Back to the Stone Age calendar
Round (haha) about now, archaeologist have started to find a change from the rectangular long barrow burial graves. Firstly, about this time 'passage' graves
appeared. They consisted of a central stone-built circular room with three or more side chambers and reached by a long, low passage, which is how they got
their names. The chambers could be for different families or different parts of one family. Both the circular centre chamber, the smaller chambers off this circle
and the passage way would be hidden inside a large round barrow. Quite often the entrance to the passage would be lined up with the position of the sunrise at
mid-winter.
It looks as though these people liked things to be circular. They had stone circles, most houses were now round and now burials chambers were circular too.
It would probably seem to these people that the circle was the most important shape. They did not yet know that the earth went round the sun so
they assumed everything went round (that word again) the earth. The moon went round the earth, the stars went round the earth, Whatever the reason, it was
now round barrows for the dead.
Forward to 3050BC
