Who built the stone circles and what purpose the did stone circles serve?
Many stone circles were created over a two thousand year time frame emerging perhaps from the extended horned forecourts of cairns, growing through the Neolithic to the truly massive great circles as the bronze age took hold, then shrinking ever more to become family temples as cairn circles and finally falling into disuse with only a few in Ireland seeing use into the iron age.
They may have been build for religious ceremonies, mabee observatories mybee a mixture of both.
There origins seem to be in the stone carvings and standing stones of a similar neolithic heritage.
Heres a great article about stone circles in the Britich Isles : http://blog.travelsradiate.com/index.php/great-stone-circles-of-the-british-isles/
The stone circles were built by the people who lived in the stone and early bronze ages. The earliest stone circles appeared about 5000 years ago. Exactly what purpose the circles served is a subject of some debate. The most favoured hypothesis is that they formed religious or ceremonial centres for the local population. There is also evidence that they may also have been involved in trade and interaction between different communities. Other ideas include that they were used to measure the movements of astronomical bodies. There have been suggestions that they may be connected with ‘earth energies’ (see below). Whatever the purpose the circles served what is beyond doubt is the huge amount of energy and effort needed to construct them. Exactly how precise their construction was is under some debate. When Alexander Thom undertook his famous survey of British circles in the 1960s he was struck by how precise their construction appeared to be. Some of the circles he measured were in fact
