity which can reside in, or leave the physical body at will. In the dream also, a man often docs things beyond his normal powers. Therefore, the spirit state could be viewed as being the more powerful state.
It took then but a few steps to the conception of powerful supernatural spirits behind the giant forces of nature to which Man is terribly subject. Man ought to identify the places where these powerful spirits dwell. He might be able to get them on his side against Chance and Time, which are his bugbears. I will be discussing the locations which were chosen, later, in detail.
Firstly, to return to our Iberian cave-men, these eventually became Neolithic farmers. However, by around 3000 B.C., the great Middle East cultures were progressing towards some of the nastier features of civilisation. Perhaps as a result of pressures from slave raiders, or perhaps simply due to a desire for better living conditions, numbers of Iberian Neolithic farmers moved northwards to re-occupy the island on the edge of the world, - Britain. The island was now free of ice, and covered with rich forests full of game, and marshlands well stocked with fish and waterfowl. A famous settlement was on Windmill Hill in County Wiltshire. These people built a Sanctuary on ground below the hill. It performed the socio-religious function of unifying people with differing interests, such as nomadic herdsmen and farmers dwelling in villages. The Sanctuary had the form of a stone circle, the largest in the world, having two subsidiary circles inside it. It was the precursor of Stonehenge. What ideas and functions centred upon a building of this nature such that would satisfy human needs, and what were these needs? Do these needs exist today? Let us consider what influences were seeping through from the rising civilisations of the Middle East to see how some of Man’s ideas were being interpreted and manifested in the island of Britain on the edge of the world. An early written text which deals with Man’s first groping towards an understanding of his situation is that of the Hebrew bible. It preserves and echoes many of the concepts of pre-history. Universal trends are reflected because the Hebrews came into contact with all the Middle East civilisations. Coupled with evidence from these, we can achieve a picture of Man’s emerging thoughts, and the ways in which he reacted to them.
A conviction that Earth is the Womb as well as the Tomb of all men, seems to have led universally to a conception which viewed the Earth as the dwelling of a Great Mother. And she was believed to give rebirth in addition to birth. It is likely there was a considerable belief that all births were in fact re-births, i.e., that Existence proceeded on a basis of continual Reincarnation. I have already used the analogy of the autumn denuded tree and the human skeleton as one phenomenon which led Man to look for rebirth after his death. The Great Mother was represented in clay figures with breasts and pubis enhanced; or in a state of pregnancy; or about to give birth. These, together with corresponding male figure symbols, lead to the conclusion that early Man saw his prosperity and survival to be dependent upon the formula: Fecundity + Fertility = Survival + expectation of rebirth after death. The Great or Earth Mother was associated with the snake or serpent. This reptile was accredited with sagacious wisdom, and the faculty of immortalising itself, as it was seen to slough its strangely marked skin. In the Hebrew bible, the ‘Mother of all living’ is called: Chayah = Eve. The word means ‘life’, mostly in the family or group sense. Adam = Mankind is created out of Adamah = Earth. The story of Woman being born from the Male in the Hebrew narrative seems to go contrary to the concept of the Great Mother. This however points to a male reaction, which manifested itself in all cultures, against the female desire to keep their offspring forever children and thereby retain permanent control over them. There appeared universally as a consequence various forms of puberty rite designed to cut the tie, and carry the adolescent over into independent adulthood. The form most commonly met with contains the idea of a symbolic death, or killing of the child, followed by a symbolic rebirth as an adult. The Jews, who really know about possessive women, developed a rite of passage which centres on the acceptance of precepts for living in a civilised and just manner in human society. The precepts accepted were believed to have been of supernatural origin and authority. There is evidence, as we shall see, which indicates that variations of these ideas appeared at Stonehenge.
It might be added that socio-religious thought frequently shows strong influence of an ancient idea that originally there was only one undivided sex.
The locations where the powerful spirits behind the great forces of nature resided were believed to be Trees, Springs, Rocks, Stones, Mountains and Hills principally. Many such appear in the Hebrew text. One of the names of God was ‘EL = Almighty. ‘ELLON then, not surprisingly, was the oak or durable tree of a Tree Sanctuary, a place of ‘EL. I shall later refer to evidence of a great Tree Sanctuary influencing Stonehenge.
All rocks and stones were held to contain spirits, a belief which occupied Man very greatly and underwent considerable development. In the book of Genesis, Jacob sleeps with his head on a stone and dreams of a stairway between earth and the dwelling of ‘EL. When he awoke, he set the stone up on end as a pillar. For, as he said, the place must be a ‘gateway to heaven’. Later, Joshua set a witness stone up in a Sanctuary of ‘EL and told the people of Israel ‘‘This Stone has heard all the words of God which were spoken to you. It will witness against you if you break His Covenant’’. Eben = a rock, stone, figured at many an important shrine. Ebenezer = Stone of Help was a famous one. The practice of burying people of importance in or near a Sanctuary, with a stone pillar to mark the spot, led to the identification of that pillar with the spirit of the dead person in ways which varied in different cultures. At first it was held that any working of a sacred stone would drive out the spirit from it. Later, very much carving was done by men often for the purpose of influencing or impressing other men. Great power has been wielded through the shaping of stones. We may note in all seriousness that in the Nelson column we have a modern hero-ancestor stone put up as a shrine of national unity. Like the sacred Tree or Stone pillar of aeons gone by, it is garlanded once a year, and the people assembled seek reconfirmation through the hero’s spirit of the conviction that the nation is under supernatural protection and patronage. I would point yet again to the ever recurring elemental concern with immortality and re-birth; in time of national danger, a reappearance of the spirit of Founding-Father and Hero ancestors is looked for.
The enclosure or precinct of a Sanctuary was considered to be Kadosh = holy, separate, taboo. This made the shrine a place of Awe, which could only be approached after special conditions, usually of a ‘purifying’ nature, had been complied with.
Late development of pre-historic thought turned towards the sky as the abode of a power outside the earth, upon which the function of nature on the earth was seen to be dependent. God the Sun, it was held, woke the Earth Mother to life.
We can now proceed to consider first the precursor of Stonehenge. It is known today as Avebury. The main circle of great unhewn stones has a diameter of 400 yards. Alternately, the great uprights arc flat and round, bringing to mind immediately the old belief that a round stone contained a male spirit, while a flat stone was believed to contain a female spirit. It is very likely that the great Circle, symbolic itself of the continuity of life, was set up as a guardian enclosure of Founding ancestor spirits. These will have been the reliable, competent parental and patronal spirit powers, for the two concepts have ever run inevitably together.
The ‘tyranny’ of parental restriction, like supernatural edict, has been resented. But the ‘Old Folks’ took responsibility for children. Life is much easier when there is someone or something to cushion the blasts of Chance and Time and personal inadequacies.
The main circle at Avebury has an approach avenue of upright stones which winds over the downs, finishing at a coven of stones. This has been seen plainly to be a symbolic serpent. We may well detect in it the motif of mundane know-how and rebirth, adjunct of the Earth Mother. One function ascribable to the Avenue will have been in connection with a puberty rite, of the style already mentioned. Boys can be imagined entering the coven of stones which represented the ‘head’ of the ‘serpent’, then to proceed along the Avenue towards ceremonies within the main circles of the Sanctuary. These may have included tests of prowess of a peaceful nature; there are no indications that bloodthirsty practices indigenous to some societies had any place at early Avebury. The two inner circles show features which might be connected with the double-stone pottery wheel of the Middle East. It was called in Hebrew: AVINOAM, and the name was also applied to a stool used for childbirth. The notion that living things, including Man, were once formed from clay or mud, later to be associated with the potter’s wheel – was universal and persistent.
However, Man, unlike any animal, is an innovator. Change is the keynote of Man’s progression, but this fact has to be seen in the face of his dwelling upon notions of Golden Ages in the past, for reasons I have mentioned. Consequently, there is strife between the impulse to progress and the fear of unforeseen results which Change might bring with it. Further, as time passes, strong advocates of Change notoriously turn into strong advocates of the status quo. An ideal society would give full rein to the advocates of Change while at the same time achieving a stability which would satisfy all classes, factions, interests and age-groups. This virtually states the impossible, but it has to be attempted if humanity is to survive. A homogeneous group can be held in check by despotic rule or by majority decision. The ordering of a heterogeneous society however, especially where the constituent groups are independent and powerful, presents a challenge to the utmost ingenuity of Man. Those attempts which have achieved any success in this direction have always called on the supernatural in some form.
It is likely that the early Neolithic people in Britain enjoyed for long the advantages of island security and an absence of sophisticated weapons. Also, personal needs may well have remained for long greatly utilitarian. But travellers and immigrants who had been in contact with advanced ideas in the Middle East began to arrive in Britain as a result of the invention of the sailing ship. They will have brought mixed blessings, as is usually the case, especially when people of land-continent experience enter an isolated, secure feeling society. Ideas, customs, possessions conferring status in the place of utility, all these things, when introduced from outside, present a threat. A society has to fight back, absorb, or give way and be taken over. What happened in Britain? In Britain, it would seem that a multitude of little kingdoms arose where previously had been pastoral village and wandering communities. Some sixteen miles away from Avebury, a Sanctuary was being developed which reflected advancing ideas and needs. A man given to strut girded with metal sword and status adornments was all the same, like every one of his fellows, highly conscious of Chance and Time. The new Sanctuary began as a circle of small pits containing human ashes, inside of which was erected a circle of not very large upright stones, of a kind not found anywhere in the surrounding country. A centre Stone and internal Avenue lined up with certain external stones approximately on the midsummer sunrise. This was the first form of Stonehenge. We may see in the Circle of Ashes the idea that rendered to dust and put into a pit in the earth, the dead are likely to reach the Womb of Earth all the quicker; the quicker to be reborn. Historically, Man has gone from burial to cremation and back again as thought about his personal immortality varied. At early Stonehenge it is likely that the Circle of Pits contained the ashes of Sages and Heroes, persons who in life having contributed to the well-being of the community, might, because of the evident greater than normal size of their spirits, still afford it patronage and protection. We can see this Circle also as an armature of high calibre spirit-power, capable of inducing the spur to high-minded effort into youth and others when within the Sanctuary.
This ‘armature’ may well have been designed to affect its potential in backing up the significance of the inner Stone Circle and Avenue. It was not discovered until recently that these ‘foreign’ stones had been brought from a mountain site in Wales. This fact may be taken to throw light on their function at Stonehenge. I have already said that the dwellings of Spirits, Gods indeed, were held to be on the tops of mountains and hills, as well as in Trees, Stones and Springs. The idea that supernatural Powers revealed Law and Precept to specially selected men while on the top of a holy or magic mountain became widespread. The Precepts were associated with stones. Great authority was ascribed to prescriptions for human conduct believed to have supernatural backing. The existence of a Cosmic Morality would solve for Man some of the problems of his subjection to Chance and Time - if not all of them. Difficulties of interpretation would arise; some factions might well use the belief to support vested interests. But all the same, the notion of an extramundane Authority has proved attractive to all conditions of men. I think it very likely therefore, that the Inner Circle of Stones at Stonehenge represented a system of Community Precepts, charged with supernatural backing, but to which older ideas stuck inevitably. Boys going through their puberty rite probably had to perform a ‘slalom’ run around the Circle as a symbolic binding to the Laws.
The passage of Time, however, brought the ever recurring influx of new ideas, and old ideas dressed up anew, good ones and bad ones, to threaten the unifying, stabilising religion of Stonehenge. For whether we like to admit it or not, Man on this globe is of diverse nature despite the features all have in common. Man is by this proof not an animal, he alone possesses the faculty of original thought.
Yet notably in Britain, the island on the edge of the world, a remarkable freedom from the sort of holocaust which plagues land-continents has been achieved for long periods at a time. And this has been together with standards of personal liberty unknown elsewhere. Was this achieved by the final form of Stonehenge, whose construction was plainly the large-scale response to a large-scale need? I think it was. A genius carried it out who used foreign achievements to uphold British society. He may have travelled widely or been a foreigner himself. Geniuses who advance British institutions in Britain usually are. In the Middle East, at Mycenae and in Egypt, he had seen Architecture. Great gates, marvellous temples held up by giant pillars astounded the people. Priests in Egyptian temples predicted accurately the times that natural phenomena vital to the national economy would occur. Temples had built-in measuring chambers connected by pipe to the river Nile, enabling the times of the vital flooding to be known. Religion backed Science. But also the supernatural was put on show. At Abu Simbel, a temple cut far into the rock of a cliff-face, the rays of the sun every morning penetrated the innermost sanctum to light up the image of Hermachis, god of the rising sun.** The people were astonished.
So in the island of Britain, on the edge of the world, the marriage of Religion, Law and Science was put in hand; the old Stone Circle was enclosed within a continuous ring of great gates, their lintels joined by tongue and groove to each other, pinned on to tooled uprights by mortise and tenon. Inside, five massive paired columns, lintel capped, towered over the Circle of Precepts and a central upright flat Stone. The Sun’s rays entered to mark out Time and Season, for this was a Cosmic Clock. It might tell the time of Man’s return from death as it told the time of Nature’s rebirth. Man had constructed a scientific instrument worked by God, where God could be seen working it.
If, however, the concept of Stonehenge succeeded in meeting the needs of men in the island of Britain, unifying them in the face of Chance and Time and their own conflicting interests, Time certainly overtook it. We do not know whether it disintegrated of itself, or whether the massive invasion of warlike Celts obliterated it with their own socio-religious ideas. However, the many mounds under which sleepers awaited the Cosmic Alarm Clock to ring remained little disturbed; few men are disrespectful of that state all must experience. There is one mound towering far above all the others. Men thought perhaps at the centre of this, in a magnificent tomb, lay the builder of Great Stonehenge. In the eighteenth century, a Duke and a Colonel tunnelled in to the centre from different points of entry. All they found was the remains of an oaken post set in a chalk base, as if it had been a Sanctuary of ‘EL, the Almighty Power ruling the Universe. This leads me to the feeling that the significance of Stonehenge is that it poses a question for our own time. We achieve marvels by our science while at the same time failing to solve the ancient human problems. In fact, we are at risk of a holocaust which could destroy civilisation. Can we unify angry men while respecting diverse personalities, using purely secular terms? Or must we, like the builder of Stonehenge, yet look for a supernatural Power to back us?
Norman Maggs, 1968
*[Ed. It was John Aubrey, in the 17th century, who seems to have been the first to suggest the involvement of Druids with Stonehenge]
**[Ed. Actually, the alignment only happens twice per year]
A copy of this essay is held in the British Library, shelfmark X.419/7438
Postscript by Peter Maggs
While I applaud the scholarship my father demonstrates in this essay, I must confess that the aspect of Stonehenge that most exercises me, is the ‘How?’ Not in the sense of the method of construction – of which many theories have been put forward, with some tested in front of TV cameras – but the way the whole process was organized.
Estimates vary wildly, but given the effort needed to quarry the sarsen stones, dress them to shape using stone mauls – including constructing the mortice and tenon joints that secured the lintels, and their tongue and groove joining together – erect the uprights and then haul the lintels up on top of the uprights, hundreds of labourers would have been needed over a period of many years. Given the state of agriculture at the time, most people must have had to work the land most of the time just in order to generate sufficient food for subsistence. How then was it possible to feed a workforce of hundreds for years on end engaged in a ‘non-productive’ activity?
Clearly only a very sophisticated society with strong leadership and compliant citizens could achieve such a result. Essential also, would be an architect/engineering genius capable of conceiving, designing and managing the work. Add to this, the requirement that the Bluestones had to be sourced from the Preseli mountains in Wales, 140 miles away as the crow flies, and one is left wondering how such an advanced civilization could manage the process without leaving behind any kind of evidence – apart from a few antler pickaxes and stone mauls – and vanish without trace.
March 2017
For anyone interested in the latest archeological knowledge about Stonehenge, it is difficult to recommend too highly Mike Parker Pearson's book 'Stonehenge', published in 2012.