Stonehenge

Stonehenge may have been a royal burial ground, according to new studies. Newsday writes:

Radiocarbon dating of cremated bones excavated from Britain's Stonehenge have solved part of the ancient mystery surrounding the 5,000-year-old site: It was a burial ground for what may have been the country's first royal dynasty.

The new dates indicate burials began at least 500 years before the first massive stones were erected at the site and continued after it was completed, British archaeologists said yesterday. The pattern and relatively small number of the graves suggest all were members of a single family.

The findings provide the first substantive evidence that a line of kings ruled at least a portion of southern England during this early period. They exerted enough power to mobilize manpower necessary to move the massive stones from as far as 150 miles away and maintaining that power for at least five centuries, said archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, leader of current excavations at the site.

This interpretation makes Stonehenge to be the British version of the pyramids built contemporaneously in Egypt.