It is official. Stonehenge was not built by aliens. Nor is it a place of healing, or a temple of the ancient druids, a decade-long study has suggested. The study claims that the monument was built to cement a new East West alliance between the former warring tribes of Britain as the country started to become a United Kingdom after centuries of strife.

The findings come after ten years of work by experts who rejected ideas that it was influenced by extra terrestrials or ancient Egypt or was even linked to the Summer Solstice, which attracts modern pagans, the Daily Mail reported. The study also rejected notions that the monument was prehistoric observatory, a sun temple, a place of healing, or a temple of the ancient druids.

Scientists believe that the stones symbolize the ancestors of the various clans - early farming families - towards the end of the Stone Age, which had been marked by conflict and religious differences, the report said.

"When Stonehenge was built there was a growing island-wide culture - the same styles of houses, pottery and other material forms were used from Orkney to the south coast," professor Mike Parker Pearson, of Sheffield University, said.

"This was very different to the regionalism of previous centuries. The building of the monument also underlined the new spirit of co-operation," he said.

"Stonehenge itself was a massive undertaking, requiring the labour of thousands to move stones from as far away as west Wales, shaping them and erecting them.

"Just the work itself, requiring everyone literally to pull together, would have been an act of unification," he added.

The site already had special significance for prehistoric Britons because its solstice-aligned Avenue sits upon a series of natural landforms that, by chance, form an axis between the directions of midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset.

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