Archaeologists think they’ve found a 3,200-year-old mysterious stone circle that inspired Stonehenge

A stone circle dating back more than 3,000 years could be the answer to Stonehenge's mysteries. Well, some of them.

Built over thousands of years, the Stonehenge site in Wiltshire, England, is one of the great mysteries of the United Kingdom's rich history. With stones arranged in a ring pattern reaching 13 feet in to the sky, it's home to free-standing trilithons - which is where you have two vertical stones with a horizontal one more across the two - that has lasted since first being constructed back in 3,100 BC. That's more than 5,100 years ago, with the stones weighing between three and 30 tonnes.

Suspected to be linked to the summer solstice and winter solstice, the ruinous monument is aligned to sunrise and sunset during both these annual events.

Now, a recent archaeological study has revealed that a different ancient monument near Dorchester could be linked to the Stonehenge site, which lies 50 miles away to the north west of the Dorset site.

The new research has been published in the Antiquity journal by researchers from the University of Exeter and Historic England, with the findings paving a new path when it comes to the evolution of monumental architecture in Neolithic Britain.

Located near Dorchester, the site in question dates back to 3,200 BC - making it older than the Wiltshire site we all know.

Known as 'Flagstones', it is the earliest known circular enclosure found anywhere in Great Britain.

It is 200 years older than first thought thanks to advanced radiocarbon analysis of some of the finds discovered there, including human remains, red deer antlers and charcoal.

Flagstones enclosure seen shortly after construction in the middle Neolithic period (Jennie Anderson / University of Exeter)

And the analysis suggests that Flagstones may have served as a prototype for later monuments like Stonehenge.

Dr Susan Greaney, a specialist in Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, in Exeter’s Department of Archaeology and History, said: "Flagstones is an unusual monument; a perfectly circular ditched enclosure, with burials and cremations associated with it.

"In some respects, it looks like monuments that come earlier, which we call causewayed enclosures, and in others, it looks a bit like things that come later that we call henges. But we didn’t know where it sat between these types of monuments – and the revised chronology places it in an earlier period than we expected."

Was Stonehenge inspired by the Flagstones site? (Getty Stock Images)

The Flagstones site was first found back in the 1980s during the construction of the Dorchester bypass. Upon excavation, it was found to be formed of a 100 metre diameter circular ditch made of intersecting pits.

Fast forward to today and half the site remains hidden beneath the bypass.

Dr Greaney added: "The chronology of Flagstones is essential for understanding the changing sequence of ceremonial and funeral monuments in Britain.

"The ‘sister’ monument to Flagstones is Stonehenge, whose first phase is almost identical, but it dates to around 2900 BC.

"Could Stonehenge have been a copy of Flagstones? Or do these findings suggest our current dating of Stonehenge might need revision?"

The Flagstones site also resembles one in Wales called Llandygái ‘Henge’ in Gwynedd.

It comes after a 4,000 year old 'Stonehenge-like' site was discovered in Denmark under a housing estate, with experts now thinking it showed 'extraordinary' cultural links that spanned Europe thousands of years ago.

Vesthimmerlands Museum curator Sidsel Wahlin, who was behind the discovery, said: "Building monuments on this scale, you need to understand why and how. If a British person from the time would have come to the site they would have known what they are doing in there."