Two miles from Stonehenge, around 2500 BC, people raised rings of timber posts now called Woodhenge, lined up on the midsummer sunrise like Stonehenge.
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Two miles from Stonehenge, around 2500 BC, people raised rings of timber posts now called Woodhenge, lined up on the midsummer sunrise like Stonehenge. Stonehenge itself is held together with woodworking joints: mortise-and-tenon joints lock its top stones to the uprights, and tongue-and-groove joints lock the top stones to each other.
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Transcript
Stonehenge had a wooden twin. Two miles away and around the same time, people raised rings of giant timber posts. They lined them up on the midsummer sunrise, just like Stonehenge. Stonehenge even uses woodworking joints. That bump on top of each upright is a tenon. The stone above has holes carved to drop right over it, the way a carpenter fits a table leg. The top stones also lock together with tongue and groove, like floorboards. So why build one in wood and one in stone? One leading theory: wood was for the living, and stone was for the dead. The timber circles stood beside a huge village, where crowds feasted on pigs at midwinter. Stonehenge holds Britain's largest collection of Stone Age cremations. The wooden twin rotted so completely that nobody knew it existed until 1925, when a pilot spotted its outline in a wheat field. Today, concrete stumps mark where its posts stood. The circle built for the dead is still standing.
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