Theory since the early modern period

Around the year 1580, the archaeologist William Lambard first rule out a supernatural origin of the plant, as he observed that in the construction of the stone circle on the stone construction techniques of Stonehenge were transferred. Moreover, he recognizes as the first, that the stones were described not as before, brought over by Merlin from Ireland with the help of magic, but come from the region of Marlborough.

The first book on Stonehenge appear in 1652. Its author, the architect Inigo Jones, examined the investment on behalf of King James I in detail and explain the stone circle, finally as a Roman temple in honor of the god COELUS.
In subsequent years, trying various other authors in the interpretation of the stone circle: the physician Walter Charleton increases in 1663, it's Stonehenge was a crowning place of Danish kings of England have been. Historian Aylett Sammes writes about in 1676 the construction of the plant the ancient Phoenicians.

The antiquary John Aubrey (1626-1697) recognizes the end of the 17th Century, the relationship Stonehenge with similar monuments in Scotland and Wales and points to the creation of all these systems as the first true local builders.
Fatal for future research and the interpretation of the plant to the present day proves, however, that ascribing Aubrey Stonehenge and all similar monuments in the British Isles the Celts. His mistake is understandable from a scientific perspective, the end of the 17th Century: there were no possibilities for dating prehistoric archaeological monuments, one dated the age of the world even after the biblical story of creation to a few thousand years, and the popular literature of ancient writers Aubrey contained no evidence of pre-Celtic population of the British Isles. Aubrey could see the ancient Greek and Latin authors, however, detailed descriptions of the Druids as Celtic priestly class, and he suggested gently, the stone circles are just the temples of these druids. In fact, lie between the tasks of the plant by the end of the Bronze Age and the first appearance of so-called Celtic culture in Europe, features more than 1000 years.

Researchers of the 18th Century attack on Aubrey's thesis inspired the historian John Toland assigns Stonehenge in its written in 1719 Critical History of the Celtic religion and learning, the Druids. The physician William Stukeley performs in the years 1721 to 1724, the hitherto most detailed and accurate measurements of the plant and the first suspected an axial direction of the plant to the point of the summer solstice. In 1740, he summarizes his results in a book and suggests Stonehenge but with questionable and unscientific methods as well Druidic temple.

Suggests in his book, The Geology of Scripture (The geology of the Scriptures), Henry Browne, since 1824, curator of Stonehenge, the prehistoric stone circle as the temple from the days of Noah. He refers to the theories of the paleontologist William Buckland (1784-1856), who represents the theory of evolution rather than the catastrophic or Kataklysmentheorie.