Stonehenge: The World’s Oldest Global Group Chat, Still on Mute
Stonehenge, Globalism’s Oldest Tourist Trap
The 4,500-year-old rock circle in Wiltshire has always been Britain’s way of saying, “Yes, we too had a Bronze Age IKEA, and yes, we also threw away the instruction manual.” But seen from the International Space Station—or more realistically, from a budget airline window seat somewhere over the Channel—Stonehenge is less a mystical relic than a planetary Rorschach test. Each culture squints and sees its own neuroses reflected in the sarsen stones.
The Chinese tour group that disembarks at 7 a.m. sees an ancestral geomantic compass gone rogue; the TikTok-ing Brazilian influencer sees a prehistoric backdrop for a 15-second dance; the American hedge-fund manager on “holiday” sees a prime candidate for NFT tokenization. Meanwhile, the local druids—modern, tax-paying, and equipped with iPhones—have to elbow their way past French exchange students just to wave some ethically sourced sage. Everyone gets fifteen minutes with the rocks, give or take the patience of an English Heritage steward who’s heard every “Aliens did it” joke since 1978.
Globally, Stonehenge functions as a sort of moral seismograph: whenever civilization feels a tremor, the stones start trending. Brexit vote? Stonehenge memes. Pandemic lockdown? Drone footage of empty Salisbury Plain—cue poetic voice-overs about humanity’s existential solitude. COP26? Someone inevitably Photoshops Greta Thunberg giving a stern lecture to the heel stone. The monoliths have become the world’s most durable reaction GIF, endlessly repurposed to reassure us that even Neolithic people managed to build something more enduring than the latest social-media platform.
Archaeologists, bless their nitrile-gloved hearts, keep unearthing new plot twists. Pig bones from Scotland, stone shards from Wales, German-style axes: Stonehenge turns out to be a Bronze Age supply-chain crisis with better branding. The latest isotopic findings suggest the builders held potluck feasts featuring pork from as far away as the Orkneys. In other words, the original Brexit was four millennia of uninterrupted supply-chain integration, and yet the stones still got built. Modern governments, please take notes—and maybe a slice of humble pie, ideally Orkney-raised.
Meanwhile, the climate crisis is giving the monument an unrequested spa treatment. Warmer winters coax new species of lichen to colonize the stones like opportunistic hipsters gentrifying a neighborhood. English Heritage now spends more money on de-salting the sarsens than some nations spend on primary education. The stones are, quite literally, worth their weight in tuition fees.
Stonehenge also serves as a convenient diplomatic shorthand. When Prime Ministers need to remind the EU that Britain has “deep historical roots,” they helicopter foreign dignitaries over the plain at sunset, hoping the orange glow will distract from whatever trade deal just imploded. The French ambassador nods politely, silently calculating how many more centuries Versailles will outlast this pile of pagan Lego. The American envoy asks whether the stones could be relocated to Texas for a theme park; the guide pretends not to hear.
And yet, for all the cynicism, the stones endure. They endured the Romans, the Victorians, and the 1985 Battle of the Beanfield when police in riot gear chased crusty New Age travelers across the grass. They will probably endure whatever fresh absurdity 2025 has queued up—be it AI-generated druid rituals or Elon Musk’s proposed “Hyperhenge” tunnel. The rocks remain, indifferent, while we orbit them like moths around a very old, very expensive porch light.
So if you find yourself at dawn on the solstice, rubbing shoulders with a yoga instructor from California and a pensioner from Osaka, remember: you are not participating in ancient mystery. You are participating in the longest-running international group chat, one where nobody agrees on the language, the topic, or the appropriate emoji, but everyone keeps hitting “send.” The stones don’t answer back. They just stand there, politely enduring our need to project meaning onto them—proof, if nothing else, that humanity has always preferred talking to listening, even when the conversation partner is 25 tons of stubborn Wiltshire granite.
