Stonehenge discovery....

[Iron Bess]

I adore things like this.....

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4955954

[Red-Handed Jill]

I saw this earlier today - what a great find. (I wasn't even aware that they had buried anyone at Stonehenge, even for just a century as previously believed.)

[Misson]

Huh. I've been there and I don't remember anything about them finding cremated bodies. (Which may actually say more about my memory than anything. Although I would think I would have remembered something about finding remains...)

"Team member Andrew Chamberlain suggested that that the cremation burials represent the natural deaths of a single elite family and its descendants, perhaps a ruling dynasty.

A clue to this, he said, is the small number of burials in Stonehenge's earliest phase, a number that grows larger in subsequent centuries, as offspring would have multiplied.

Parker Pearson added: "I don't think it was the common people getting buried at Stonehenge — it was clearly a special place at that time. One has to assume anyone buried there had some good credentials."

I think that's quite a reach on the part of the scientists. People could have been buried there for any number of reasons which we can't even begin to grasp. Heck, it could have just been a small village's burial plot. Curious that the bodies were buried before the stones were put up - what if the stones are nothing more than a monument to the dead and the arrangement is not really relevant to their original purpose? (They go on and on about the arrangement of the stones in the audio presentation on-site.)

[Rumba Rue]

In the same context of that idea and the other context that it was a 'temple' to the elements, seasons or equinoxes, perhaps it is both. by that I mean guiding the dead in some way in either receiving light, following, or giving something back to the living.

Well it makes sense to me, don't know about anyone else...

[Duchess]

The June National Geographic article is much less focused on this "city of the dead" idea. It gives a bit of airing to a couple of current theories, which is a good scientific way to approach things.

I too visited Stonehenge a few years back and don't remember anything about it being a burial site, so this might be relatively new information.

I'm curious if they've excavated other areas of plains, maybe there are bodies all over, so the Stonehenge ones are nothing special.

[Ransom]

I like the idea that Stonehenge is still an enigma. It has stood for centuries, doesn't give up it's secrets easily, and the bottom line is, scientist still don't know for certain what it was for.

Not all mysteries are meant to be solved.