This is how the builders of Stonehenge lived: they celebrated feasts with viscera during the winter solstice

• Archeology Discovered next to Stonehenge a prehistoric ring of wells

Stonehenge is the most famous and enigmatic prehistoric monument in the world.

Theories about how and why this fascinating circle was built with large blocks of stone in the English county of Wiltshire have been happening, but there are few certainties about who built it or the type of ceremonies that were celebrated there.

Luckily for scientists, just 2.8 kilometers from the megalithic complex, a Neolithic settlement called Durrington Walls is offering clues as to who the builders of Stonehenge were and what lifestyle they led five millennia ago, as they are believed to have stayed in that town during the second phase of construction of Stonehenge.

To reconstruct that stage, a British team combines archaeological excavations with laboratory techniques: "In prehistory we only have archaeological evidence, because at that time writing had not yet been invented," Piers D. Mitchell, an archaeologist, told this newspaper. from the University of Cambridge and lead author of this research.

To know more

Culture.

The British Museum reveals the ancient secrets of Stonehenge

• Writing: PAOLA DE CAROLIS (CORRIERE DELLA SERA)

The British Museum reveals the ancient secrets of Stonehenge

Thus, their analysis of fossilized excrements found in Durrington Walls has indirectly revealed what the feasts they celebrated were like, as the authors detail today in the specialized journal

.

Scientists have found in these prehistoric droppings parasites similar to those that continue to cause intestinal problems in many people today when they consume raw or undercooked animal foods.

For 4,500 years, eggs of parasitic worms have lain hidden in fossilized feces, which archaeologists call coprolites (because

means 'excrement' and

'stone' in Greek).

Now, those parasites have come to light by passing the excrement through the laboratory.

"Because the internal organs of animals decompose in the soil, we have much less information about whether they were eaten by people, compared to eating meat, which we can detect through knife marks on the bones that show how was removed. However, the presence of parasites demonstrates that both the people and the dogs at Durrington Walls also ingested internal organs of the animals they ate," Mitchell wrote in an email.

Human feces collected at the Durrington Walls settlement. Lisa-Marie Shillito

worm eggs

in human feces, recognizable by their lemon-like shape, indicate that the person had eaten the raw or undercooked lungs or liver of an already infected animal.

According to Mitchell, although

worms can infect cattle and other ruminants,

.

During excavations of the area considered to be the main midden at Durrington Walls, archaeologists found pottery and stone tools along with more than 38,000 animal bones - 90% were from pigs and just under 10% from cows.

The mineralized feces used in the study were also found there.

Specifically, his team analyzed 19 coprolites.

In five (one from people and four from dogs) they found eggs of parasitic worms, so their theory is that during the celebration feasts they ate internal organs of animals such as cows, and gave the leftovers to the dogs around them.

In a dog's excrement they also found parasite eggs from the consumption of raw fish, but no evidence has been found at the site to suggest that humans ate fish there, so it is believed that the dog was already infected when it arrived. Stonehenge.

Those analyzes were carried out at the University of Bristol's National Environmental Isotope Facility and also revealed that the cows came from southern regions of the UK.

Egg of a parasite from fish found in the feces of a dogEvilena Anastasiou

As Mitchell points out, the settlement of Durrington Walls has been dated to 2500 BC, a period that coincides with the period in which the famous trilithons, two huge upright stones supporting a third upright rock, are believed to have been erected.

Scientists believe that some of the builders of Stonehenge - a place that should have been reserved for worship - stayed at Durrington Walls.

Its inhabitants came and went:

, and we believe that in summer it was empty. This suggests that farmers and farmers stayed during the summer months in their homes in other areas of the south of England, working in the fields, and during the winter, when it was not cultivated in the United Kingdom, they traveled to Stonehenge to work on the construction of the monument", the archaeologist theorizes.

A hypothesis supported by previous isotopic analyzes of cow teeth from Durrington Walls, which suggest that some cattle were brought there from Devon or Wales, some 100 kilometers away, for a large-scale feast.

Patterns identified in the bones of cattle from the site suggest that their meat was cut primarily for cooking and the bone marrow was removed.

The type of parasites found in feces, says Mitchell, is consistent with all previous evidence pointing to winter feasting during the construction of Stonehenge.

These are the oldest tests of intestinal parasites in human excrement that have been identified in the United Kingdom, although as the British archaeologist contextualizes, they have been found older in other places in Europe.

"The oldest evidence of intestinal parasites in humans was found in a cave in France, in which layered nematode eggs were found dating back 30,000 years."

Microscopic view of a parasite egg found in fecesEvilena Anastasiou

As for the parasites that infected the builders of Stonehenge, Mitchell says, their eggs have also been found in Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in continental Europe, and those worms continue to infect animals today.

"It is probable that these feasts took place every winter, and that they were not only done once," says the archaeologist.

"The reason why we believe that these celebrations took place in winter is because pigs are born in spring, around the month of March, and the pig bones that have been found at the site were about nine months old. This suggests that they were sacrificed between December and January, coinciding with the winter solstice, when the sun aligns with Stonehenge".

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more