Welcome to Stonehengeology

82.1. Folks in late Neolithic times set up home for a while in a dish-shaped combe (a steeply sloping valley) a little way southwest of the modern village of Durrington in Wiltshire to excavate a ditch some 400 metres in diameter by five metres deep. The chalk from the ditch was heaped up around the outside of the ditch to make a bank, which turned the combe into a massive henge.

As seen above, the ditch and bank described many radii, measuring up to and including 750 Megalithic yards. Like the Avebury henge, Durrington Walls expressed a desire to grow bigger.

People were attracted to this combe because of a bright sunset on summer solstice evening when viewed from a bend in the river Avon. A gap, or causeway, was left through the ditch and bank for which the sun could pass unhindered.

Next to be built was an egg-shaped timber structure - which Professor Wainwright called the "Southern Circle."

This egg was to be fertilised when intense sunlight seared through it.

The spirits of their cremated elite waited in a tear-drop-shaped depository alongside the egg. Ashes of their elite were deposited in this so-called 'Midden,' built adjacent to the egg. However, their bones were carefully sifted out and taken for burial in the Aubrey Holes of Stonehenge.

This enriched sunlight then had to pass through a constriction in the placenta, intended as a cervix to the womb, next having to pass over a ‘Sex Pit’ holding a female pelvis of natural flint with several pairs of balls and a penis, also of natural flint.

Flowing south on a meandering path towards Stonehenge, the Avon was a veritable umbilical of human remains. That the Avon was treated as an umbilical is known from research into Avebury’s moon-aligned avenues and the moon-egg of Woodhenge, with its girl-child burial.

Because the inhumation of a girl child in the middle of Woodhenge contradicts archaeologists' life-to-death hypothesis of Stonehenge, a recent excavation of the site - but not the burial, which is covered in flint, has allowed them to claim the girl as a late addition.

Judging by the number of beaker sherds in the Midden, the cremated elite were immigrant folk from the continent. It was hoped the spirits of these folks might enter the egg before travelling the umbilical - not just to repossess their impounded bones, placed in the Aubrey Holes but to instil life into Durrington Walls’s baby -- Stonehenge.

Other monuments shown to represent growth mathematically are….

1. Avebury Henge. 2. Stonehenge Avenue. 3. Site IV, Mount Pleasant Dorset. 4. Windmill Hill Causewayed Enclosure. 5. Longstone’s Enclosure, Beckhampton.

83. Durrington Walls, the mother of Stonehenge, seen with the geometric moon-egg, Woodhenge.

Before English Heritage placed its vastly exaggerated and false information boards alongside Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, visitors to the more obvious Woodhenge site would often ask, “Where is the massive henge known as Durrington Walls?” Both monuments are pictured above.

With concrete posts representing what were once massive tree trunks several feet tall, Woodhenge is seen entering the picture from the right.

The snow-covered horizon marks Durrington Walls’ far bank. Durrington Walls's north-western bank, which Beaker Folk built in 2,650 BC -- Oh yes, they did! -- can be seen on the left, but it’s not snow-covered.

Durrington Walls's considerable downhill slope is obvious. People were attracted to this valley, or combe, by the elevated north-western bank, which, even today, delays the summer solstice sunset and gives a totally different azimuth to that on the flat -- see photo later.

The snow was left behind by the ‘Beast-from-the-East’ - a cold snap that came across from Siberia in 2018.

Durrington Walls’ near bank, or what is left of it, thanks to many years of ploughing it flat, is just beyond the line of parked cars. This, too, is marked with snow.

Beyond the trees to the right of the picture can be seen another section of Durrington Walls' bank. This is also highlighted with snow.

Cutting through those trees is the Countess Road, built in 1965. This new highway is elevated several feet above the pan-shaped valley, which early folk had cordoned off to build Britain’s largest henge.

Note the blue farm vehicle parked beneath the embankment of the new road, because that vehicle very nearly marks the centre of the timber egg known as the “Southern Circle.”

Professor Wainwright uncovered the Southern Circle in 1966/67 when excavating in advance of the Countess Road, which replaced the old one with a dangerous bend due to several accidents.

Unfortunately, Wainwright's excavation of the Southern Circle only exposed two-thirds of it, and even that is lost to us beneath the embankment of the new road.

Note the red vehicle on the extreme right of the above picture because the following photo was taken alongside it.

84. The old road, little more than a track, can be seen to pass over Durrington Walls's denuded bank before dipping through the centre of the henge.

Much of Durrington Walls has been completely flattened due to many years under the plough. This was fortunate in some ways because loosened chalk and hill-wash colluvium covered the monuments lower down and protected them - especially so the Southern Circle of timber. Prehistoric remains at the top of the combe lost much of this protective cover and were not so lucky.

Imagine what the above landscape looked like when Durrington Walls was new. A ten-foot-high bank of gleaming white chalk, taken from an 18-foot-deep internal ditch, blanked out most of the sky in the above picture.

Now note the footpath in the right foreground, because a little further along it is where the following photograph was taken from.

85. The henge and the Southern Circle of timber were connected to the river Avon via an avenue of hard-packed chalk and flints. The river can be seen behind the van and through the trees that grow on its banks. My impression of the Avenue is superimposed on the photograph and should give you the idea that something was meant to exit the henge by sliding down it.

The Stonehenge Riverside Project started in 2003 and found five houses alongside this avenue. All of them were found buried beneath Durrington Walls' bank. These houses were small affairs measuring approximately six megalithic yards square. Their positions are marked in the above picture with small splodges of snow, which can be seen behind the row of trees.

Hoping to solve the age-old mystery of when folk had gathered to celebrate at Durrington Walls - i.e., was it summertime or winter - one of Britain’s top astronomers, Professor Clive Ruggles of Leicester University, was invited to take sightings to find out precisely what the Avenue points at.

Clive proved the Avenue's axis to aim where the sun sets in June beneath Durrington’s north-western bank.

This agrees with that found by the astronomer Professor John North sometime before 1996.

About 50% of the pigs found at Durrington Walls arrived as carcasses of meat intended for feasting and celebrations and were destined to be slaughtered as the sun set beneath Durrington Walls' western bank at the close of summer solstice day. These pigs were sacrificed to the sun and moon because their age was equivalent to the human female gestation period of nine months.

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If you want a job doing right, do it yourself. So, on Solstice Day, 21st of June 2018, you might have seen me standing close to the blue tractor, which very nearly marks the position of the Southern Circle. The actual position is marked by a drain which goes under the Countess road and prevents the valley from flooding. That is where I waited for the summer sun to set.

It was a bit of a shock to find that the sunset could no longer be seen while standing by the drain because bushes were allowed to grow alongside the old road blocks the view. So, a hurried leaping of a few fences was made to get into a better position.

I did manage to get a beautifully clear picture of the sunset, but this alone was not enough to help determine the azimuth of the Avenue. The final determination was achieved by superimposing the sun's position onto Professor Wainwright's original plans and satellite images from online Bing.

Watching the sun go down from inside the Durrington Walls henge is an experience not to be missed. Especially for the feeling you get when climbing out of the henge to find it is daytime!

86. My photograph of the setting summer solstice sun seen from inside the Durrington Walls Henge. 21 June 2018.

A beaker burial, dated to 2,650 BC, was found to the left of the sun. Professor Stuart Piggott put the hex on this early date in actual archaeological anti-beaker-person bias because they might have come from Germany.

Beaker people had no interest in making history or impressing us modern folk with what they were up to, which is why most don't enter the records until later.

A beaker man, identified by his rounded skull (brachiocephalic), discovered buried in the long barrow of Belas Knap was perhaps one of the very first to arrive in, say, 3,300 BC. He was found guardian-like, protecting several children of increasing ages, which in one book I have described as like 'Ovaltine's. This is interesting because the cremated bones recovered from Stonehenge's Aubrey holes also expressed a wish for something to grow, and in a similar way. These were as follows... a foetus, an infant, a young child, an old child, a teenager, and 21 adults.

Please permit me to tell you what happened to the Stonehenge dead. Apart, that is, from an inhumation placed on Stonehenge’s secondary axis.

The Stonehenge elite was cremated inside the Durrington Walls Henge on funeral pyres alongside the timber egg known as the Southern Circle. When cool, the bones were separated from the ashes and taken 1.8 miles to Stonehenge, while the ashes and beaker sherds were placed inside a so-called ‘Midden’ attached to the northeast side of the outer egg - regarded as the shell.

Professor Wainwright believed the Midden to be ceremonial. He also stated it was too large (6.7 by 12 metres) to be roofed, especially since it lacked a central post to support one. So, the Midden was not a house.

The midden was full of black ash, a third of a meter thick and held almost 50% of the total beaker pottery sherds found on the site. The people who built the midden felt it contained the spirits of the dead. The ash was carbon-dated, but the late date is dismissed here because archaeologists had proved corrupt around the time or slightly before Durrington was excavated.

Having placed the spirit-rich ashes of the dead in the Midden, it was hoped those spirits would fertilise the timber egg before travelling to Stonehenge to join their bodily remains and invest Stonehenge with life. After fertilising the timber egg, those spirits left the Durrington Walls Henge via the avenue that leads down to the River Avon, first passing over a Sex-Pit containing a female pelvis of natural flint, several pairs of balls, and erect penis of flint, like that found at Stonehenge.

Then, guided along by the Avon, those spirits picked up the start of Stonehenge Avenue by locating the West Amesbury Henge. Then, by travelling along Stonehenge Avenue, which, by the shape of its curves, is proven to represent growth - those spirits finally arrived at Stonehenge – the monument that creates so many arguments!

Meanwhile, intensive high-altitude rays of the setting summer solstice sun fertilised the Southern Circles eggs by slicing through them. This spirit-laden sun continued down the avenue, passing over a pit of sexual artefacts to turn the river red. But first, the Midden’s contents had somehow poured through a break in the eggshell as people were munching on nine-month-old piglets from all over the country!

Like Avebury’s West Kennet Avenue of stone, the River Avon, to prehistoric folk, was an umbilical cord. Is this just a supposition? I don’t think so!

One final thought on the problem of broken pottery. Imagine smashing a beaker pot and placing one sherd in the midden, then transporting a matching sherd to Stonehenge. Neolithic folk are famous for shifting stuff around.

87. Durrington Walls' Southern Circle was a collection of timber eggs. The whole point was for the solstice to cut right through those eggs and fertilise them. The so-called ‘Sex-Pit’ found in the middle of the Avenue held a female pelvis of natural flint together with a male phallus and a pair of flint balls. As far as I am aware, an in-situ picture showing these male and female artefacts together has never been published. And for obvious reasons!

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It could be argued by many, myself included, that the avenue leading to the river has long been expected to exist. Professor John North, for another, when in 1996 he wrote - ‘The distance between the centre of the Southern Circle and the river is 200 megalithic yards.’

88. This is a view of Durrington Walls from the river Avon. We have already mentioned that the sun rose approximately 48.5 degrees clockwise and set 48.5 degrees anticlockwise from the north at Stonehenge, and that's because Stonehenge overlooks a relatively level horizon. (Altitude less than half a degree.)

However, the summer sun sets much earlier when viewed from the Southern Circle inside Durrington Walls for having to look uphill at it by some four degrees.

Seen from the 'Avenue,' the sun seems to obey the 10-degree rule at Durrington by setting 60 degrees anticlockwise from the north, and the moon sets at 50. It's almost as if the sun and moon have swopped places.

89. The mandate was for the posts of the Southern Circle to be set up in families of three at the unfortunate expense of distorting the shape of its eggs. And that is what makes it so difficult to determine the geometry of the eggs that the Southern Circle was based upon.

A vital discovery is finding a clear break in the outer circuit to the northeast. That break is at the very point where a midden, replete with beaker sherds and other types of pottery sherds, plus numerous animal bones, axes, and flints, were found together in a mass of burnt ashes and charcoal a third of a meter thick.

This midden, packed with Stone Age ingredients, appears like an eye dropper that patiently waits to dispense its fertile contents into the circle at the time of the setting summer sun.

Archaeologists accept that the Southern Circle is connected to Stonehenge -- first by the avenue that links it to the Avon, then along the river until it met with a timber circle on its northern bank, near Amesbury. This circle is known as the 'West Amesbury Henge.'

90. This ground-plan view of Durrington Walls' Southern Circle of timber, produced on CAD, is as good as I can make it. Note how the solstice axis, central to the Avenue and large exit posts, causes it to slice through the axes of all three eggs.

Note eggs have direction! The sharp end points the way!

Durrington's eggs point toward the setting summer solstice, not winter!

Posthole 139 was cut into when the massive exit post next to it was erected. Post 139 was, therefore, the older of the two. A beaker sherd was found buried in the posthole of 139. So, once again, we are reminded of archaeological resistance to the very idea that beaker folk might have designed Stonehenge when Wainwright suggested that this sherd probably fell into 139's hole when the post had rotted away.