Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Stonehenge for Healing

The new excavation at Stonehenge (the first since the 1960s) has led to this theory from archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright (any relation to Loudon?) and Timothy Darvill:

It was a healing center, they say, and pilgrims chipped of bits of the blue stones to take home with them. The blue stones are the 80 or so brought from the Preseli Mountains in Wales, which had to be a major undertaking 5000 years ago.

My post from April (and its links) give the background of the dig. Here's the new Smithsonian article and photo spread on the progress made so far. An item that didn't make the headlines, but which I find interesting, as that some charcoal in the area dates back to the eighth millennium BC--ten thousand years ago. Which means people were camping there ten thousand years ago.

Being partial to the liberal media, I rarely cite Fox News. Let me correct that imbalance now and point you to their coverage of the event, as well as their photo collection--which includes this AP shot of two archaeology students (Steve Bush and Sam Ferguson) at work.

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