Britain’s Stone Age Building Boom

Something momentous was in the air in the south of Britain about 4,500 years ago during the dying days of the Neolithic era, the final chapter of the Stone Age. Whatever it was cast a spell over the inhabitants and stirred them into a frenzy of monument building.

In an astonishingly brief span of time, people who lacked metal tools, horsepower, and the wheel erected many of Britain’s huge stone circles, wooden palisades, and grand avenues of standing stones.

The most famous relic of that long-ago building boom is Stonehenge, drawing millions of visitors to England’s Salisbury Plain. For centuries, the ancient megalith has intrigued and mystified all who’ve seen it.

Yet the truth is the most inscrutable of all, for it was built by a vanished people who left only a scatter of bones, stone and antler tools—and an array of equally mysterious monuments, some of which appear to have eclipsed Stonehenge in scale and grandeur.

Antiquarians and archaeologists have been picking over England’s ancient monuments since the 17th century. Yet it wasn’t until recent years that anyone realized many of these mega-monuments had been built at roughly the same time, and in a mad rush.

Now a burst of cutting-edge technologies has thrown open new windows into the past, allowing archaeologists to piece together the world of the great Stone Age monuments of southern Britain and the people who built them with a vividness that would have been inconceivable a few decades ago.

Artist Bios

Reuben Wu

Reuben Wu is a multidisciplinary artist who uses technology and the concept of time and space to help tell compelling stories about the world we inhabit.

His work has been commissioned by National Geographic magazine, Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen, and he is a global brand ambassador for Phase One.

A leading artist in the photography NFT space, his work also belongs in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.
Alice Zoo

Alice Zoo is a photographer and writer based in London. She is interested in the ways that people create meaning for themselves—often in the forms of ritual, celebration, and recounted memory—and she is always seeking a visual address that is honest and nuanced.

Her work has been commissioned by publications including National Geographic, the New York Times, and the New Yorker, and has been exhibited internationally: in the Magenta Foundation Flash Forward 2016, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition in 2018, the Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition in 2018 and 2019, and the PhotoVogue Festival in 2020. She writes about art and photography for publications including the British Journal of Photography and for Magnum Photos, and she publishes a monthly photography newsletter called INTERLOPER.

Organizations

National Geographic

Established in 1888, National Geographic is a trusted print and digital publication offering stories that illuminate, inspire, and reveal. Our mission is to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of cultures, the sciences, and the natural world. We advance that mission by creating visually stunning, richly reported photojournalism and distinguished, impartial coverage of the globe’s most pressing issues. National Geographic (@natgeo) has more than 284 million followers.
NYC Parks

NYC Parks is the steward of more than 30,000 acres of land — 14 percent of New York City — including more than 5,000 individual properties ranging from Coney Island Beach and Central Park to community gardens and Greenstreets. We operate more than 800 athletic fields and nearly 1,000 playgrounds, 1,800 basketball courts, 550 tennis courts, 65 public pools, 51 recreational facilities, 15 nature centers, 14 golf courses, and 14 miles of beaches. We care for 1,200 monuments and 23 historic house museums. We look after 600,000 street trees, and two million more in parks. We are New York City’s principal providers of recreational and athletic facilities and programs. We are home to free concerts, world-class sports events, and cultural festivals.