Archaeologists have unearthed remains of a huge ancient settlement that they believe housed the hundreds of construction workers needed to build nearby Stonehenge.
Piles of animal bones found at the Neolithic village in Wiltshire, the largest of its kind ever found in Britain, suggest it was also the place to go for a lavish feast, featuring spit-roast pork and beef.
"We’re talking Britain’s first free festival. It’s part of attracting a labour force – throwing a big party," Professor Mike Parker Pearson, of the University of Sheffield, lead archaeologist, told Times Online.
He said that the village’s Neolithic inhabitants – who he believes are likely to be among the ancestors of modern Britons – were not primitive "cave men".
They were well-dressed in "smarter than you'd imagine" leather clothing and capable of enormous feats of engineering – notably the transport of the huge stones of Stonehenge 240 miles from Wales's Preseli Mountains to Salisbury Plain.
The excavations have unearthed hundreds of well-preserved houses with imprints of beds and wooden dressers still present on the clay floors.
More in The Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2575005,00.html
also
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11067-ancient-housing-settlement-discovered-near-stonehenge.html
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road