New study tells Stonehenge was 'built on land inhabited by deer, elk and wild boar'
Stonehenge
New research found that red deer, elk and wild boar would have roamed land near the Stonehenge area around 4,000 years before the standing stones were constructed.
The iconic Stonehenge, which is said to be the most architecturally sophisticated and only surviving lintelled stone circle in the world, is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England.
After examining Blick Mead, a Mesolithic archaeological site in the vicinity, scientists found that the area had not been covered in dens and closed-canopy forests which was previously believed.
Meanwhile, it has been understood that the area would have been populated by grazing animals and hunter-gatherers. "There has been intensive study of the Bronze Age and Neolithic history of the Stonehenge landscape, but less is known about earlier periods," explained lead researcher, Samuel Hudson, of Geography and Environmental Science at Southampton.
"The integration of evidence recovered from previous excavations at Blick Mead, coupled with our own fieldwork, allowed us to understand more about the flora and fauna of the landscape prior to construction of the later world-famous monument complex," Hudson added.
"Past theories suggest the area was thickly wooded and cleared in later periods for farming and monument building. However, our research points to pre-Neolithic, hunting-gatherer inhabitants, living in open woodland which supported aurochs and other grazing herbivores," he added.
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The findings of the study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, were established after analysing pollen, fungal spores and traces of DNA preserved in ancient sediment (sedaDNA), combined with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating to produce an environmental history of the Wiltshire site.
Later, the researchers used the evidence to build a picture of the habitat in the area from the later Mesolithic (5500 BC) to the Neolithic period (from 4,000 BC).
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