Questão 3168218

The secret history of Stonehenge

By James Owens

1. Stonehenge, located in southern England, ranks among the world’s most iconic
2. archaeological sites and one of its greatest enigmas. The megalithic stone circle on Salisbury
3. Plain inspires awe and fascination — but also intense debate some 4,600 years after it was built
4. by ancient Britons who left no written record.
5. The monument’s mysterious past has spawned countless tales and theories. According to
6. folklore, Stonehenge was created ___ Merlin, the wizard of Arthurian legend, who magically
7. transported the massive stones ___ Ireland, where giants had assembled them.
8. Another legend says invading Danes put the stones up, and another theory says they were
9. the ruins of a Roman temple. Modern-day interpretations are no less colorful. Some argue that
10. Stonehenge is a spacecraft landing area for aliens, and even more say it’s a giant fertility symbol
11. in the shape of female genitalia.
12. Archaeological investigation of the site dates back to the 1660s, when it was first surveyed
13. by antiquarian John Aubrey. He wrongly credited Stonehenge to the much later Celts, believing
14. it to be a religious center presided over by Druid priests.
15. Centuries of fieldwork since show the Neolithic monument, now a UNESCO World Heritage
16. site, was more than a millennium in the making. It started out 5,000 years ago as a circular
17. earthen bank and ditch, in a larger area of burial mounds.
18. Modern debate over the monument’s meaning has two main camps: those who see it as a
19. holy site, and others who believe it represents a scientific observatory.
20. Both camps base their theories on the site’s celestial influence. They point to alignments to
21. the sun and moon as evidence of rituals linked to the changing seasons and
22. the summer and winter solstices.
23. A radical theory asserts that Stonehenge served as a “prehistoric Lourdes” where people
24. came to be healed. This idea revolves around the smaller bluestones, which, researchers argue,
25. must have been credited with magical powers for them to have been floated, dragged, and hauled
26. 145 miles from west Wales.
27. Competing to solve the enduring prehistoric puzzle is University College London’s Mike
28. Parker Pearson, co-leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, “Stonehenge isn’t a monument
29. in isolation,” he says. “It is actually one of a pair — one in stone, one in timber. The theory is
30. that Stonehenge is a kind of spirit home to the ancestors.”

(Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/stonehenge-1 – text specially adapted for this test).

In the sentence “when it was first surveyed” (l. 12), the simple past tense was used to express a: