Why Would Anyone Line Up Hundreds of Stones? Alignments Without Answers

The monuments vary from a line of three stones to the extraordinary complexes of Brittany, where thousands of stones stand in parallel rows extending for several kilometres and represent one of the largest concentrations of prehistoric construction anywhere. Stones are typically graded in height along the row, tallest at one end. Rows sometimes terminate at a burial monument, a stone circle or an enclosure, and sometimes at nothing visible at all. They cluster in particular regions, notably Brittany, south west England, western Scotland and Ireland, which suggests a shared tradition among Atlantic communities rather than independent invention. Dating places most of them in the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age, over a period of more than a thousand years.

Explanations have accumulated for three centuries:

• •Astronomical alignments marking risings and settings of the sun or moon
• •Processional routes leading towards or away from a significant place
• •Boundaries dividing territory, grazing or ritual space from ordinary land
• •Commemorative monuments with each stone representing a person or a group
• •Markers of a route across difficult ground, usable in poor visibility
• •Accumulations built up over centuries with no single original purpose

Claims that these monuments encode astronomical observations have a long and difficult history in archaeology. The difficulty is statistical rather than a matter of principle, since a row has two directions, a landscape has many horizon features, and the sun and moon produce a number of significant rising and setting positions, so alignments occur by chance at a rate that has been calculated and is not small. Rigorous analysis requires specifying the target in advance, sampling monuments without selecting the ones that work, and accounting for the horizon profile at each site. Studies done that way find some genuine patterning, particularly towards the extremes of the moon's cycle in certain regions, and far less than the more enthusiastic literature claims.

These rows are one member of a family of upright stone monuments and distinguishing them avoids a great deal of confusion. A single standing stone, which is the most numerous type of all, stands alone and is frequently impossible to date because nothing is buried with it. Stone circles enclose a space rather than pointing along a line, and are concentrated in Britain and Ireland with relatively few elsewhere. Chambered tombs use large stones structurally to roof a burial chamber that was originally covered by a mound, so the bare stones visible today were never meant to be seen. Cove arrangements of three or four stones form a small enclosure within a larger monument. Many sites combine several of these, built at different times and not necessarily by people with the same intentions.

Setting aside the purpose, the construction itself supports conclusions that are more secure. Moving and raising stones weighing several tonnes without wheels or draught animals required organised labour on a scale that implies a community able to direct many people towards a project yielding no food. The work was done in stages over generations at several sites, with additions and rearrangements, so the monument was a continuing commitment rather than a single act. Stone was sometimes brought from a distance when closer material was available, which indicates the source mattered. And the effort was expended where no one lives now and often where farming is marginal, which is part of why the monuments survived at all.

Lines of upright stones, occasionally thousands of them over several kilometres, survive across Atlantic Europe from the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Astronomical, processional, territorial and commemorative explanations all have advocates and none is established, with astronomical claims weakened by how often alignments occur by chance. The construction itself proves organised labour sustained across generations for no material return.