Cool Finds

Archaeologists Discover Evidence a Wooden Prototype for Stonehenge May Have Aligned With the Solstice 500 Years Before the Stone Circle

The remains of a wooden monument in southern England, three miles away from Stonehenge, may demonstrate Neolithic people’s interest in the heavens

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

June 19, 2026 12:00 p.m.

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Archaeologists think Stonehenge was constructed to align with the rising and setting sun on the solstices, the longest and shortest days of the year. Now, they’ve discovered the remains of a wooden monument nearby they say may have been a prototype of the famous stone circle.

Researchers with the British organization Wessex Archaeology discovered the remains roughly three miles from Stonehenge in southern England. Based on artifacts found at the site, archaeologists suspect it was constructed around 2950 B.C.E., during the late Neolithic period, also known as the New Stone Age.

Stonehenge was built in stages between 3000 B.C.E. and 1520 B.C.E. The standing stones that seem to have been intentionally aligned with the sun on the solstices were erected around 2500 B.C.E., roughly 500 years after archaeologists think the wooden monument was built.

Researchers have a hunch the two landmarks may have been constructed by the same group of people. At the very least, the builders likely knew of each other.

“It’s possible that this might even have been a kind of navvy camp for the workers who were doing the digging” at Stonehenge, Phil Harding, an archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology who worked on the project, tells National Geographic’s Roff Smith.

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Archaeologists found the monument’s remains while conducting excavations ahead of a planned U.K. Ministry of Defence housing development between 2015 and 2017. During their exploration of a 30-acre plot overlooking the village of Bulford, they found 48 pits that contained grooved-ware pottery shards, animal bones, flints, charcoal and a rare disc-shaped knife. Radiocarbon dating later revealed the items had been deposited over a relatively short period of time—possibly, a single decade—around the year 2950 B.C.E.

Two of the pits, located nearly 400 feet apart, stood out from the others, reports NewScientist’s Michael Marshall. Rather than having straight, vertical sides, their 30-inch-deep walls were tapered, going from about four feet across at the top to just 1.6 feet at the bottom. And, instead of pottery, they contained chalk rubble. One of them also held charcoal from an ash tree.

Researchers deduced that these pits were once post holes, which had been filled with chalk rubble to hold up thick wooden columns that may have been 12 to 14 feet tall. Upon further investigation, they also determined that a line drawn horizontally through the vertical timbers would have pointed to a spot on the horizon where the sun would have come up on the day of the summer solstice at that time. The imaginary line connecting the posts was also parallel with the solstice sightlines at Stonehenge.

“Although the rising and setting positions of the sun, moon, planets and stars do not appear to radically change within one’s lifetime, over the centuries they do,” Fabio Silva, an archaeologist with Stone x Sky who worked on the project, tells National Geographic.

The alignment was off by roughly 1 degree, but researchers say that discrepancy can be explained by the width of the wooden posts, which may have measured up to 20 inches across.

“Probably a rough orientation is good enough for the ritual that you are supposed to carry out in these sites,” A. César González-García, an archaeoastronomer at the Spanish National Research Council who was not involved with the research, tells NewScientist. “It looks like there is a broad understanding and interest in the sky.”

Some experts, however, remain skeptical of the team’s conclusions about the monument. Jim Leary, an archaeologist at the University of York, tells National Geographic that a monument aligning with the sun on the summer solstice “wouldn’t be out of place for this period,” but that “two postholes don’t make a particularly convincing alignment.”

Why did it take so long for researchers to share their findings? Harding tells National Geographic it took the team years to investigate all the materials, measurements and other data from the site. They also announced the discovery a few days before the summer solstice on June 21, reports Pan Pylas for the Associated Press.

Thousands of individuals are expected to gather at Stonehenge this weekend to celebrate the solstice. But “what few will realize is that 5,000 years ago on a nearby hillside overlooking modern-day Bulford, people were doing the exact same thing—revering and celebrating the sunrise on Midsummer’s Day,” Harding says in a statement.

Archaeologists don’t know what the sun might have meant to the individuals who constructed the wooden monument and Stonehenge. But “the amount of effort that’s directed toward marking [the sun] and its movements leaves us in no doubt at all that this is a major religious event that’s inscribed over the whole landscape over millennia,” Matt Leivers, an archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, tells the Guardian’s Esther Addley.

“This is how they are understanding their place in the cosmos, how the universe works, what their deities are,” he adds.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.