46 Recent Excavations at Stonehenge. 
That the sun was revered by many races in the primitive period 
there are abundant proofs. In Britain our knowledge of the re- 
ligious cult of the men of the period of transition from stone to 
bronze, or of the early bronze age, is extremely limited, yet very 
strong evidence in favour of some kind of worship or reverence of 
the sun is afforded by the interments in the barrows of Yorkshire 
and Derbyshire,’ explored by Canon Greenwell, where “ the habit 
was generally to place the body in the grave facing the sun.” 
In later days, when Stonehenge had ceased to be a temple of 
the sun, and its sacred character had departed, it might have been 
used as a sepulchre, but of this there is no positive evidence, and 
its ascription to such a purpose would seem to have no other basis 
than the fanciful ascriptions of ancient legends. 
Finally, as to the origin of Stonehenge. 
The idea of the origin of megalithic structures from a common 
source has been advanced by many writers. But in this connection 
it should be borne in mind that there seems to have been an epoch 
in the life of many races, widely separated from one another, 
during which, under very varied conditions, they erected monuments 
of more or less rude megalithic blocks and of similar forms. And 
from this it by no means follows that the practice or the forms 
were copied by one race from another, but rather that they were 
the outcome of a similar development of the human mind and had 
an independent origin in many and remotely separated regions. 
In Britain there is abundant evidence, in the numerous rude 
stone monuments distributed throughout its area, that this peculiar 
phase of mental development had reached a very high point. Why 
then should we seek in distant countries for the origin of this 
crowning example of megalithic art ? 
Of its foreign origin there is, in fact, no proof, and its plan and 
execution alike can be ascribed to none other than our rude fore- 
fathers, the men of the neolithic or, it may be, of the early bronze 
age. 

1W. Greenwell, British Barrows, 26. 

