Why you can’t touch Stonehenge any more



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Written and presented by
Tom Scott

Producers
for Penny4
Cambria Bailey-Jones
Guy Larsen

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Heloise Lowenthal

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Jamie MacLeod

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Frank Hammond

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Isla McTear

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Myles Wheeler

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Jamie MacLeod

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Alex “J’Rassic” Bate

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Dan Pugsley

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Maggy Apodaca

Subtitles by So Speedy

With thanks to the Historic County Borders Project

Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images

Executive Producer
Tom Scott

© Pad 26 Limited MMXXVI

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39 Comments

  1. I think the guy is wrong on writing. I think they did have writing. The ability to scratch down symbols that can communicate ideas is just too patently obvious when you are spread out. More likely, whatever they used to write on, just didn't last.

  2. What happened to the missing stones? Have they been used in nearby buildings or other structures?

    Why not make a replica "nearby" of how it would have looked originally?

  3. He Forgot to clarify that the human remains that dated around 800k to 900k in the uk were not Homo Sapiens remains. Modern Humans branched around 300,000 years ago.

  4. Honestly stonehenge is a bit of a tiresome media queen. She was "tidied up" a few times in the 20th c; 1901, 1920, 1958, 1963; including some judicious use of concrete and a small repositioning or two.

    Go to the north we have big rocks all over. The devil's arrows, the Twelve Apostles, Thornborough henges, The Rudston Monolight, Catterick (which has 600 years on stonehenge). Pop over to Carnac in France and the place is lousy with stones. Every other restaurant seems to have a dolmen in the back garden, and the Alignements are hundreds of stones arranged in rows. In the off season you can walk freely around lots of it.

  5. I Remember playing as a kid on stonehenge after parking on the side of the road. I hate what they did to it. I know it helps protect the stones and helps bring in tourist revinue while organising the ever increasing numbers of tourists but heck it!

  6. Okay cool but what was it FOR? Why do this? Astronomical amount of difficulty and work. For gods? Did they have any at the time? For astrology? Did they know what a star is at all? The most mysterious wonder of the world?

  7. The nearby town of Amesbury is worth a mention, as it’s the oldest continuously inhabited town in Britain at some 10,000 years old (since 8820BC).

    Also, don’t worry about touching them. Just google the summer solstice events that happen there every year.

    Bloody cool though, and I’m proud to live just 3 miles away (apart from those damn traffic jams of all the people gawking).

  8. I have been to Stonehenge at both summer and winter solstices – the sight of people climbing up and dancing on the stones in thier doc martins is something that will anger me to the end of my days. Some people are just unregenerate vandals.

  9. I guess that question of stabilisation or letting the stone fall would have to be evaluated based on what kind of damage would it do to the rest of the wider structure as well as what kind of scientific information we can still gain from it before any potential collapse. I do think it is the right thing to do to prevent it from being directly accessed now, because it feels more and more like this time period has people who are less and less conscientious about their own impact on the world around them.

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