Stone circles appeared for the first time in the British Isles, around about 3,200 BC. The earliest occurrence of them was in Ochney and they seem to spread south from there. There is no evidence that stone circles were attacked as a defensive measure by early Britons. But we do have evidence of attacks at other types of near-lithic monument such as Crickley Hill.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss megaliths - huge stones placed in the landscape, often visually striking and highly prominent.
Such stone monuments in Britain and Ireland mostly date from the Neolithic period, and the most ancient are up to 6,000 years old. In recent decades, scientific advances have enabled archaeologists to learn a large amount about megalithic structures and the people who built them, but much about these stones remains unknown and mysterious.
With
Vicki Cummings
Professor of Neolithic Archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire
Julian Thomas
Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester
and
Susan Greaney
Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Exeter.