![]() As you enter the site along the main avenue and walk towards the standing stones, the position of the Winter Solstice’s sunset is the main focus directly ahead, perhaps in the same way that the most important parts of a church are located ahead of you as you enter. Interestingly, Archaeoastronomers (yes that’s an actual job, amazing!) think that the midwinter solstice may actually have been the more important focus for the builders of Stonehenge, due to the entire monument’s alignment facing toward the setting midwinter sun. It’s likely that on the solstices people gathered at the monument to celebrate, though little archaeological evidence remains of the ceremonies that may have taken place there. The site’s megaliths are aligned with the direction of the sunrise on the Summer Solstice, with the sarsen stones lined up to trace the movements of the sun. Stonehenge, our most famous Neolithic monument, was certainly built to reflect the solstices, and it has long been debated whether one of its functions was to act as ancient solar calendar. ![]() Now that’s the science of a solstice explained (phew!), but just why do we humans place so much significance on the solstices and the days surrounding them? We know that the solstices certainly held importance for Neolithic humans, who may initially have started to observe the Summer Solstice as a marker for planting and harvesting crops. The hemisphere tilted most towards the sun sees its longest day and shortest night (the Summer Solstice), whilst the hemisphere tilted away from the sun sees its shortest day and longest night (the Winter Solstice.) Prehistoric significance On these two dates, day and night are of equal length before the days begin to get either lighter in the spring, or darker in the autumn.ĭuring the solstices, the Earth’s axis tilts us at either our closest or farthest point from the sun. Incidentally, ‘equinox’ comes from the Latin ‘equi’ meaning equal, and ‘nox’ meaning night. It takes place between 20 th and 22 nd June each year, the reason for the shift in date boiling down to the fact that our calendar doesn’t precisely reflect the Earth’s rotation, and so we have to allow some wiggle room!īoth the summer and winter solstices form part of a wider astronomical calendar, flanked by two equinoxes in the spring and the autumn, and other daily and monthly cycles throughout the year. The Summer Solstice marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the end of spring and the start of the astronomical summer. The name derives from the Romans’ observation that during a solstice, the sun’s position in the sky at noon didn’t seem to change much throughout the day, but instead appeared motionless. But what actually is a solstice, and why do we mark them in the way that we do? Read on to find out!įirst things first! The term ‘solstice’ can be traced back to the Latin word ‘solstitium’, combining the words ‘sol’, meaning sun, and ‘-stit’ or ‘-stes’, meaning standing or still. The Summer Solstice is almost upon us! Days are longer, nights are shorter, and the natural world is full of life.
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