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Tonight, one of the world's most famous landmarks.

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Stonehenge is an amazing place.

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These stones are enormous.

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Some of the biggest ones rise up 30 feet

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and weigh an estimated 25 tons.

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To this day, no one knows how it was built or why.

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Were people really that much smarter than us 5,000 years ago?

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Now, we'll explore the top theories surrounding this mysterious monument.

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It's everything from a magical feat by King Arthur's Wizard Merlin

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to a druid venue for human sacrifice.

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Experts have found two skulls that show evidence of primitive surgery.

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This was a place that was specifically built for the dead.

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Can modern technology unlock its many secrets?

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Now, suddenly this opens up a whole new world of theories,

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which could actually be true.

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What is the true purpose of Stonehenge?

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Salisbury Plain, England, 2021.

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While traveling the UK,

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researcher Michael Goff visits one of the country's most famous landmarks.

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Like millions before him, he goes to see Stonehenge,

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the massive, mysterious circle of giant stones that draws as many as 9,000 visitors a day.

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Stonehenge is like a letter from the deep past.

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It's there, it's physical, you can't ignore it, but what does it mean?

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Goff believes he's finally solved the mystery,

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one that begins hundreds of years ago.

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The first written mention of Stonehenge is not until 1130 by Archdeacon Henry of Huntington.

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He describes the monument, but he doesn't actually guess on what it may have been for.

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But soon after, someone else does.

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In 1136, a British cleric named Geoffrey of Monmouth

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shares the first documented theory on Stonehenge in his book,

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The Histories of the Kings of Britain.

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Monmouth tells of a time in the 5th century when the Saxons are ravaging the land.

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Treacherous Saxon leader Hengist masterminds the betrayal and murder of more than 400 British nobles,

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leaving a mass grave in Salisbury Plain.

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The High King Ambrosius Aurelianus asks his people to create a monument to the dead,

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but no one feels worthy of this task, so he was told to ask the wizard Merlin.

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According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, it's this legendary wizard who brings the famous stone circle to England.

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Yes, we are talking about that Merlin, the famous wizard from the Arthurian legend.

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Merlin is the one who tells Aurelianus that in order to bless this burial site forever,

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he needs to build a stone circle.

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Merlin doesn't want to build one from scratch, he wants to steal an existing one from Ireland.

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Merlin says these particular stones in Ireland have healing properties,

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as well as a kind of magic that will preserve the memory of the dead.

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According to Monmouth's book, Aurelianus and Merlin bring a small army to Ireland to capture the stones.

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15,000 men tried to bring the stones from Ireland, but they couldn't.

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Legend has it that Merlin flies through the air to capture the stones, then sets them up on Salisbury Plain.

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Monmouth writes that Ambrosius is eventually buried there, along with his brother, Uther Pendragon, father of King Arthur.

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This really seems like a fantastical theory, especially because we know that Merlin and King Arthur were fictional characters,

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but this theory persists for hundreds of years as the explanation of Stonehenge.

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Then in the 1620s, English architect Inigo Jones uses new tools to analyze the site.

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So now it's the Renaissance, and people are less interested in magic and more interested in science.

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King James I sends Jones out to Stonehenge to do a proper survey with the modern equipment of the day.

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What Jones does is he looks at the site from the perspective of a builder's eye, being an architect.

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So Jones goes out to the site with his student, John Webb, and he sees many similarities in the architecture of Stonehenge to what we see in Roman architecture.

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And he becomes certain that's who built it, which means it's much older than Monmouth's estimate of the 4th century AD.

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And in some ways this makes sense because the Romans had conquered the British Isles in 50 BC,

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and just some 100 years later they were treating it as a colony of Rome.

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But unlike aqueducts and roads and amphitheaters, there is no obvious utility to Stonehenge.

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So Jones and Webb study ancient Roman architectural plans to try to understand what this could be for.

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So they look for any Roman architectural plans that might be similar to Stonehenge.

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They find two in a book from about 30 BC called De Architectura.

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One of these is called a Monopteros and the other is the Peripteros and they're both Roman temples.

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Jones and Webb are convinced they know what Stonehenge is.

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In 1644, the researchers go a step further to prove their theory.

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Jones creates a draft of a restoration of what he thinks the monument of Stonehenge would have looked like before it fell into ruins.

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According to Jones' drawing, Stonehenge was laid out in a precise Roman form based on four equilateral triangles arranged to create a hexagon surrounded by a circular colonnade.

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Stonehenge resembles the layout and proportions of the Truvices designs, but because it was built without a roof or an enclosure,

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Jones concluded that it was built to worship the sky god, Chylus.

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Even the people at the time were having trouble justifying Jones' idea that this was a Roman construction because you can look at Roman construction and understand it through its refinement and its pure geometric expression.

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Contrast that against Stonehenge's megalithic trilathon assemblies.

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Even at the time it was understood that this was a far-fetched idea.

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Meanwhile, around the same time, renowned English archaeologist John Aubrey is in the midst of his own excavation at Stonehenge.

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Aubrey makes a lot of discoveries at the site.

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One of these was a ring of pits, 56 of them, around the outside of the main monument, and these are now known as the Aubrey holes.

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Curiously, these holes were dug and filled many times over.

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On a hunch, he does something no one has ever done before.

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He sketches out the positions of the stones and then compares them to the stars.

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He realizes something really important, that these stones are placed so precisely that on the summer solstice, the rising sun appears precisely between the two largest stones.

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To Aubrey, this can't be a coincidence.

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Aubrey spends over 20 years analyzing Stonehenge and publishes his findings in 1666.

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Like Jones and Webb, he agrees that Stonehenge is a temple, but he thinks it predates the Roman arrival in Britain by a great deal and was instead built by the Druids.

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The Druids themselves were active in early Britain in the 3rd century BC.

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They're an early, mysterious group of priests that were part of the Celtic religion.

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Juridic law forbade writing down religious teachings so we don't really know much about them today.

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Greek and Roman writers, including Julius Caesar, judged the Druids to be extremely knowledgeable, especially in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, and science.

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All subjects that would be useful in planning and constructing a massive stone monument aligned to the sun.

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Over the next hundred years, additional British scholars advance Aubrey's research, including 18th century scientist William Stucley.

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Stucley really spends a lot of time studying the ancient writings, focusing on the Druids' ancient religious beliefs.

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It was thought that the Druids worshiped the sun, held very elaborate ceremonies, and they potentially even included human sacrifice.

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If that is the case, Stucley proposed that they would need a venue for these practices, and Stonehenge is that venue.

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In fact, one stone in particular even becomes known as the Slaughterstone, because the hollows of the stone turn red when they fill with rainwater,

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which some believe to be stains from the blood of the victims of human sacrifice killed there.

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Stucley is also one of the first to try to precisely date the monument.

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Based on the construction methods and the layout and the alignments at that time with the summer solstice, Stucley believes that it was constructed in about 460 BC.

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And for the next 100 plus years, this is the final word on Stonehenge. It's a Druid monument from somewhere around 400 to 500 BC. Case closed.

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This theory is so pervasive that many people today still believe it was built by the Druids and used for their ceremonies.

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But those people are wrong, because a new scientist is about to uncover evidence that Stonehenge is much, much older than we ever believed.

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For hundreds of years, scientists and visitors have wondered about the true purpose of Stonehenge.

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It's everything from a magical feat by King Arthur's Wizard Merlin to a Roman ruin to a Druid venue for human sacrifice.

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These diverse theories definitely show that people have been interested and curious about Stonehenge for a very long time.

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Then in the late 1700s, an archaeologist named William Cunnington proposes a new theory, one that starts with an accident.

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In 1797, a large tremor is felt by the villagers in Cunnington's hometown of Wiltshire, England.

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Shockingly, the cause of this tremor is actually some of the massive stones at Stonehenge falling over.

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The impact can be heard and felt at least half a mile from the site.

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Sometimes known as the Great Fall, this is one of only three times that stones have collapsed at the site in modern times.

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One of the stones actually breaks as it hits the ground.

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The fall of any of these stones is really a sad occurrence, but to lose three of the largest stones at Stonehenge was really quite devastating,

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considering they have stood there for thousands of years.

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For Cunnington, this was not only a tragedy, but it was an opportunity because it meant that he could start to dig in the place where the stones previously existed.

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By 1802, Cunnington digs a pit that's six feet deep.

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And in this pit, he uncovers animal bones, charred wood, and antler bones that were used for digging.

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His early finds generate excitement.

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In 1804, noblemen and fellow archaeologists Sir Richard Colt Hor begins financing Cunnington's excavations,

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enabling him to do the kind of detailed work that he wants.

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This is perhaps the first serious and sustained attempt to understand what Stonehenge truly is.

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Cunnington figured out that Stonehenge actually had two different kinds of stones.

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The large stones are what's called sarsen or sandstone, and there are a set of smaller standing stones which are called bluestone,

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which are a variety of kinds of stone which, when wet, can seem bluish.

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Because there are two different kinds of stone in the circle.

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He believes that there are probably two different periods of activity here, but he can't conclude much more than that.

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For seven years, the pair conduct many excavations and investigations on the site,

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and they discover areas where there are burial mounds, and in these mounds, there are human remains.

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This startling discovery only opens up more questions.

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So, like the many who've come before him, Cunnington feels that without written records, he's at a loss.

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After ten years, in 1807, Cunnington finally gives up.

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Though Cunnington and Hor actually reach a dead end, they end up excavating 465 sites at Stonehenge,

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and their archaeological studies are what inspires the next generation.

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Including a researcher named John Lubbock, who picks up the mantle in 1862.

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Lubbock comes in and studies the excavations of Cunnington and Hor, ultimately focusing on these burial mounds.

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For Lubbock, the burial mounds are likely the key to unlock the mystery of Stonehenge.

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Lubbock spends over three decades investigating Stonehenge, and eventually, he makes a surprising breakthrough.

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He's able to determine that, along with the bones and bone fragments, there are cremated remains.

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According to Lubbock, this means Stonehenge is much older than anyone has ever considered.

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By this time, archaeologists had realized that cremation hadn't been practiced by the local Britons since the Bronze Age,

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which dates back to about 3000 BC.

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Lubbock finds proof that Bronze Age tools were used to carve the stone,

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and then buried alongside the cremated remains of the artisans.

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Up until this point, the monument is believed to be no older than the 5th century BC.

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Lubbock's claim places it 2500 years older than that.

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The Bronze Age is way, way, way before the Druids, the Romans, and the legends of King Arthur.

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There are two ways that you can feel about these new revelations.

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First, the bad news.

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I'm sorry, but yes, we're back at square one when it comes to theories on Stonehenge and what it was for.

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Every previous theory is now officially wrong, but the good news, now suddenly this opens up a whole new world of theories, which could actually be true.

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Unfortunately, progress after that isn't immediate.

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It's not for another 100 years after Lubbock that we get our next breakthrough.

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In 1961, a new research team led by Boston University astronomer Gerald Hawkins descends on Stonehenge with state-of-the-art technology.

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Hawkins and his team map out every stone and every pit at the site, and they also collect astronomical data,

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plotting out the stars each day that they're there.

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They punch the coordinates of all those things onto cards and feed them into a huge IBM 704 mainframe computer at Boston University.

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Hawkins is shocked to discover over 100 alignments between the stones and the sun, moon, and stars.

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In the 17th century, Aubrey thought the stones might have tracked the sun one day a year.

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Hawkins thinks it does way more than that.

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Based on these alignments, Hawkins decides that the monument can track the sun and moon over a recurring 56-day cycle, as well as possible eclipses.

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Remember when Aubrey found those 56 small pits in a circle around the stones?

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Hawkins believes that those once held smaller stone or wooden markers that would be moved around the circle to track the moon's phases.

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Hawkins publishes his findings. In the 1965 book, Stonehenge Decoded.

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When Hawkins eventually publishes his works, it's a bestseller. I mean, this book is rewriting what we understand from prehistory.

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But in doing so, he's getting quite a bit of backlash from his contemporary archaeologists at the same time.

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In fact, one of Britain's top archaeologists, Richard Atkinson, is scandalized by the idea.

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He believes Stonehenge was built by, quote, howling barbarians who couldn't possibly have had the sophistication to make astronomical calculations.

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Hawkins is ridiculed until 1971, when Oxford professor Alexander Tom finally backs up his theory.

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Alexander Tom studies many stone circles throughout Britain. He has already studied over 250.

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This includes Stonehenge and some that are even older.

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Tom decides that all of these sites had astronomical use and that 4,000 years ago people had this very sophisticated knowledge of engineering and linking their stone circles with the skies.

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Far from howling barbarians or mindless savages, Tom believes that the creators of Stonehenge used the huge stones in conjunction with the landmarks on the horizon to mark the position where the moon rises or sets.

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Tom finds their calculations to be incredibly precise, close to what modern astronomers can do with tools and technology that would have been unthinkable 5,000 years ago.

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We have computers and the web telescope. They had antlers to dig with and very large stones. It's incredible.

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But there are many scholars, archaeologists who just don't really agree. As enigmatic and interesting as this theory is, it still doesn't explain why there are so many human remains in and around the monument.

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So there has to be even more to this place.

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In early 1971, Oxford engineer Alexander Tom announces a compelling new theory.

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Like other ancient stone circles, Stonehenge was built to track the movement of the heavens.

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But this doesn't take into account one critical fact.

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Building this structure is so dangerous, it seems inevitable that workers would die.

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And for a long time, this is the primary theory as to why human remains are found at the site.

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One of the things that people always talk about is just how difficult it would have been to move these large stones.

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We can start with the sarsen stones, the sandstones. The closest place they could be from is Marlborough Downs, which is over 20 miles away.

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Now, you and I, 20 miles, might not sound that far, but these folks had no cars.

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We don't think they had wheeled carts either, or any large beasts that could pull them.

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And these stones weigh an average of 25 tons. The largest stone of all weighs 45 tons.

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That's as much as an adult humpback whale. And that's just one stone.

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So how did they move them?

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Some believe the ancients used wooden sleds, others postulated that they used wooden rollers made from tree trunks.

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Those are just the sarsen stones. The other stones, the blue stones, there's nothing like them anywhere remotely close to the site.

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The best estimate we have is that these stones come from whales in the Purcelli Mountains, which are 140 miles away.

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We're talking a vast distance for ancient technology.

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After the haul, the work is far from over.

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At the site, the stones have to be shaped with very simple bronze tools, chipping off small pieces to taper the stones as needed.

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Then to fit the upright stones with the lentils, the builders had to use an intricate tongue and groove system that was used predominantly in wood.

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And then using antler picks and stone tools, they had to dig out the cavity in which the stones could be placed so that they would stand tall and not fall.

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Researchers estimate that it takes more than 10 million combined man-hours of labor to construct the monument.

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This would be equivalent to 1,200 people working non-stop 24 hours a day for an entire year.

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For almost a century, the bodies found at Stonehenge are believed to belong to the dedicated workforce.

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But in 2008, British archaeologist Michael Parker Pearson makes an astonishing discovery that suggests something different.

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Michael Parker Pearson is the head of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, and he goes through and studies the human remains found at the site.

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Interestingly enough, he discovers something that nobody else has realized before.

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There are not just male workers' bodies buried on the site. There are also women and children.

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Suddenly, we now realize that the burials probably aren't just from construction accidents.

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This was a place that was specifically built for the dead.

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To figure out how old the remains are, Parker Pearson uses cutting-edge radiocarbon dating.

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He learns that they're not just from one period, but they were deposited there in an over 500-year period.

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Next, Parker Pearson tries to figure out who these people were.

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Alongside one of the burials is a mace that would have been associated with a form of nobility at the time.

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Another burial mound contained a number of bronze and copper knives, daggers, and many of these had ornamental designs.

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These fine objects actually provide the evidence that it was the elites that were buried here at Stonehenge.

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This isn't a mass burial site because over the course of about 500 years, there were only 240 burials that took place.

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But where did these ancient nobles come from?

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While there is evidence that people are buried at Stonehenge, there's no evidence that people actually lived there full-time.

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So he looks at the nearest settlement to figure out if there are more clues.

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Two miles north of Stonehenge is an area known as Durrington Walls.

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Durrington Walls contains nearly 300 dwellings, making it the largest village in Northern Europe at the time.

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And in the middle of it, Parker Pearson finds the remains of a giant wooden henge. Woodhenge, if you will.

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Not only do Stonehenge and the wooden structure look very similar, but radiocarbon dating indicates that it was in use right around the same time Stonehenge's largest stones get installed.

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Why would these two structures be built so close together?

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Parker Pearson believes it's because they're spiritually linked.

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To him, Stonehenge isn't just an isolated structure.

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Parker Pearson believes that we're looking at a pairing, one in timber, to represent the transient nature of life and the other in stone to mark the eternity of death.

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What he's suggesting is that Stonehenge may represent the final resting place, both in body and in spirit of ancient peoples.

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The two henges, wood and stone, represent this journey both literally and figuratively.

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So perhaps if one were near the end of his or her life, they would come to the wooden henge to die and then be buried at Stonehenge.

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We really don't have any way to know if this is actually the case. The ancient builders have left us with a mystery that will probably never be solved.

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In 2008, a pair of archaeologists are granted rights to the first excavation of Stonehenge's inner circle in almost five decades.

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What they find suggests a whole new purpose for the monument, one that brings visitors from all over the world.

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During their digs at Stonehenge, Geoffrey, Wainwright and Timothy Darville focus specifically on the monument's bluestones.

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Darville and Wainwright find the actual quarry of the bluestones in Wales, and it's a site known as Karn Minnan.

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They spend six years surveying the area, trying to figure out why the ancient people would have transported these bluestones all the way to Stonehenge. What's so special about them?

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One thing they discover is that the stonecutters who managed to remove the rocks also dug man-made springs.

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To see this type of man-made spring in the ancient world is extremely rare.

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Darville and Wainwright suppose that this is some kind of medicinal spring, and that the bluestones that were brought to Stonehenge were brought there for healing purposes.

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Some of Stonehenge's earliest theorists also believed in the site's healing properties.

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In 1215 AD, the British poet Leaman writes that the stones hold magical healing power. According to him, the ancient people would wash the stone and with the water, quote,

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bathe away their sickness. This sounds very much like what Darville and Wainwright had found in Wales.

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Perhaps these writers from the Middle Ages had heard some oral histories that had been passed down for generations that these stones held some healing powers.

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More evidence is uncovered when they take a closer look at the human remains.

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They find an unusual number of skeletons in the area with signs of disease or injury. About half of them are from outside the vicinity.

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In fact, isotope analysis of teeth from the remains at Stonehenge find people had traveled from as far away as Germany, Italy and France.

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Experts have even found two skulls that show evidence of primitive surgery. It could very well be that Stonehenge was some kind of hospital.

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In 2013, another group of academics expands on this theory.

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Researchers at England's Royal College of Art make a strange request to the government. They ask for permission to, quote, whack the hench with rounded quartz hammers.

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They suspect that the stones have special acoustic or sonic healing properties.

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The government grants the request and the results are actually pretty cool because when struck, each stone gives off suddenly different sounds and reverberations.

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And the circular arrangement enhances the sound quality and volume. It's like you're sitting in a sound room for the most part. It's as if the stones are meant to be played.

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The rocks produce sounds that are so clear that churches in the area use them as bells well into the 1700s.

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One village nearby is actually named Mein Klaka, which means ringing stones.

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But can sounds actually heal? Many cultures think so.

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Ancient Egyptians believed that sounds can generate vibrations with healing abilities. They even built structures to amplify the therapeutic effects of these beneficial sounds during religious ceremonies.

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In ancient Greece, it's widely believed that diseases can be cured with repetitive sounds. Sound therapy plays a very important role in Greek medicine.

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But of course, if Stonehenge actually was a hospital, the sad thing is we only really know about the people who died there.

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This makes it incredibly difficult to understand or determine how successful a hospital it actually was.

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For centuries, scholars have debated why Stonehenge was built, but equally as puzzling is how it was built.

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In 1968, Swiss author Eric Von Daniken believes he has simultaneously answered both of these questions. And the answer is aliens.

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Von Daniken claims it simply makes no sense that ancient people would have been able to transport these stones on their own and build these structures.

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And the fact that we still can't figure out how they did it is pretty suspicious.

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It forces us to ask the question, were people 5,000 years ago talented, smart enough and had the right ability to build something like this?

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Von Daniken believes that aliens shared their technology with humans to move human civilization forward in the areas of science and technology.

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He feels they did this several times in human history, and that explains many different monuments and structures all across the globe, including the ancient Egyptian pyramids and the Easter Island Moai structures.

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So in the case of Stonehenge, the aliens helped teach the humans about astronomy and then helped them move and arrange the stones in this particular pattern.

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This idea is picked up in a 2008 book, The God's Machines, from Stonehenge to Crop Circles by author One Chak Bang.

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He suggests Stonehenge had a dual purpose.

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He believes that the astronomical orientation of the site was really an aid for navigation so that aliens could figure out where to land.

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According to Woon, after a ship landed on top, the stones could act as conduits for electricity pulled out of the earth.

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So the monument is actually a combination of landing pad and charging station.

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In 2013, an unexpected source offers proof of UFO activity in the area.

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In June of 2013, the British Ministry of Defense declassifies their final collection of UFO files after closing the program down.

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One of these files includes several photos sent to the ministry that show a disc-shaped object hovering over Stonehenge.

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This is just one of many reports of unexplained aerial phenomena at Stonehenge.

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In 2019, Philip Rousseau is taking pictures of the sunset in Nap Hill, 15 miles from Stonehenge, and he spots a bright spherical object on the horizon.

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The ball of light is then joined by another and then several more.

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The spheres appear to create some sort of formation. They're hovering silently in the sky.

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In 2020, a couple driving in Mayor Wilshire observed a disc of light hovering near Stonehenge.

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What is that thing in the sky?

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What is this?

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They capture it on video and just as suddenly as the disc of light appeared, it vanishes.

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But most modern scholars are skeptical.

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At the end of the day, is there anecdotal evidence of UFO activity near Stonehenge? Certainly.

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But is this evidence that aliens built Stonehenge? Not really.

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Throughout history, people have wanted to believe that humanity at the time of Stonehenge's construction were savages or barbarians.

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But I think that's foolish. Physically, they were just like us.

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Maybe not the exact same DNA, but similar in most respects.

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So if you're insulting them, ultimately, you're just insulting yourself.

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With each new discovery, there's hope that we're one step closer to figuring out what Stonehenge is and why it was built.

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You think it's a cemetery, but it also tracks the sun's position. How does that detail fit in?

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At this point, the more we study Stonehenge in some ways, the less we know.

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But in 2021, Michael Goff believes he may have finally solved the puzzle.

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When researcher Michael Goff visits Stonehenge, he already knows about the monument's alignment with the heavens.

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And he thinks that was a purposeful choice. But while he's looking around, he realizes there's a lot more to it than that.

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Goff starts by studying how Stonehenge would have looked thousands of years ago before any of the stones were lost to time.

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He reconstructs the entire site and demonstrates that the monument's outer circle originally consisted of 30 sarsen pillars and the same number of connecting lindel stones.

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He also notes that the four cardinal points, north, south, east and west, line up with the structure.

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This means sunlight is intentionally focused through the stones, casting light and shadows.

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This was all known before, along with the fact that Stonehenge tracks the length of a year since the annual solstice appears in the same spot every time.

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But Goff believes that with one extra tool, Stonehenge could track more than just the time of year.

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Goff figures out that if you add some smaller markers in the middle, Stonehenge could tell the time of day, every day, like a sundial.

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According to Goff, Stonehenge actually had moving parts that are now missing. These could have been little stones or maybe even pieces of wood that have since been lost to time.

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Some small stones have actually been found within the monument that could have served this purpose.

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The real trick to this, however, is that these stones or markers would have had to have been moved every year to keep the clock accurate.

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So how did they know where to move them?

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Goff believed they used a particular constellation, the Southern Cross, that would appear prominently right on the horizon in that area thousands of years ago.

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According to Goff, every year when the cross was centered in the Southern Gap at Stonehenge, the people could just move the small stones to calibrate their clock for the upcoming year.

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Around the same time, more evidence is uncovered to support this, but in a different location and by a different team.

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Archeologist Michael Parker Pearson goes to Wales with a team to excavate in the area where the Bluestones were found.

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There they find a dismantled stone circle made from Bluestones at a place called Wymanne.

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Researchers start to wonder if these Wymanne stones might be related to the stones at Stonehenge.

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As they search for evidence using modern day scientific techniques, they realize that these two circles have the same diameter of 360 feet across, and both are aligned to the mid-summer solstice sunrise.

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But one small clue proves the connection is much bigger.

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There is evidence that Wymanne was dismantled. Most of its stones pulled up and removed, but in one of the holes, a stone chip is left behind.

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A computerized model is made of the chip, and incredibly, that chip fits perfectly into one of the stones at Stonehenge, one that's called Stone62.

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It's like a key into a lock.

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Parker Pearson concluded that around 3000 BC, most of the stone circle at Wymanne was dismantled and the stones were carried to some 140 miles to Stonehenge.

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But why go to such lengths to excavate and arrange the huge Bluestones only to then move them 140 miles away?

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Goff believes his clock theory holds the answer.

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Today, the Earth's tilt has changed so much that the Southern Cross is no longer visible at all.

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From Stonehenge, this slow movement was happening back then too. Goff believes that's precisely the reason Stonehenge was moved.

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Goff's theory is that the ancient clock was first installed at Wymanne, because that's where the Southern Cross is at the horizon, and you can use it as a clock.

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As the Southern Cross disappeared from that location, they moved it 140 miles away, rebuilt it at Stonehenge, where the Southern Cross is visible at the horizon, and now you get another 100 years of use out of your clock.

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It's a pretty cool idea, but you also have to ask yourself, scientists and archaeologists have been studying Stonehenge for centuries. How could a clock not have been discovered before?

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According to Goff, it's all because of the number 30.

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There are 30 pillars at Stonehenge, and therefore the clock theory never worked with our current 24-hour concept of time. That's why nobody ever figured it out.

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Once you try it with a day that's broken up into 30 parts, so a 30-hour day, Goff's theory works perfectly. The total length of the day is the same. It's just the hours are now 48 minutes long.

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But if Stonehenge is a clock, why are human remains buried here?

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The burials of the elite or royal people, the clock doesn't seem to explain those, until you think about the fact that maybe the timekeepers are also the rulers of this society.

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You can imagine that type of knowledge would be quite powerful at this time, so the leaders would have lived, died and be buried with the source of their power, the clock.

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Look, there's a popular saying in science, correlation does not equal causation. Just because your football team won when you wore mismatched socks doesn't mean this is why they won.

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And unfortunately, this applies to Goff's theory. Just because it lines up doesn't mean this is why they did it.

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And just because there are bodies doesn't mean it's a cemetery. You can apply this to pretty much every theory about Stonehenge.

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We'll never have any records that tell us what this thing is. These ancient builders have left us with a mystery that will probably never be solved.

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Recent dating of charcoal found at Stonehenge proves the site has been in use since 7000 BC, long before the stones ever arrived.

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This exciting new evidence gives archaeologists many more puzzles to solve.

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I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.