The Stonehenge is a man-made giant circle of stone which has been stooped in mystery for thousands of years. The Roman scholars thought that this was a temple built to honour their sun god Apollo, and the Welsh wrote it into legend as a creation of the wizard Merlin. Professor Mike Parker Pearson had his own ideas.

He and his team dug up evidence that Stonehenge wasn’t some isolated incident but actually formed part of one of the largest prehistoric religious complexes on the planet. In the middle of this complex was an incredibly close replica of Stonehenge but built with wood. This discovery led Professor Pearson to hypothesize that Stonehenge was not a temple to the gods, but in fact, a monument to the dead, honouring the ancestors of those who built it.

In 2018, some evidence emerged that support Professor Pearson’s hypothesis. The German Stonehenge-Pommelte is believed to have been built around the same time as the Stonehenge, and it is here where an archaeologist dug up the dismembered remains of over 20 men, women and children, suggesting that the site was used for ritual sacrifices.

This update to the original Stonehenge Decoded (2009) will explore the evidence gathered in the past 10 years and present it in the forms of interviews, archived footage and modern filming to lay bare what we know about the Stonehenge and its ties to other Neolithic circles in Britain.

Friday at 8 PM on National Geographic (ch 220, on May 22^nd)