³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

A place of healing?

It's a revolutionary new theory. According to two of Britain's leading archaeologists, Stonehenge was the ancient British equivalent of Lourdes, a place where the sick came to be healed.

Professor Timothy Darvill and Professor Geoff Wainwright have turned accepted wisdom on its head. Stonehenge, says Darvill, was "the A & E of southern England."

And if Stonehenge was a place of healing, it stands to reason that it would attract healers. The two archaeologists think that, as Stonehenge's reputation grew, a permanent camp of healers may have grown up to service a ready supply of potential clients.

If that's true, it begs a couple of further questions. What medicine could late Neolithic Britain offer those ailing pilgrims, and would it actually make them better?

It's true to say that by our own standards, late Neolithic Britons lived short lives and died of trivial illnesses. Children, in particular, were vulnerable to ailments that we consider little more than nuisances, and child mortality rates were high. But experts believe the situation was more complex than those bare facts suggest.

Life expectancy

"Don't regard life then as being nasty, brutish and short," says Professor Wainwright. "These were people with a sophisticated society. Life expectancy was quite variable. Yes, there was a high mortality in the 20s and 30s, but on the other hand people did go on for a lot longer than that."

To go on for a lot longer than that required luck, a solid immune system, and sometimes the intervention of skilled healers. There is no written record from Neolithic times, but Wainwright believes herbal remedies would probably have been well known, and their secrets passed from generation to generation.

Neolithic Britons were not entirely at the mercy of the viruses and infections they would inevitably contract. Nor were they helpless in the face of injury.

Going under the knife

Some ancient Britons could be pretty handy with a surgeon's scalpel (even if it was made of flint). According to archaeological forensic pathologist Jackie McKinley, our ancient ancestors practised a primitive form of brain surgery.

"There is quite a lot of evidence of trepanation from this period and that's basically brain surgery," she says. "They would make a hole in the skull by scraping away with a flint tool in small, circular motions. It's really quite sophisticated, because they'd worked out how to do it while causing the least damage. A lot of people survived the operation."

But why bore into someone's skull? Our ancestors believed that many problems could be healed by relieving pressure inside the head, from severe headaches to mental illness. And for one problem, at least, they were right. "They knew that if you got bashed on the head and fractured bits of the skull it was helpful to remove the bits of the skull from the brain," says McKinley.

Trepanning must have been a wholly unpleasant experience, but people survived it. Indeed, they often did so without signs of serious infection. That suggests something else about ancient healers and medicine men. They probably knew the importance of keeping wounds clean, and the Neolithic first-aid cupboard might have included some form of plant-based antiseptic.

Healthy lifestyle

Our ancestors even had one or two natural advantages that we don't enjoy. A diet high in red meat and raw vegetables created strong immune systems and surprisingly good teeth. Severe tooth decay only became endemic when 'stickier' foods, based on wheat and pulses, became common. By contrast, our Neolithic ancestors ate a diet that tended to scrape their teeth clean.

A Neolithic version of the Atkins diet also meant that diseases of nutritional deficiency - like anaemia - were relatively rare. And a couple of our 21st century health hang-ups were less of a problem for those living in 3000 BC. "They obviously did have stresses in their lives," says McKinley, "but they didn't have lots of stress in terms of living space or having to fight for food.

"Also, they had very active lifestyles. Now that opens you up to potential problems (of injury), but the body is designed to be active; it's stimulated by movement, not by sitting in a chair in front of a computer all day."

In other words, obesity was not a problem for ancient Britons, even in times of plenty. Their bums never looked big in anything. And they didn't suffer the intense psychological stress that comes from polishing off a whole packet of biscuits. In that respect, at least, they were a lot better off than us. Of course, in a thousand other ways, they weren't.

Belief in the stones

Something as trivial as tonsillitis could kill. When you died at 35 in 2500 BC, it may well have been from the sort of non-specific infection that might mean a week off work in modern times. A fractured ankle could mean a lifetime of limping. There was probably no such thing as a trivial illness in Neolithic Britain.

And that's why Professors Darvill and Wainwright believe so many made the long journey to Stonehenge. Did the bluestones of Stonehenge have healing powers? As recent studies on the power of the placebo effect have shown, belief can be a powerful thing. If our ancient ancestors believed the rocks would make them feel better, it's quite possible that, at least some of the time, they did.