Free Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery by Christopher Knight, Alan Butler

in which they lived. Almost everything they used was organic in nature, such as wood, plant fibres or leather, and in the damp climate of Britain, with its acid soils, little that is so perishable survives the ravages of time. Stone artefacts do exist, such as exquisitely crafted hand axes and flint implements of one sort or another, but they can throw little light on the thoughts, aspirations or religious imperatives of people so long ago.
    Only a few scant burials and the ephemeral echoes of post holes where huts once stood offer evidence of the ordinary lives of people who, when we look at their achievements in the form of huge structures such as the henges, must have been complex and very capable. If the later Britain of the Iron Age can be used as a model for late Stone Age life, family groups probably formed a part of clans, which were ultimately components of a large tribal system. However it has to be admitted that this is speculation because although we have fairly good evidence for the Iron Age, thanks to the Roman invasions of Britain, we have no such testimonies for a period as early as 5,500 years ago.
    One thing is certain; the people of Britain during this early period may not have been on the same level as we are in a technological sense, but they were certainly no less bright. What is more, their achievements on the landscape, especially at sites such as Thornborough, which was probably by no means unique, show that they had good organizational skills and sufficient free time to create structures that must have taken many years to complete.
    We now had the evidence we so badly needed and we knew it would be difficult from this point on to dismiss Alexander Thom’s rediscovery of megalithic measures out of hand. From our own point of view the giant henges of Yorkshire and other parts of the British Isles were so significant to our research that we simply had to understand how they had been created. We also needed to know why such a fantastic exercise in community effort obviously seemed necessary to an apparently simple farming community.
    Our next task was to examine the henges more closely to find out why they are laid out as they are (including the dogleg), and try and understand what those using these sites could have achieved from using their remarkable observatories.

Chapter 5
    •
GIANT HENGES AND THEIR USES
Degrees of Excellence
    It would be fair to suggest that archaeologists have always found themselves in something of a quandary when it comes to explaining the purpose of the ancient henges dotted about the British landscape. There may once have been many hundreds or thousands of these structures and, if those that remain are anything to go by, they differed greatly in scale.
    A small henge, of which there are still many examples, could quite reasonably be suggested as a simple ‘meeting place’ for a local community. Such a notion could easily make sense, and thus the henge might be seen as a very early form of the later ‘thing’ or ‘ting’. This was the name given to an open-air meeting place used by the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples who came to occupy Britain at a much later date. It was in such locations that local laws were made, where justice was meted out and disputes were settled.
    In the case of the Thornborough henges such a usage, as any primary purpose, can be ruled out immediately. The three Thornborough henges are so large that any local or even regional meeting that took place within any one of them would seem like the proverbial pea on a drum. It is worth pointing out once again that the measurement across each of the Thornborough henges is 233 MY, which is 193 m. Anyone who, like us, has stood at the centre of such a henge, immediately becomes aware that such an area can easily swallow a cathedral-sized building, which would make it far too big for any conceivable gathering of people.
    It has also been suggested that the henges at Thornborough might have had a defensive