Swedish Stonehenge? Stone Structure Spurs Debate

A series of 59 boulders placed at a seaside cliff in Sweden might represent Stonehenge's "sister" site.

THE GIST

• An ancient stone structure in Sweden may be 1,500 years older than previously thought.
• New analysis suggests the stones represent an ancient astronomical calendar.
• Some researchers argue the stones were placed with the same underlying geometry of Stonehenge.

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Could this megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar, be much older than we thought?

Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kåseberga. They carefully arranged the massive stones -- each weighing up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) -- in the outline of a 220-foot-long (67-meter) ship overlooking the Baltic Sea.
Archaeologists generally agree this megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar ("Ale's Stones"), was assembled about 1,000 years ago, near the end of the Iron Age, as a burial monument. But a team of researchers now argues it's really 2,500 years old, dating from the Scandinavian Bronze Age, and was built as an astronomical calendar with the same underlying geometry as England's Stonehenge.
"We can now say Stonehenge has a younger sister, but she's so much more beautiful," said Nils-Axel Mörner, a retired geologist from Stockholm University who co-authored the paper on the interpretation, published in March in the International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Other researchers familiar with the site are skeptical. Among other arguments, they cite the results of carbon dating to reject Mörner's interpretation.
Inspired by Stonehenge?
Mörner says his team observed that the sun rises and sets at specific points around Ales Stenar at the summer and winter solstices, hinting that an ancient culture could have built it as an astronomical calendar to time things like annual religious ceremonies or planting and harvesting crops. [Stunning Photos of Summer Solstice]
They also observed that certain aspects of the stone ship's geometry matched those of Stonehenge, a Bronze Age monument that some enthusiasts believe was used as a calendar. (Those claims are contentious, and there are many other theories of Stonehenge's original purpose.)
The similarities led Mörner to propose the mysterious stone structure of Sweden was a Stonehenge-inspired astronomical calendar constructed by a Bronze Age Scandinavian community that regularly traveled and traded throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.
"The first thing is to see that, yes, it's a calendar," Mörner told LiveScience. "But Ale's Stones also tells us a lot more than we knew before about trading and travel in the Bronze Age among Scandinavia, England and Greece."
Beowulf, not the Bronze Age
Other researchers are not convinced.
"The idea that the stone ship might have been an astronomical calendar has no supporters among academic archaeologists," said Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist, managing editor of the archaeology journal Fornvännen.
Rather, Ales Stenar was probably an ornate grave marker, he said.
The Swedish countryside is home to many similar megalithic structures, which are generally known as stone ships. Most of them date back to Sweden's Late Iron Age (approximately A.D. 500-1000), and they serve as burial monuments, Rundkvist said.
Archaeologists using radiocarbon dating have calculated that Ales Stenar was built about 1,400 years ago, near the end of Scandinavia's Iron Age -- long after the construction date estimated by Mörner's team. [Photos: Mysterious Stone Structures]
Ales Stenar was built by members of a war-like community of seafarers who used oxen, slaves, rope, sleds, wooden spades and simple steel tools to collect and raise the huge boulders, Rundkvist said.
"This was the world of Beowulf," Rundkvist said, referring to the epic poem set in Iron Age Scandinavia.
Ships were an important part of life in this nautical culture, which may have inspired communities to mark the graves of important people with stone ships, some scholars say.
Rundkvist believes there's no evidence for anything beyond that -- including Mörner's Stonehenge theory.
"New Age mystics like standing stones," Rundkvist told LiveScience.

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Understanding Stonehenge: Two Explanations

Was the prehistoric monument built to unite a land or as a destination to heal the sick? Recent research supports both ideas.

By Rossella Lorenzi

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A symbol of unity or healing? The debate continues. Click to enlarge this image.
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After centuries of puzzling over the meaning of Stonehenge, laser-equipped researchers have concluded that the prehistoric monument was built to show off the solstices.
Apart from revealing 71 new images of Bronze Age axeheads, which bring the number of this type of carvings known at Stonehenge to 115, the English Heritage groundbreaking analysis showed that the stones were shaped and crafted differently in various parts of the stone circle.
In particular, the stones first seen when approaching the monument from the north-east were completely "pick dressed." Stonehenge workers removed their brown and grey surface crust to show a bright, grey-white surface that would glisten at sunset on the shortest day of the year and in the dawn light on the longest day.
PHOTOS: Stonehenge Made to Glisten
According to the researchers, this provides an almost definitive proof that it was the intent of Stonehenge's builders to align the monument with the two solstices along a north-east/south-west axis.
Located in the county of Wiltshire, at the center of England's densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, Stonehenge has been the subject of myth, legend and -- more recently -- scientific research for more than eight centuries.
The mysterious circle of large standing stones has been interpreted in the most disparate ways -- as a temple for sun worship, a temple of the ancient druids, a healing center, a burial site and a huge calendar.
The new laser findings appear to be compatible with two main theories taking shape in recent years to explain the monument's purpose.
According to archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, head of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, the iconic monument was built as a grand act of union after a long period of conflict between east and west Britain.
Another theory, posed by archaeologists Geoff Wainwright and Timothy Darvill, says Stonehenge was a destination to which the sick traveled from around Europe to be healed by its magical powers.
"The scanning work at Stonehenge is really important and has opened our eyes to many new aspects of Neolithic technology," Darvill, professor of archaeology in the School of Applied Sciences at Bournemouth University, England, told Discovery News.
Darvill and Wainwright made one of the most significant findings in 2005, when they located the quarry where the bluestones, which form Stonehenge's inner circle, were cut around 2500 B.C.
The archaeologists discovered a "small crag-edged promontory with a stone bank across its neck" at one of the highest points of Carn Menyn, a mountain in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, in southwest Wales.
ANALYSIS: Stonehenge Reveals New Clues of Ancient Worship
The site, which measures less than half a hectare, is characterized by numerous prone pillar stones with clear signs of working. Darrvill described it as "a veritable Aladdin's Cave of made-to-measure pillars for aspiring circle builders."
The bluestones weighed about four tons and were between six and nine feet in height and would have been transported 240 miles to the famous site at Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.
According to Darvill, the color and the presence of distinctive white spots made the Preseli Hills stones very pleasing aesthetically.
"Importantly, the methods of working the bluestones seems to be the same as for the central Trilithons and serves to support the idea I put forward some time ago that these two components of the monument were contemporary and somehow linked," Darvill said.
According to the archaeologist, the huge stones were taken on such a journey from their Welsh location because they were believed to harbor great powers.
In 2008, Darvill and Wainwright excavated a small patch of earth at Stonehenge. The dig unearthed about 100 pieces of organic material from the original bluestone sockets and provided the most accurate dating for their erection, pinpointing the bluestone construction to 2300 B.C. It also produced a large number of bluestone chippings, as if people flaked them off to create little amulet bits.
ANALYSIS: Stonehenge Built as Symbol of Unity
The presence of a large number of human remains in tombs near Stonehenge showing physical injury and disease and analysis of teeth reveal that around half of the corpses were not native to the Stonehenge area and suggested Stonehenge served as a center for healing, said the archaeologists.
Attracted by the powers of the bluestones, the sick and injured would have come to the site from far away.
"The new work indirectly supports the healing hypothesis as it shows the importance of the stones from Wales," Darvill said.
"It also shows that most of them have had bits chipped off them and some have been reduced to stumps by removals exactly as we suggested was the case," he added.
But according to Mike Parker Pearson, the enigmatic stone circle had nothing to do with sickness and diseases. On the contrary, it was built as a grand act of union after a long period of conflict between east and west Britain.
"Stonehenge itself was a massive undertaking, requiring the labor of thousands to move stones from as far away as west Wales, shaping them and erecting them. Just the work itself, requiring everyone literally to pull together, would have been an act of unification," Parker Pearson said.
Because of Stonehenge's solstice-aligned avenue, prehistoric people would have seen the spot as nothing less than the "center of the world."
According to Parker Pearson, the discovery of the winter sunset axis at Stonehenge by the laser scan project supports his previous findings.
"Our study of seasonal culling of animals eaten at feasts at Durrington Walls, from the time when the sarsens were put up around 2500 B.C., shows that they were killed at two times of the year, most in the midwinter period and the rest in the summer," Parker Pearson said.
The midwinter solstice was the most important time for these ceremonial gatherings, presumably the beginning and end of their year.
"We have isotope evidence for people bringing their animals from all over Britain, tying in with the theme of unification. You could call it the Neolithic version of Christmas and New Year," Parker Pearson said.

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