5 SECRETS OF STONEHENGE
When was STONEHENGE BUILT?
The enormous standing stones near Salisbury, England, have been attracting visitors for millennia. Archeologists working there have discovered human artifacts more than 8,000 years old. The first sandstone ring, Stonehenge I, was built in prehistoric times, starting around 3100 BC. This original ring was used for some 500 years before the site reverted to scrubland. Stonehenge II was built of bluestone pillars circa 2100 BC to create a second concentric circle. Work on Stonehenge III began around 2000 BC, and the complex remained in use for another thousand years.
Why were the STONE CIRCLES BUILT?
“How grand! How incomprehensible! How wonderful!” That’s how British archeologist Sir Richard Colt Hoare described Stonehenge in Volume I of his The Ancient History of Wiltshire (1812). The structure was long considered one of history’s great mysteries. Surprisingly, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th-century story that Merlin had magically transported Stonehenge from Ireland to
Salisbury Plain was long accepted. While there is still little evidence as to what rites may have taken place there, modern analysis has shown that great care was taken to align the monument with the movements of the Sun. So it may have been the site of ceremonies connected with the summer and winter solstices, when the Sun’s apparent path is farthest north and south, respectively, from the Equator.
How did the GIGANTIC STONES GET THERE?
Standing upright in the barren landscape like a group of pious pilgrims, Stonehenge’s largest stones weigh an average of 25 tons. For a long time it remained a mystery where the stones came from and how they got to the site. In its present form, Stonehenge consists of an outer ring of huge sandstone blocks and an inner ring of much smaller blocks of bluestone. The sandstone occurs naturally about 20 miles away. But some of the bluestones match a rocky outcrop in Wales, 160 miles from the Stonehenge site. The sandstone blocks were most likely moved on sleds that slid across rollers. The bluestones probably traveled by river on rafts.
Were there RULERS OF STONEHENGE?
Excavations near Stonehenge in 2002 resulted in an exciting archeological find: a small Roman cemetery with two graves that did not appear to be Roman. Bronze Age pottery indicated the two graves were more than 2,500 years older than the others. The first contained a man’s bones along with almost 100 burial objects, some made of copper and gold, making this the richest known burial of that era. The man in the second grave was probably related to him and had also been buried with gold. Analysis of the teeth indicated that the first man may have grown up near the Alps. What was he doing in Britain? We’ll probably never know.
Have all the SECRETS OF STONEHENGE BEEN REVEALED?
Many generations of researchers have sought to unravel the mysteries of Stonehenge, but new questions continue to arise. Aerial photographs taken in the 1920s identified Woodhenge, which consists of six concentric oval rings of postholes where a timber circle monument was built about 2 miles northeast of Stonehenge as early as 2500 BC. The relationship between Woodhenge, Stonehenge, and Durrington Walls—another nearby henge enclosure—remains unclear.