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What sort of roof would have been used for Stonehenge? Would it have been possible to use a type of thatch at that time?

There are two different questions here: did people use thatch for roofing at the time Stonehenge was built (about 2,500BC); and was Stonehenge roofed? The answer to these is almost certainly yes, and no.

There was quite a debate about roofing big ceremonial Neolithic structures in the last century, after the excavation of Woodhenge in 1926. Did the 150-odd oak posts, arranged in ovals on a similar scale to Stonehenge, support a roof, or were they freestanding and comparable to the stone rings 3km away? The excavator initially thought the latter, but Stuart Piggott gave a talk in London in 1940 suggesting a thatched roof with an oval ridge and an open centre. This became the standard view. The post-only version was not abandoned by everyone, however, and within the past decade has become more popular: a wooden henge at Stanton Drew, Somerset, has been discovered that is so large it could not possibly have been roofed.

Meanwhile, the odd suggestion is put forward that Stonehenge was roofed. In 1937 a chap called Vayson de Pradenne wrote that it could have been covered with a turf roof supported on timbers 8-9m long.

The response from archaeologists is always, why? There are no indications in the stones for a superstructure (eg sockets in the lintels to take the timbers), and everything about it seems to suggest that what we can see (allowing for its ruination) is more or less what we were meant to see.

On the other hand, there can be little doubt that people lived in roofed houses. The recent buildings discovered in the excavations at Durrington Walls, close to Woodhenge, were probably thatched. The oldest thatched structures yet found in the UK were both discovered only a few years ago, built like large tents by hunter-gatherers nearly 10,000 years ago in Northumberland and East Lothian.

— Mike Pitts, editor, British Archaeology

Who was the Larry in the expression “as happy as Larry” and what was he so happy about?

One suggestion is it relates to Larry Foley, an Australian boxer (born 1847). It is said that he was never defeated, retired as a champion, was relatively well-off and lived to 70. I guess he was pleased with his life’s outcome.

Certainly almost all of the early examples are found in New Zealand or Australian texts with the earliest about the mid-1870s.

A second possibility relates to the Cornish, and later Australian/New Zealand, slang term “larrikin”, meaning a rough type or hooligan prone to larking about, first used in this sense in the late 1860s.

— James Briggs, Bristol

How did the Kyrie Eleison (which is of Greek origin) find its way into the Roman Catholic Mass? Was there no Latin equivalent?

How the kyries came to be in the Roman Catholic mass is obscure. The phrase “Kyrie Eleison” was used from earliest times in the Eastern Church as a response to petitions in a litany recited at the beginning of the liturgy.

Peter G. Cobb, in The Study of Liturgy, states: “The Kyries. These are the vestigial remains of the Litany introduced into the Roman rite, probably by Pope Gelasius (492-96), in imitation of the East, where the form first appeared in the fourth century . . . The original Roman form of this Deprecatio Gelasii has in all probability been preserved in a ninth century MS . . ., but a letter from Gregory the Great to John of Syracuse in 598 . . . reveals that in his time, on weekdays, the petitions were omitted and only the responses used. It was not until the eighth century that this was the practice at all Masses. The response were first stylised into the familiar nine-fold pattern of three Kyries, three Christes and three Kyries in the Gallican tradition . . .”

— Brian Bagot, Cranleigh, Surrey

Did all present-day flightless birds (eg, penguins, ostriches) evolve from birds that once flew? If yes, when was the last time a penguin’s or ostrich’s ancestor flew?

— Richard Collins, Cheltenham

On cloudless cold mornings, why are aircraft vapour trails short-lived on some days and long-lived on others?

— Neukom Helsby, Frodsham, Cheshire

What is the origin of the expression “soap opera”?

— Tony Knifton, Liverpool

E-mail your questions and answers to q&a@thetimes.co.uk, fax them to 020-7782 5870 or write to Questions Answered, The Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. Please include your name, address and daytime telephone number.