What was claimed
Stonehenge is a modern fake.
Our verdict
No it isn’t. It’s between 4,500 and 5,000 years old.
Stonehenge wasn’t built in the 1950s
15 July 2021
A video claiming that Stonehenge is a modern fake has been widely viewed on Facebook. (At least one other post has made similar claims.)
Stonehenge isn’t fake, just to be clear.
The video appears to come from TikTok. It begins with the caption: “And you thought Stonehenge was real?!” It then shows a series of pictures of the site.
The video claims that the first picture shows “Metal framing with poured concrete”. In fact this is a picture of “Stone 60”, which is ancient like the rest, but was reinforced with concrete in 1959.
The other pictures show people working on the site with various pieces of scaffolding and equipment. The video captions say: “These are just props… Created in the 1950s… Then Faked old pictures from the 1800s… To fool the masses… ‘His-story’ is a lie... We are now learning the mainstream narrative of history was completely fabricated!”
A post accompanying the video claims something slightly different, saying: “They built the fake Stonehenge in the 1800's”.
In fact, these pictures simply show the stones being restored at various times in history.
Stonehenge was built in stages, between 5,000 and 4,500 years ago. It wasn’t made in the 1800s, or the 1950s.
Update 15 July 2021
This article was updated to include a second video.