Thousands of years ago, ancient Britons built Stonehenge, but its true purpose has puzzled researchers for centuries.

Could it have been a burial ground? A way to observe the night sky? Or maybe used as a place of worship or even sacrifice.

The stones which are set up in a circle like some sort of formation as well as the way they line up with certain things such as the summer and winter solstices, have left scientists with many questions.

Many attempts have been made to better understand Stonehenge, with numerous fieldwork efforts uncovering a variety of artefacts and objects.

One more recent effort saw researchers recreate the famous megalith through a 3D printer in order to answer the big question — and what they found was quite amazing.

A team from the University of Salford constructed the model to explore the effects Stonehenge’s unique structure would have had on sounds such as conversations, rituals and music.

The way in which the stones were placed meant that speech and music would have not been projected beyond the structure itself, nor would people standing close by have heard what was going on inside. 

To replicate this, acoustical engineer Trevor Cox and his team used laser scans of the site to print a 3D model of the monument and built something that was around one-twelfth the size of the real thing.

Based on an estimated total of 157 stones erected at the site some 5,000 years ago, the researchers printed 27 stones of various shapes and sizes.

They then used silicone moulds of those stones and mixed plaster and other materials to recreate the 130 items left over. Each stone was created in a way to minimise sound absorption, similar to the stones found at Stonehenge.

The team, in 2020, then placed speakers and microphones at different points around the construction and beamed sounds into it, from low to high frequencies.

Despite the many gaps that make up Stonehenge, the sounds sent into the scale model stayed inside it for a short while.

Reverberation time, a measure of the time it takes sound to decay by 60 decibels, averaged about 0.6 seconds inside the model for mid-frequency sounds.

The effect would have increased the ability to hear voices and massively enhanced the sounds of instruments like drums.

Sounds didn’t echo inside the replica, and inner groups of the simulated stones actually obscured and scattered the sounds reflected off the outer sarsen circle.

It showed that Stonehenge could have been used for something similar to an acoustic chamber, a way to boost sounds and music in some sort of dramatic setting.