No, the people who built Stonehenge were not ‘black’
Another day, another attempt by woke revisionists to rewrite history
It’s just relentless, isn’t it? Almost every day, we are subjected to a fresh propaganda exercise designed to convince us that Britain has, throughout its entire history, been a smorgasbord of assorted races, ethnicities and cultures, and anyone who argues otherwise, or dares to suggest the country has something called an ‘indigenous population’, is plainly some kind of uncouth nativist.
It is, in fact, almost impossible these days to watch a historical TV or film drama, or visit a museum, library, gallery or heritage attraction, without sensing a distinct whiff of revisionism.
If these depictions of our past were accurate, all well and good. After all, who could object to the propagation of bald truth? But they usually aren’t. People know it, and it jars.
The latest example of the phenomenon is the claim that Stonehenge was built by black people. You read that right. That prehistoric monument in deepest Wiltshire was the handiwork of tribes comprised of black folk.
The prompt for this startling assertion was the recent publication of a study, conducted by the University of Ferrara in Italy, which analysed the DNA of 348 individuals who had lived in Eurasia between 45,000 and 1,700 years ago. From the evidence, the study had drawn certain conclusions about human pigmentation. On the back of it, many commentators and activists took to social media to claim – in a slam-dunk ‘Ha! In your face, bigots!’ type of way – that the world-famous stone structure was constructed by people with black skin. Even some mainstream media outlets got in on the act.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear the term ‘black people’, I think of individuals who are definitively black and of African ancestry – say David Lammy, Mo Farah, Alison Hammond and Lenny Henry. In fact, so distinct has become the term ‘black’ in the context of race that the ‘b’ is these days often capitalised.
So when I heard the claim that black people had built Stonehenge, I thought immediately of this demographic. There was just one problem. The claim was hogwash. The study did not assert that black people had built Stonehenge. It merely concluded that, for the period covered, European people – note: not people of African descent – were darker than they are now but there had, over that time, been a progressive – though slower than previously thought – lightening of skin, hair and eye colour. So by the time we reach the period that Stonehenge was built (towards the tail end of the period covered), many people did indeed have dark (not black) skin, but just under half the population had pale or intermediate skin tones.
In reality, then, the type of people who built Stonehenge were of European ancestry, and some of them happened to have skin a few shades darker than is typical today. That’s about the long and short of it. Yet that didn’t stop those with political motives jumping on a bandwagon going in completely the wrong direction.
It seemed not to matter to these race partisans that the study made no claims as to the prevalence in prehistoric Wiltshire of people with African ancestry. But they requisitioned the local population of the day for their own cause all the same. You can just imagine the reaction today if someone of indigenous Wiltshire stock tried to identify as black African. I dare say they’d be hell to pay.
The suggestion that Stonehenge was built by black people is not actually new. In 2023, a children’s history book, Brilliant Black British History, made the same claim. The book, which was published by Bloomsbury and funded by the Arts Council, asserted that Britain was ‘a black country more than 7,000 years before white people came, and during that time the most famous British monument was built, Stonehenge’.
Now, I’m all in favour of the achievements of Black Britons being properly recognised, but these attempts to rewrite history for political reasons are becoming extremely tiresome.
Why do these people continue to insult our intelligence in this way?
There has, quite understandably, be an almighty furore over the fact that courts in England and Wales have been advised by some quango called the Sentencing Council to obtain pre-sentence reports in all cases where the offender isn't white or Christian. These reports are often highly beneficial to the offender, allowing him or her to avoid jail.
Plainly this kind of discriminatory arrangement cannot be allowed to stand. Indeed, the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has written to the Sentencing Council to register her displeasure.
The problem is that Mahmood doesn’t have the power to instruct the body to withdraw its guidance. So she has threatened to bring forward legislation to revoke it.
She’d better get a move on, mind. After all, the new guidance comes into force on 1 April. So if nothing has changed by then, we will be in the bizarre situation where the justice secretary herself recognises that a two-tier system of justice is in force. What then?
You probably haven’t heard the name Tom Blenkinsop. The man is a former Labour MP of little distinction who left public life some years ago. Even as a longstanding labour movement activist, I knew virtually nothing about him. That was until recently, when he started popping up on my ‘X’ (formerly known as Twitter) timeline aiming puerile and vacuous insults at me.
As the name rang a distant bell, I decided to look a bit more closely at his activities on the platform. I rather wish I hadn’t. His posts are a stream of vapid abuse, obsessively targeted at anyone who disagrees with him.
I don’t deny that Blenkinsop is entitled to write the things he writes. But the experience did make me wonder whether we do enough as a society to help MPs readapt to ordinary life when they leave parliament. I fear we do not, and so some, such as Mr Blenkinsop, end up filling their days trying to recreate their lives in the bear pit of the Commons - only this time from behind a computer screen.
We ought perhaps to do more to help the Blenkinsops of this world find fresh purpose in life.
According to the Times, the government is considering allowing the NHS to outsource assisted dying to private clinics in a bid to ease pressures. What could possibly go wrong?
A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery
What is wrong with these race obsessives. I couldn't give two hoots who built Stonehenge but I give many hoots about the truth. Let's say black Africans HAD built it. Then what? So what? Would this mean that black owiple are superior? Would it warrant some reparations claim or another? What are they trying to prove? The implication is that black people have achieved nothing in the real world so we need to push some weird narrative that proves they are great. It's pathetic and insulting to all.
Words! I have seen you on GBNews. You are always, logical and you don't let emotion get in the way of clear thinking and common sense. If only the Left followed your lead the world would be a better place! I can't see anyone shouting you down. Keep up the good work.