Britain’s Bournemouth University archaeologists, led by Geoffrey Wainwright, president of the London Society of Antiquaries, and Timothy Darvill, on September 22, 2008, speculated that it may have been an ancient healing and pilgrimage site, since burials around Stonehenge showed trauma and deformity evidence: “It was the magical qualities of these stones which … transformed the monument and made it a place of pilgrimage for the sick and injured of the Neolithic world.” Radio-carbon dating places the construction of the circle of bluestones at between 2,400 B.C. and 2,200 B.C., but they discovered charcoals dating 7,000 B.C., showing human activity in the site. It could be the primeval equivalent of Lourdes, since the area was already visited 4,000 years before the oldest stone circle, and attracted visitors for centuries after its abandonment. However, this theory is hotly disputed, on the grounds that it is not adequately underpinned by evidence on the ground, either in the Preseli Hills area or at Stonehenge.