00:00Stonehenge is famous, but it isn't the oldest UK monument of its kind in England.
00:05That title belongs to Flagstones, a site that predates Stonehenge by about 200 years.
00:12In fact, it's possible that whoever built Stonehenge might have been copycats,
00:17or perhaps, as some prefer, inspired by flagstones.
00:24Let's start unraveling the mystery of flagstones by looking at its exact age.
00:29To crack this ancient puzzle, scientists turned to a powerful technique, radiocarbon-dating prehistoric monuments.
00:37This method works on organic materials like wood, bone, or charcoal that are up to about 60,000 years old.
00:44Each of these materials contains something called carbon-14.
00:49When an organism passes away, its carbon-14 starts to break down at a predictable rate.
00:55By measuring how much is left, scientists can estimate the age of these ancient objects.
01:01The method is really impressive, so it doesn't come as a surprise that the inventor of this method was awarded the Nobel Prize.
01:08Radiocarbon-dating has revealed that people built flagstones around 3,200 BCE,
01:15making it older than even the earliest parts of Stonehenge.
01:18But the mystery of flagstones is just beginning to unfold.
01:22Flagstones is located in Dorset, in southwest England, about 37 miles away from Stonehenge.
01:30It was discovered in the 1980s, when workers were building a new road.
01:35Archaeologists dug up a huge circular ditch about 330 feet wide, made with overlapping pits.
01:41Inside the pits, they found the remains of at least seven people,
01:46a cremated adult, three young individuals, and three other adults whose bodies were partly cremated.
01:53This shows that people could have used the site as an ancient cremation burial site.
01:59Flagstones is basically a big, ancient circle that popped up right where early farming communities were spending their time.
02:06If you went there today, you wouldn't see any obvious walls or banks.
02:11But if you look inside the pits that make up the circle, you'll find chalk rubble from both sides.
02:17That's a clue that when people dug these pits, they used the dirt and chalk they took out to build up banks both inside and outside the circle.
02:26This special spot sits right in the middle of a whole bunch of other really old monuments and sites,
02:34which were built over thousands of years during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.
02:39Experts have figured out the ages of some of these nearby places really well.
02:43For example, the ditch at Maiden Castle dates back to around 3,600 BCE.
02:51And the Big Henge at Mount Pleasant was built around 2,600 BCE.
02:57Today, half of flagstones is under that road,
03:01and the other half is under an old historic house looked after by the National Trust.
03:06You can find objects from the site at the Dorset Museum.
03:10Because flagstones and early Stonehenge look so similar with round enclosures, pits, and cremated burials,
03:18scientists used to think they appeared at the same time.
03:21But thanks to radiocarbon dating, we now know flagstones.
03:26This ancient cremation burial site is the earliest big circular monument ever found in Britain.
03:32To figure out how old the site really is,
03:35researchers tested things like human bones, red deer antlers, and charcoal found there.
03:42One of the most puzzling discoveries was a young man who was buried under a huge sarsen stone in the middle of the circle.
03:49Someone left him there about 1,000 years after people used the site for the first time.
03:54This find just added to the mystery of flagstones.
03:57You're probably wondering about the flagstones versus Stonehenge comparison.
04:03Well, the latter is a mystery on its own, a big old circle of giant stones in the south of England.
04:09Those who made it didn't write anything down, so we don't know exactly what they were thinking.
04:14One old tale says that King Arthur's wizard, Merlin, used magic to move the stones from Ireland,
04:21where giants had put them together.
04:23Another story says that people from Denmark built it.
04:27Today, some people think extraterrestrial visitors made it.
04:32A man named John Aubrey started studying Stonehenge in the 1660s.
04:37He thought the Celts had built it for their priests, called Druids.
04:41But that turned out to be wrong.
04:43Radiocarbon dating of this prehistoric monument shows that its constructors built it in phases over several centuries.
04:50The construction started around 3,100 BCE and continued till around 1,600 BCE.
04:58First, about 5,000 years ago, it was just a round ditch in the ground.
05:03Then people added wooden posts.
05:05Around 2,600 BCE, they brought big blue stones from Wales.
05:11Later, they added sarsens, even bigger stones, each weighing as much as five elephants.
05:17They moved those stones from 19 miles away and placed them in a big circle with five tall stone arches shaped like a horseshoe.
05:27Experts think building Stonehenge took more than 20 million hours of hard work.
05:33And that's a lot of teamwork, strength, and planning for people who didn't even have machines.
05:39These days, there are a few different ideas about what Stonehenge was really used for.
05:46Some experts think it was a sacred place where people gathered for religious ceremonies.
05:51Others believe it was an early kind of science center used to study the sky and track time.
05:57Both groups noticed that the stones at Stonehenge are lined up with the sun and moon.
06:02So people may have used the site to mark the changing seasons, especially during the summer and winter solstices.
06:09Some think it worked like a giant calendar, helping people figure out dates or predict things like solar eclipses.
06:17Stonehenge was an ancient cremation burial site too, at least for some time.
06:22Anyway, if we continue with the Flagstones vs. Stonehenge comparison, we can't but dwell more on the age of these monuments.
06:33Flagstones is older than Stonehenge.
06:35In fact, it's one of the oldest UK monuments.
06:38It's really special because it's the most ancient big round enclosure ever found in Britain.
06:44According to the newest studies, its age is about 5,200 years old.
06:50After it was built, more and more round monuments started popping up in other places too.
06:57Before its construction, most ancient monuments were long and straight,
07:01like rectangular barrows or burial mounds or long ditches called cursus monuments.
07:07Some had even more random shapes.
07:10But the Flagstones monument shows a big change.
07:14People were starting to build in circles instead.
07:16Some experts think this idea of circular monuments might have come from Ireland,
07:21where people were already burying cremated bodies in round tombs.
07:27On the other hand, even though Flagstones has turned out to be older than Stonehenge,
07:32the new findings suggest that Stonehenge might need to be redated.
07:36Some of the objects found at Stonehenge, like animal bones, are actually older than the main structure itself.
07:42For example, near the entrances to Stonehenge,
07:46archaeologists found deer bones and cattle skulls that date to around 3,200 BCE.
07:53Experts used to think that people kept those bones for a long time before burying them.
07:58But it's possible there was an early version of Stonehenge made from overlapping pits
08:03that existed before the big circular ditch was built around 2,900 BCE.
08:09Now, could Flagstones and Stonehenge have been part of a bigger shared tradition?
08:15Could there have been other ancient cremation burial sites in the UK?
08:19After all, these constructions aren't the only round prehistoric monuments in Britain.
08:25In Wales, there's a similar site, called Hlandegaihenge, which also looks like a circular burial place.
08:31Such a way of burying the deceased might have been a common custom across the UK
08:36because you can see similar structures in Eastern Ireland.
08:40In the Boyne Valley, for example,
08:43there are ancient places like the Mound of the Hostages that people used in the same way.
08:49Now, researchers want to do more digging in Ireland to see if some of those monuments were built before 3,200 BCE.
08:56If they're even older than Flagstones, they might help explain where the idea of building round burial sites started
09:04and why people across Britain and Ireland were building them.
09:08The more we learn, the better we'll understand what these sites were really for
09:12and how the people back then might have shared beliefs and traditions across the sea.
09:18Hopefully, one day, we'll figure out the mystery of Flagstones, one of the oldest monuments in the UK.
09:24That's it for today.
09:26So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:31Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
Comments