Darwin Day visit to Stone-Henge Aotearoa
Peter Clemerson (March 6, 2023)
Dear Mr Hall,
I visited your admirable monument to early astronomy today as one of a party. You may remember that someone asked if you could source your comment that at some time since Christianity was introduced to England, some of its adherents had tried to destroy Stonehenge, given its pagan origins. As that visitor, I regarded your comment as quite plausible in principle but I had my doubts. If this was true, it would likely have featured prominently in many of the documents, films, videos and TV programs that have covered Stonehenge in recent decades. I had never heard this idea before today and given the coverage just mentioned, I was sceptical. You stated that you believed some contemporary accounts of such destruction exist and we agreed that I should be able to find some documentary evidence with suitable internet searches.
Some many searches later, I would like to let you know the results just to finish off the matter.
You might be familiar with a web site called https://www.quora.com which permits questions to be posed to the digital cosmos and enables people to answer them. The answers can come from anyone, rather than be restricted to relevant researchers and scholars. The only answer that I could find that carried a hint of Christian destruction was at
A 3 year old response from a Janet Reedham is sensible. She states:
“They didn't generally destroy monuments. Sometimes they built their own churches over them but most of the time they just lived around them. Some of Avebury's stones were toppled in the Middle Ages but it is not known if it was because they were ‘un-Christian' or just a nuisance for farmers…”.
While this answer, by implication, places the idea that Christians could have been responsible during the Middle Ages for destruction at Stonehenge into the blogosphere or digital cosmos, it does no more than that.
It is worth mentioning in this context that the Colosseum in Rome was often used as a quarry at various times to supply masonry for later constructions, but to the best of my belief, at no time did the various Rome or Vatican based Christian authorities formally propose any of the demolition that is now so evident.
The website https://artsandculture.google.com/story/stonehenge/mwURGp1URe8zgg does carry the text:
_“Stonehenge Today
After Stonehenge was abandoned around 3000 years ago, it stood intact until around the 14th century. Over the next 400 years Christians tried to destroy the stones, believing them offensive to their pagan origins.”_
However, the site includes illustrations of many hypotheses about the origins and purpose of the structure, some highly speculative, and produces no references to support any of them. The use of the word “intact” implies that the author claims to know much more about its state during a period of over 2000 years than any qualified archaeologist would. I think it is also significant that the very detailed Wikipedia site dedicated to the history of Stonehenge makes no mention of any deliberate destruction.
Posing the question “Which Christians tried to demolish Stonehenge in England” to Google took me to the site
https://www.history.com > news > 7 Things you should know about Stonehenge – History
Underneath this, it carries the text “7 Things you should know about Stonehenge – History” as a link to another site. Underneath this link there appears the text:
“1/19/2018 during the medieval era, a number of the stones were knocked over and buried by local Christians who believed they were pagan symbols. Later …”
This looked promising, but clicking this link takes one to the site https://notice.aenetworks.com/ which states that the search for content “is not available in your area”. It turns out that aenetworks refers to the American commercial television company which owns the History channel. This channel probably did produce a programme in which the above is asserted but the quality and credibility of the channel has been in decline for decades. Not much to rely on there.
Another search proved more informative.
In 2012, English Heritage published a report called Stonehenge Laser Scan: Archaeological Analysis. Access to the pdf version of this report can be found at https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/32-2012
It seems that one of the hypotheses for the imperfect state of Stonehenge is that it was never completed. In a discussion of this hypothesis, the following paragraphs can be found on page 61.
_“Incomplete or imperfect and damaged: the non-completion theory re-considered
Ever since John Wood (1747) wondered why so many of the lintels were missing from Stonehenge, and how any would-be stone robber might have removed them without damaging the uprights, successive authors have questioned whether Stonehenge was even finished. After accurately surveying the monument, William Flinders Petrie invigorated the debate, stating:
"The evidence for non-completion of the outer sarsens, is in the very much smaller Stone 11.,,. Again Nos. 21 and 23 are both defective in size compared with the rest; these show that 11 was no single freak, but was the result of not having better material. If the builders ran so short as to have to use such a stone as 11, is it not very probably that they had not enough to finish the circle?' (Petrie 1880, 16)
This issue is still hotly debated; Christopher Tilley eta!. (2007) argue that the monument was not completed, while Anthony Johnson (2008, 146) argues for a finished monument This debate was also considered by David Field and Trevor Pearson following their survey of Stonehenge (2010, 62-66). Analysis of the laser-scan data has revealed significant new evidence that informs, rather than solves, this debate. Key aspects of the non-completion theory are reviewed. These are:_
- The presence and use of ‘inadequate' stones (e.g Stones Il and 21).
- The absence of approximately one third of the Sarsen Circle on the SW side of the monument and the absence of the majority of the lintels.
- The absence of documentary evidence for the removal of stones or slighting of the monument.
The use of inadequate stones, particularly on the SW half of the monument, is central to the non-completion theory. ......”
My purpose in quoting these paragraphs is not to join in any discussion of the reasons for its current state but to draw attention to their statement noting “The absence of documentary evidence for the removal of stones…”
We are all familiar with the maxim absence of evidence is not evidence of absence but in certain circumstances, I think it is. If you are looking for X, which you know may or may not exist, as all the possible locations of X are thoroughly searched and found not to provide any evidence of X's existence, it becomes reasonable to conclude that indeed X does not exist.
By employing Marcus Abbot and Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, English Heritage seem to me to have employed properly qualified personnel to carry out the investigation and write their report. (See links below for relevant professional CVs.) Should there be any authentic documentation in existence which in any way supports the hypothesis that devout but destructive Christians were responsible for any damaged or incomplete structure at Stonehenge, I am confident that they would have wanted to find it and refer to and quote it in their report.
Preferring to trust the authors of the English Heritage report, I conclude that there is no justification for claiming that Christians have pulled down some of the stones, despite this idea circulating in the less reliable parts of the digital world. May I mention that I have no religious beliefs and am not in any way inclined to defend either Christianity or its adherents.
May I also mention that today's visit was my second, after an interval of about 5 years. I thoroughly enjoyed both and look forward to a third sometime in the not too distant future.
With apologies for the length of this email and thanks for the stimulus for an interesting investigation,
Peter Clemerson
http://www.marcusabbott.org/Marcus_Abbott/Marcus_Abbott.html
Hi Peter
Thank you for this well informed report. Duly noted. Looks like that is a statement that needs modification. Again, thank you for your efforts, they are much appreciated.
Regards,
Kay Leather and Richard Hall
