page_title: Theories about Stonehenge
section_title: Druids and scientific evidence
hierarchical_section_title: Theories about Stonehenge / Druids and scientific evidence
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Stonehenge, Großbritannien English: Stonehenge, GB
context_page_description: Stonehenge has been the subject of many theories about its origin, ranging from the academic worlds of archaeology to explanations from mythology and the paranormal.
context_section_description: The first academic effort to survey and understand the monument was made around 1640  by John Aubrey. He declared Stonehenge the work of Druids. This view was greatly popularised by William Stukeley. Aubrey also contributed the first measured drawings of the site, which permitted greater analysis of its form and significance. From this work, he was able to demonstrate an astronomical or calendrical role in the stones' placement. The architect John Wood was to undertake the first truly accurate survey of Stonehenge in 1740. However Wood's interpretation of the monument as a place of pagan ritual was vehemently attacked by Stukeley who saw the druids not as pagans, but as  biblical patriarchs.
  By the turn of the nineteenth century, John Lubbock was able to attribute the site to the Bronze Age based on the bronze objects found in the nearby barrows.
caption: Stonehenge
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