FOR thousands of years, Stonehenge has confused visitors with a seemingly unanswerable question: Why would anyone carry so many huge stones across Britain and put them in a ring? It seems even stranger when you think of the fact that it was done by prehistoric people working without modern technology, not even a wheel. Stonehenge has started endless debates over the centuries. Experts have said at different times that it was a temple, a calendar   or a graveyard  . Yet "all the ideas to date could be mistaken," said Julian Spalding, a famous art critic   and former director of some of the UK's leading museums. "We've been looking at Stonehenge the wrong way: from the earth, which is very much a 20th century viewpoint," he told The Guardian. Spalding has put forward a new theory about Stonehenge in his latest book, Realisation: From Seeing to Understanding. "The current theories about Stonehenge are based on looking across the ground, which is a modern idea," he writes in his new book. He told The Guardian that in ancient times, spiritual ceremonies didn't happen on the ground. Prehistoric people believed that in this way they could get closer to the heavens. So Spalding says that "rituals   at Stonehenge were performed in the same way - not among the stones, but on top of them," reported The Washington Post. He re-imagines a scene in his book, explaining how the mysterious site was used: Stonehenge held up a large, circular platform  . It was a raised altar   reached by stairs, and thousands of people might have worshipped   there. To support his theory, Spalding lists examples from ancient civilizations worldwide. In China, Peru and Turkey, such sacred   monuments   were built high up, whether on man-made or natural sites. In an interview with The Washington Post, Spalding said the wood that would have been used for the platform had long since rotted away  , leaving only the stone pillars   that supported it behind. So far scholars have had "a fair degree of skepticism  " about these ideas, according to The Huffington Post. Sir Barry Cunliffe, prehistorian and Oxford University archaeology   professor, said: "He could be right, but I know of no evidence to support it ... There are a large number of stone circles around the country which clearly didn't have a platform on top. So why should Stonehenge?" How does Spalding support his theory about Stonehenge?
By raising questions. By providing related figures. By quoting other experts' research. By giving examples from other civilizations.