Was Stonehenge used to support an altar to "be closer to heaven"?
Historian Julian Spalding has put forward an hypothesis about Stonehenge. In his opinion, the circular stones served to support a raised platform for the performance of ancestral rites. A ramp, or stairs, would have brought the priests to the platform. As the millennia passed, the stones remained, but the wood decayed.
Whether it was a Druid temple, an astronomical calendar, or a healing center, the mystery of Stonehenge has fueled endless debate over the centuries. To the various hypotheses put forward, we add that proposed by the historian Julian Spalding, former director of some of the most important museums in the United Kingdom.
In his opinion, the prehistoric stone circle was actually an ancient altar used to get closer to heaven.
The megaliths would not have been used to celebrate rites at ground level, but to support a gigantic circular wooden platform capable of supporting the weight of hundreds of people and on which religious ceremonies were carried out.
All the interpretations proposed so far could be considered plausible but the Spalding's theory is a completely different theory to those put forward previously.
According to Spalding, we need to look at other similar monuments in other parts of the world, such as those discovered in China, Peru and Turkey, which were built to point "upwards" and with circular geometry, also linked to the movements heavenly.
"In ancient times, no spiritual ceremonies would have been performed on land,” Spalding said. "We looked at Stonehenge from a modern, earth-bound perspective. All the great altars of the past suggest that a celestial rite would never have been celebrated in contact with the humble earth, which would have been offensive to immortal beings."
However, over the millennia the wood of the platform has rotted away, leaving only the stone pillars that once supported it.
Stonehenge, built between 3000 and 2000 BC, was initially supposed to be entirely made of wood. The wooden blocks would be inserted later, to make the structure permanent.
The blocks of Stonehenge are made of diabase, a bluish rock with white spots that resemble stars. These megaliths, weighing between two and four tons each, were transported 400 km, an extraordinary achievement for those times, which indicates that Stonehenge was a huge joint undertaking.
The faithful accessed the elevated altar via a ramp or wooden stairs, then moved in a circle following the movement of the stars to celebrate some dedicated ceremonies, such as the solstice or the funeral of a king.
Spalding's theory rosed from a visit to the archaeological site of Gobleki Tepe, in southern Turkey, similar to Stonehenge, but 6,000 years older. The purpose of the T-shaped pillars at Gobleki Tepe still remains a mystery, but Spalding believes that even then they served as support for some raised platform.
