V. Gordon Childe

Archeologists have found mass graves from this era all over Britain, filled with skeletons whose skulls have been fractured by arrows and blunt weapons.

But in his 1957 book The Dawn of European Civilization, Australian archeologist Gordon Childe argued that it would have been impossible for a culture at war to build Stonehenge.

Moving hundreds of tons of stone across great distances and turning them into a monument takes a lot of manpower.

The biggest tribes had 200 members.

Remember, the heaviest construction at Stonehenge, the placement of the 40-ton sarsen stones, which were sourced from 20 miles away, happened around 2500 BCE.

This would have been the same period when thousands of people were coming to Durrington Walls.

Researchers now believe Gordon Childe's theory that Stonehenge was a peace monument is at least partially correct.

The people visiting Durrington Walls came from many different tribes, but they all came together every year to join in the cooperative ritual of building Stonehenge.

Um, and it is v- remarkably unclear why this happens.

Um, so the, the, a guy called, um, Gordon Childe, who's an Australian who's, who's, like, one of the sort of greatest archaeologists of the 20th century, had this theory of it, uh, you, first of all you have the agricultural revolution or neolithic revolution where people kind of start settling down and farming instead of hunter-gathering.

And then a few millennia later you get the urban revolution where people kind of start living in large numbers.

And Childe's theory was basically that it was a product of economic surplus.