The people who built Stonehenge in southern England thousands of years ago had wild parties, eating barbecued pigs and breaking pottery. This is according to recent work by archaeologists--history experts who investigate   how human beings lived in the past. Archaeologists digging near Stonehenge last year discovered the remains of a large prehistoric village where they think the builders of the mysterious stone circle used to live. The village is about 4600 years old, the same age as Stonehenge and as old as the pyramids in Egypt. It is less than two miles from the famous ancient landmark and lies inside a massive manmade circular dirt wall, or "henge", known as the Durrington Walls. Remains found at the site included jewellery, stone arrowheads, tools made of deer antlers, wooden spears and huge amounts of animal bones and broken pottery. "These finds suggest Stone Age people went to the village at special times of the year to feast and party", says Mike Parker Pearson from Sheffield University in England. He said many of the pig bones they found had been thrown away halfeaten. He also said the partygoers appeared to have shot some of the farm pigs with arrows, possibly as a kind of sport before barbecuing them. An ancient road which led from the village to the River Avon was also found. Here, the experts think, people came after their parties to throw dead relatives in the water so the bodies would be washed downstream to Stonehenge. Parker Pearson believes Stonehenge was like a cemetery where ancient Britons buried the dead and remembered their ancestors. "The theory is that Stonehenge is a kind of spirit home to the ancestors." The recent discovery of the village within the Durrington Walls shows that Stonehenge didn't stand alone but was part of a much bigger religious site, according to Parker Pearson. People still come to worship and celebrate at Stonehenge today. They meet there when the sun sets on the shortest day of winter and when it rises on the longest day of summer. But the days of barbecuing whole pigs there and throwing family members into the river are a thing of the past. What do experts think people did after the village parties?
Returned to live at Stonehenge. Prayed for good luck in the new year. Hunted farm pigs as a sport. Put their dead relatives in the river.