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Discovering secrets

The creation of Stonehenge tested the ingenuity and technology of an ancient people to the limit. If renowned archaeologists Professor Timothy Darvill and Professor Geoff Wainwright are correct, its fame as a place where the sick could be healed spread throughout Britain and beyond.

And now, 4000 years and more since its creation, Stonehenge is performing another service. The origins of the stones, their construction, and the remains of those who lived and died near Stonehenge are telling us profound things about what life was like for our ancient ancestors.

Along with other archaeological discoveries, Stonehenge is giving away the secrets of Britain in 2500 BC.

And the first thing the great stone circles tell us is that, for at least some of the time, life in prehistoric Britain was pretty good.

Communities were settled. Agriculture was well developed and efficiently practised. Compared with modern Britain, streams were teeming with fish and woods were alive with game.

Work hard play hard

We know this simply because Stonehenge was a huge, long-term construction project, a Neolithic equivalent of the 2012 London Olympics. It required an army of workers to construct and perhaps even a garrison of soldiers to protect.

These people were not farming or hunting, but relying on a surplus of food that only a settled and successful farming society could provide.

"This was an established agrarian economy," says Professor Wainwright. "They grew crops and kept domesticated animals. They will have hunted and fished in addition to farming, and Britain at the time was something of an Eden. But above all, it was their crops that gave them the leisure time to build great communal projects like Stonehenge."

Evidence of that leisure time has recently been found in late Neolithic dwellings unearthed near Stonehenge.

Archaeologists have speculated that these may have been the temporary homes of Stonehenge construction workers, or those who came to visit the monument. And what they show, according to Professor Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, is evidence of some pretty wild partying.

"The rubbish isn't your average domestic debris. There's a lack of craft-working equipment for cleaning animal hides and no evidence for crop-processing. The animal bones are being thrown away half-eaten. It's what we call a feasting assemblage. This is where they went to party - you could say it was the first free festival."

Like us, it seems our ancestors liked to work hard, and play hard afterwards. They also had strong communication networks and a talent for organisation. Parker Pearson believes that, at one stage or other, most of southern Britain may have been involved in the huge construction project that was Stonehenge. And that could mean thousands and thousands of people.

A mobile society

By 2500 BC, Britain was not an isolated and sparsely populated European outcrop. Professor Wainwright believes that several million people inhabited these shores, and like today, not all of them were born and bred Britons.

We know, for example, that the Amesbury Archer, whose remains were discovered close to Stonehenge, was originally from the central European Alps. His metalworking skills may have brought him to Britain, and his hope for relief from the searing pain of an acute dental abscess may have prompted his final and fateful journey, to Stonehenge.

The Amesbury Archer gives us a fascinating insight into one aspect of late Neolithic life. At the end of the Stone Age, there was already a section of society prepared to move huge distances in the quest for better opportunities. Like an Indian doctor or Polish construction worker today, the Amesbury Archer came to Britain to exploit a highly prized skill.

And it was highly prized. Metalworkers in Britain were scarce. This was a time when our ancestors were moving out of the Stone Age, and into the age of metal. Being buried with gold and copper jewellery, as the Archer was, was a sign of status. After millennia of stone and flint, this was the first age of bling.

Others moved around too. "People would have heard about Stonehenge through word of mouth, travelling, and trade," says Professor Wainwright. "People were not static. There was a big industry in trading stone axes, and axes were traded right across Britain and into Europe. Around Stonehenge, for example, there have been axes found from every part of Britain."

In other words, society in 2500 BC was mobile, at least to some extent. People knew of a world beyond the horizon, and even of strange lands across the ocean. Traders brought news from far and wide. For some of our ancestors, news of the magical healing powers of a giant stone circle in Wiltshire might have offered a glimmer of hope, and prompted pilgrimages on horse and foot of many hundreds of miles.