Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people longing for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.
Celebrants cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night in the Northern Hemisphere.
No one could see the sun through the low winter clouds, but could not stop the wave of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.
There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday – but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.
The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can walk up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands prepare to rise at dawn to soak up the atmosphere.
No one could see the sun through the low winter clouds, but could not stop the wave of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke. (AP Photo)
The stone circle, whose massive columns took 1,000 people each to move, was built about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshipping Neolithic culture.
Its full purpose is still debated: was it a temple, a solar calculator, a tomb, or a combination of all three?
In a paper published in the International Journal of Archaeology, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University say the site, on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers southwest of London, may have had political and spiritual significance.
The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can walk up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands prepare to rise at dawn to soak up the atmosphere. (Reuters photo)
That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique flat stone at the center of the monument, called the “Altar Stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site.
Some other stones were brought from the Presley Hills in southwest Wales, about 240 kilometers (150 mi) to the west.
Lead author Mike Parker Pearson, from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, said the geographical diversity meant Stonehenge “may have served as a unifying monument for the people of Britain, celebrating their ancestors and their eternal connection with the universe”.
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