LONDON — In 2003, the Canadian gynecologist Anthony M. Perks came up with an anatomical explanation for Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument in England whose precise purpose is a mystery.
“Stonehenge could represent, symbolically, the opening by which Earth Mother gave birth to the plants and animals on which the ancient people so depended,” he wrote in an essay published in a medical journal. It could depict, he suggested, “the human vulva, with the birth canal at its center.” The essay was illustrated with sketches of Stonehenge and of female genitalia.
The vulva hypothesis is one of the myriad theories that have proliferated around Stonehenge, which was constructed some 4,500 years ago. While it was built at roughly the same time as the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, we know far more about those Egyptian sites. Incomplete knowledge of Stonehenge has turned it into a riddle that is now part of its identity.
