For 5,000 years, the purpose of this monument has remained a mystery, but archaeologists have uncovered a theory to explain this architectural riddle.

As the English scholar Henry of Huntington wrote back in 1130, Stonehenge is a place “where stones of an amazing size are set up in the manner of doorways, so that one door seems to be set upon another. Nor can anyone guess by what means so many stones were raised so high, or why they were built there.” The people who quarried the immense sarsens and the smaller bluestones—the latter of which seem to have come from far away and then arranged them into a circular monument came and went many centuries ago, without leaving an explanation, either written or remembered, of how they built it or what purpose it was intended to serve. It’s not surprising, then, that the mysterious monument has spawned a wealth of theories, ranging from the mythic belief that it was fashioned by an ancient sorcerer to the notion that it was some sort of gigantic prehistoric computer. Some even have speculated that its origin is extraterrestrial. Until one such narrative is conclusively proven to be fact, it’s likely that those who stare in wonder at the structure will continue to come up with new and perhaps even stranger explanations.

Stukeley believed that the builders of Stonehenge aligned the monument with the magnetic North. Although incorrect, he was the first to attempt to connect Stonehenge and natural phenomena.

Dr. William Stukeley was an 18th Century physician who had a parallel career as an investigator of antiquarian ruins, and also dabbled in mysticism (he was one of the first prominent English gentlemen to become a Freemason). In 1740, Stukeley published Stonehenge, A Temple Restor'd to the British Druids, a work that he envisioned as part of a multi-volume history of mankind. Stukeley argued that mankind started out with a single, universal patriarchal religion, which as it spread was altered and subverted by pagan idolatry before ultimately being restored by Jesus. By Stukeley’s account, England was visited in 460 BC by travelers from the Middle East—possibly Phoenicians, a seafaring people who lived to the just north of ancient Canaan, the land conquered by the Israelites. The visitors, who were followers of the ancient meta-religion, founded the pre-Christian Celtic religion of the Druid priests, and built Stonehenge as a place of worship. Stukeley’s wildly errant calculation of the monument’s age was based upon his belief that the builders understood the principles of magnetism and had aligned the monument with magnetic North, which he assumed oscillated in a regular pattern (rather than wandering randomly, as it actually does). As later researchers discovered, Stonehenge actually was far older than the Druids. Stukeley was, however, the first to try to connect Stonehenge’s location and design to natural phenomena.

Legend states that Merlin summoned the stones that make up Stonehenge from the Giant's Circle in Ireland.

Mid-12th Century pseudo-historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose book Historia Regum Britanniae (“History of the Kings of Britain”) presented the legend of King Arthur as fact, was perhaps the first to come up with an elaborate, fanciful explanation for Stonehenge’s existence. According to Geoffrey, the monument’s bluestones originated in Africa, where ancient giants scooped them up because of their healing properties and transported them to the mythical Mount Killaraus in Ireland, where they formed the Giants’ Circle. But when Aurelius Ambrosius, King of the Britons, wanted to create a memorial to slain warriors, the magician Merlin suggested to him that the stones would make excellent building material. The king sent an army to defeat the Irish in battle, but they were unable to move the stones, until Merlin used his sorcery to dismantle the structure and transport it across the sea—proving, in the process, that the supernatural was more potent than brute force.