AMESBURY, UK — A recent dig has not only revealed when Stonehenge was built (2300 BC) but why! Ground-penetrating radar has revealed sheaves of inscribed animal skins beneath the ancient rock of Stonehenge. This discovery may finally explain the nature of these mysterious monuments.

“I believe the monoliths are primitive staples binding the earliest known writing in the British Isles,” said Dr. William Atkinson of the Homeland Department of Old Things. Every staple was probably placed by hand since no device existed for driving such massive objects through the animal skins — though Bronze Age rock carvings discovered on the site long thought to be a catapult or similar siege engine may represent an early design for such a device.

“In any case, stapling was rather a lot of work so they gave up,” Dr. Atkinson said. “We didn’t see another staple in human history until the McMurphy Company patented a ‘Single-Stroke Staple Driver’ 4500 years later in 1877.”

Home Dep OT’s work has forced a complete re-imagining of Stonehenge. Scientists now understand the ancient stones’ alignment with the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset was an attempt to maximize natural reading light. “Moreover, the Bronze Age people we’ve found buried near the site were probably involved in building the staples,” Dr. Atkinson added. “Fittingly, they were memorialized in their own invention.”

In the meantime, Dr. Atkinson has already moved on to new research in Egypt, working on a controversial theory that Thutmosis III habitually opened papyrus letters with the tip of his obelisk.