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FOXNews.com – Stonehenge May Have Healed Sick, Injured – Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News
Stonehenge has a new age — and a new purpose.

It’s long been understood that the Neolithic stone circle on Salisbury Plain in southern England was an observatory tuned to the summer solstice and the positions of the stars.

But new excavations led by a pair of British archaeologists show that it was also a healing center, a sort of pagan Lourdes for chronically ill and crippled pilgrims from across western Europe.

“Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell, but people who were capable of [healing] them,” Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University told the BBC.

The dig by Darvill and fellow archaeologist Geoff Wainwright also may reset the timeline of the Stonehenge site.

The huge 20-foot monoliths, or “sarsen stones,” that we associate with Stonehenge are thought to have been erected around 2300 B.C. with rock from local quarries.

Inside them are two concentric circle of 6-foot “bluestones” that originated hundreds of miles away in the Preseli Hills of southwestern Wales.
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Those circles had been thought to date to 2600 B.C. — but Darvill and Wainwright’s research show them to be 300 years younger, the same age as the sarsen stones.

Furthermore, chippings from the bluestones were found all over the Stonehenge site, indicating that people were taking bits home with them to sustain their supposed healing powers.

Even more compelling is the number of sick or injured people found buried in graves around the site.

And analysis of plant material shows the site may have been a religious center as far back as 7200 B.C. — nearly 4,000 years earlier than previously thought.