William B Stoecker

Did the druids build Stonehenge?

September 27, 2008 |  2 comments
Image Credit: sxc.hu If you drive north by car or tour bus from Salisbury, with its cathedral, you will pass the hill known as Old Sarum, which is the original site of Salisbury. You will cross the beautiful River Avon and may catch a glimpse of swans and red deer in this lovely part of southern England. And, at last, you will see the haunted hilltop burial mounds known as barrows, and then Stonehenge itself. Stonehenge, Old Sarum, and Salisbury Cathedral are all in a straight line. Archaeologists believe that construction of Stonehenge began at least 5,000 years ago, and proceeded in stages over a period of many centuries. First came a circular ditch and bank in the soil and its underlying chalk, which is soft limestone. About 4,000 years ago, later builders added a circle of eighty bluestones, weighing about four tons each, from the Prescelly Mountains 240 miles away in southwest Wales. These could have been transported mostly by water. Later 50 ton sarsen stones were added, brought from Marlborough Downs some twenty miles to the north on the other side of a steep ridge. Horizontal lintel stones were lifted and placed atop the sarsens, held in place by mortices and tenons (vertical) and tongues and grooves (horizontal). This was finished some 3,500 years ago by a people now known as the "Beaker People" after their distinctive ceramic pots.

Since about the seventeenth century, antiquarians began to take an interest in Stonehenge and other mysterious sites. John Aubrey (1626-1697) and William Stukely (1687-1765) believed that these structures were probably built under the direction of the Druids, the priests of the Celtic people living in Britain when the Romans arrived. More recently, archaeologists and historians have pointed out that this was impossible, since the Celts and their Druid priests only arrived in the British Isles about 2,500 years ago, and that Stonehenge had to have been made by a pre-Celtic people. As we shall see, it may not be so simple. In fact, author Colin Burgess has suggested that Stonehenge was, in fact, built by the ancestors of the Celts.

Stonehenge and the nearby burial mounds are, in fact, part of a great complex of megalithic structures, made of immense, rough-hewn stones, in southern England. Similar structures are found throughout the British Isles, France and other parts of mainland Europe, the Mediterranean island of Malta, Turkey, Israel, and throughout the Americas and elsewhere. Not far from Stonehenge is Avebury, the world's largest known stone circle, with a town partly built over it; sadly, in the past, much of this structure was dismantled. Avebury features forty ton sarsens with no lintels, and a circular ditch and bank some 1,396 feet in diameter and twenty feet high. In Britanny in western France is the immense complex of stone rows called Carnac, with some 3,000 stones, dating perhaps as far back as 6,500 years ago. The megaliths and underground structures in Malta, like the Ggantiza Temples in Xaglara on the Maltese island of Gozo, are over 6,000 years old and were once roofed, plastered, and painted. In the Americas, in addition to the Mound Builder structures and the great ruins of Mexico and South America, structures resembling those in England have been found in places like New Hampshire and New York; some maverick archaeologists have suggested that these may have been built by a tribe called the Red Paint People, perhaps 3,000 years ago. These people had ocean-going boats; it has even been suggested that they may have crossed the Atlantic and been in contact with their European counterparts. Indeed, most of the European megaliths are near the ocean, suggesting that they were built by sea-going peoples.

The idea that the Druids could not have built Stonehenge and the other British and French structures rests on the assumption that the Celts are relatively recent immigrants to western Europe. This, in turn, is based on the fact that certain components of classic Celtic culture, like horses and chariots, appear in the West only about 2,500 years ago, and in Central Europe about 2,800 years ago. Celts spread as far east as Turkey, and their modern descendants are the Irish, the Scots, the Bretons, the Welsh, and the Cornish. They were a warlike people, typically light skinned, fair haired, and tall.

Little is known for sure about their religion and the Druid priests; their Roman conquerors accused them of sadistic human sacrifice, and this may well be true, but little hard evidence of this remains today, and we would do well to remember that those who win the wars write the history. The Celts are believed to have worshipped spirits found in nature and to have held oak trees and mistletoe to be sacred, and the Romans said that they believed in reincarnation. It is believed that the Druids were not a hereditary class, that they underwent a long and arduous training, and they may have worn white robes. The Druid religion may have survived in Ireland into the seventeenth century, and, of course, there are people today who have decided to call themselves Druids. There is no evidence of the Druid religion among the Celts of Central Europe, but it may have existed there under a different name.

There is absolutely no evidence of war or of any conquest of an earlier, pre Celtic people at the time the Druids supposedly arrived in Western Europe, making it difficult for archaeologists to explain how they could have peacefully imposed their language, religion, and culture on this hypothetical earlier people. Even more embarrassing is the fact that geneticists claim that modern British people are related to the Spanish, and DNA from human remains of supposedly pre-Celtic times in Britain have shown that many modern British people are related to these early people as well. More and more it is beginning to appear that the Celts (and their Druid priests) may have been in the West all along, and may, indeed, have built Stonehenge after all.

The Celtic languages are part of the Indo-European language group that also includes modern German, Spanish, French and so forth; indeed, in Western Europe only the Basques of the western Spanish/French border area speak an unrelated language. And there is no evidence that any pre-Indo-European language people were conquered anywhere else in Europe. Furthermore, judging by their adaptations to climate, with large blondes in the north and shorter, darker people in the south, the same peoples appear to have lived in these various areas for a very long time.

Ancient Greek and Italian were also Indo-European languages, as were the Farsi language of ancient Persia (Iran) and Sanskrit in India. And here, too, conventional history tells us that the original inhabitants, speakers of the still extant Dravidian languages, were conquered by invading "Aryans" from the northwest. And here, too, there is no evidence of this. The oldest known civilization in the region (until undersea ruins were discovered off the coasts of India) was the 5,000 year old Indus-Sarasvati culture, with cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Since they did not seem to have horses and chariots like the later "Aryan" culture, it was assumed that they were conquered by people who did...but, once more, there is no evidence of war or conquest, and these new technologies both here and in western Europe need not have been spread by war. In fact, their art depicted swastikas and phalluses like the art of the much later Hindus, and one of their ancient seals depicts a man in a yoga position. They had river boats and perhaps sea going boats as well, and traded with the Sumerians of present-day Iraq. They also seem to have practiced goddess worship and had paintings of leaping bulls like the Minoan culture of Crete. Their culture appears to have undergone a slow, natural decline.

So, more and more, it appears that the Celts and other Indo-European speakers were there all along. If so, the Druid priests, or some early form of same, were there when Stonehenge was built, and, since it appears to have been a religious center, they would be its most likely architects.

William B Stoecker Comments (2)

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