Ancient monument may have had some acoustic inspiration.
The origins of Stonehenge have long baffled historians … was it intended as a monument for the dead, a celestial observatory, a place of healing?
A US researcher has come up with a new theory, claiming that the ancient stones were arranged to create a special sound effect.
Steven Waller said the ordering of stones at the monument in Wiltshire could be an attempt to re-create a sound illusion known as an ''interference pattern'' during prehistoric pipe-playing rituals.
The effect happens when two sounds clash, and results in some people hearing a louder noise and some a softer noise, depending on where they stand in relation to the source.
People taking part in a ritual dance around a pair of pipers would have heard the music grow quieter as they moved past certain spots, Dr Waller said. This would have created the illusion that the sound was intermittently being muffled by invisible obstacles, he said.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Vancouver on Thursday, Dr Waller, an independent California-based researcher, said it could be a desire to re-create this phenomenon that provided the ''blueprint'' for the stone circle.
The theory contradicts the most widely accepted assertion that the arrangement of the pillars at Stonehenge is related to the positioning of the sun at the equinoxes.
Mr Waller said: ''Ancient people had myths about echoes being spirits in rock. If they heard interference patterns, that would have been a mysterious thing … I think they were experiencing this illusion, thinking it was magic pillars, and then constructed the actual structure.''
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