Stonehenge
Stonehenge is arguably the world’s most famous prehistoric monument. It was built in stages: the first monument was an early henge, which was established about 5,000 years ago, and the unique stone circle was made in the late Neolithic period, around 2500 BC. During the early Bronze Age, many burial mounds were constructed nearby.
Stonehenge, together with Avebury, is now the focal point of a World Heritage Site, including a remarkable concentration of prehistoric monuments.
For many years, historians and archaeologists have been baffled as to how Stonehenge, an old Neolithic landmark, was created. It took almost 1,500 years to erect. It is located in southern England and consists of roughly 100 enormous upright stones arranged in a roundabout shape. While many cutting-edge researchers now agree that Stonehenge was once a graveyard, they can’t seem to figure out what other roles it served and how progress without modern innovation—or even the wheel—delivered the enduring icon. Its development is all the more perplexing because, while the sandstone pieces of its external ring come from nearby quarries, researchers have traced the bluestones that make up its inner ring all the way to the Preseli Hills in Wales, exactly 200 miles from Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. Today, Stonehenge receives approximately 1 million visitors from all over the world each year. It was awarded a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.
Stonehenge’s Multiple Phase Construction
The Stonehenge we see now is the culmination of numerous construction phases, following 4,000 years of destruction and deterioration. Several stones have fallen or disappeared, making the original plan impossible to discern.
Archaeologists believe that England’s most famous ancient monument was built in several stages, with the earliest dating back at least 5,000 years. In the first phase, Neolithic Britons used rudimentary tools—possibly made from deer tusks—to dig a massive round ditch and bank, or henge, on Salisbury Plain. Profound pits dating back to that time are located inside the hover—known as Aubrey gaps after John Aubrey, the seventeenth-century curator who discovered them—and may have formerly supported a ring of timber pillars, according to some scholars.
In 1620, George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, dug a massive excavation in the ground near Stonehenge in search of hidden treasure.
A few hundred years later, Stonehenge’s builders lifted an estimated 80 non-indigenous bluestones, 43 of which still exist today, into standing positions and arranged them in a horseshoe or roundabout formation. Sarsen sandstone chunks were organised into an exterior bow or ring during the third era of development, which began around 2000 B.C. Some were assembled into the notorious three-pieced monuments known as trilithons, which stand tall in the centre of Stonehenge. The location now has about 50 recognisable sarsen stones, which may have contained more in the past. Radiocarbon dating indicates that work at Stonehenge continued until around 1600 B.C., with the bluestones being relocated on multiple occasions.
The megaliths of Stonehenge
Stonehenge’s first major building was a circular ditch with an interior bank and a smaller external bank, which was created around 3000 BC. Today, the ditch and inner bank can be seen as low earthworks in the grass, but the outer bank has been mostly ploughed away. The ditch on the eastern side is deeper since this section was excavated in the 1920s. The enclosure has two ancient entrances: one wide to the northeast and one smaller on the south side. The circuit now has many more causeways and gaps, the majority of them are the result of later tracks that crossed the monument. The Aubrey Holes, or 56 pits, were located immediately inside the bank. Approximately half of these have been dug, and white concrete circles were used to mark them in the 1920s.
Stonehenge’s sarsens, the largest of which weighs more than 40 tonnes and is 24 feet tall, may have simply been scattered in the immediate area when the monument’s Neolithic modellers began construction. The smaller bluestones have been followed all the way to the Preseli Hills in Wales, which are around 200 miles from Stonehenge. How could ancient developers, who lacked modern tools and structures, move massive stones weighing up to 4 tonnes over such a long distance?
According to one long-held theory, Stonehenge’s creators created sledges and rollers out of tree trunks to transport bluestones from the Preseli Hills. They then switched the boulders for pontoons and glided them first along the Welsh drift and then up the River Avon onto Salisbury Plain; alternatively, they may have pulled each stone with an armada of vessels. Later hypotheses indicated that the bluestones were transported using supersized wicker containers or herds of bulls.
Geologists have been contributing to the debate about how Stonehenge appeared. Testing the example image of productive Neolithic developers dragging, trucking, rolling, or tugging the tough bluestones from faraway Wales, a few academics have proposed that icy masses, not people, accomplished the majority of the hard work. The earth is covered in gigantic rocks known as cold erratics, which were separated by drifting ice floes across long distances. Maybe ice sheets took Stonehenge’s huge pieces from the Preseli Hills during one of the Ice Ages and saved them a short distance—relatively speaking—from Salisbury Plain. Most archaeologists have remained sceptical about the chilly idea, despite the fact that nature may have communicated the right number of stones required to complete the circle.
Who built Stonehenge?
The stones’ primary axes are aligned with the solstitial axis. At midsummer, the sun rises over the horizon to the northeast, near the Heel Stone. At midwinter, the sun sets in the southwest, between the two highest trilithons, one of which has since fallen. These times in the seasonal cycle were clearly significant to the prehistoric people who built and used Stonehenge.
According to the twelfth-century essayist Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose account of King Arthur and legendary record of English history were accepted as true well into the Middle Ages, Stonehenge is the work of the magician Merlin. According to legend, the Saxons slaughtered numerous British aristocrats in the mid-fifth century and strewn their remains throughout the Salisbury Plain. King Aureoles Ambrosias despatched an armed expedition to Ireland to recapture the Giants’ Ring, a stone carved by ancient monsters from mystical African bluestones. The officers successfully crushed the Irish but failed to move the stones, so Merlin used his power to spirit them over the Atlantic and arrange them over the mass grave. Legend has it that Ambrosias and his sibling Uther, King Arthur’s father, are buried here.
While many people believed Monmouth’s account to be the true narrative of Stonehenge’s formation for a long time, the landmark’s history predates Merlin—or, at the very least, the genuine characters who are alleged to have propelled him—by several thousand years. Other early theories attributed its effectiveness to the Saxons, Danes, Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. Classicist John Aubrey claimed in the 17th century that Stonehenge was built by Celtic pious priests known as the Druids, a theory widely supported by collector William Stukeley, who discovered primitive burials at the site. Even now, people who identify as modern Druids continue to congregate at Stonehenge for the mid-year solstice. Nonetheless, radiocarbon testing in the mid-twentieth century revealed that Stonehenge stood approximately 1,000 years before the Celts occupied the territory, eliminating the ancient Druids from the running.
Numerous sophisticated history scholars and archaeologists now agree that a few distinct clans of people contributed to Stonehenge, each during a different phase of its development. Bones, instruments, and other antique artefacts discovered on the site appear to support this idea. The primary stage was completed by Neolithic agrarians who were most likely native to the British Isles. Afterward, it is claimed, groups with cutting-edge technologies and a more communal lifestyle left their mark on the site. Some have argued that they were migrants from the European continent; nevertheless, many scholars believe they were local Britons who got by the first developers.
Stonehenge’s purpose and significance
Stonehenge is a unique prehistoric structure located in the heart of an exceptionally rich archaeological landscape. It is an outstanding source for the study of prehistory and has played an important role in the development of archaeology.
While historians agree that it was a site of enormous significance for over a millennium, we may never know what drew early Britons to Salisbury Plain and inspired them to continue building it. There is solid archaeological evidence that Stonehenge was used as an entombment site, at least for a portion of its long history, but most researchers believe it also served other purposes—either as a stylised site, a religious journey goal, a final resting place for eminence, or a commemoration raised to respect and possibly profoundly associate with distant forefathers.
Gerald Hawkins, a space scientist, argued in the 1960s that the collection of megalithic stones functioned as a galactic timetable, with distinct concentration points corresponding to celestial marvels such as solstices, equinoxes, and shrouds. While his proposal has received a lot of attention over the years, experts maintain that Stonehenge’s builders most likely lacked the knowledge required to anticipate such events, or that England’s dense cloudy cover would have obscured their view of the skies. More recently, signs of illness and damage in human remains discovered at Stonehenge prompted a group of British archaeologists to speculate that it was viewed as a place of healing, maybe because bluestones were thought to have curative properties.
Stonehenge Today.
Stonehenge is one of the world’s most well-known and recognisable landmarks, attracting over 800,000 visitors each year, many of whom also visit the area’s other Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments. Stonehenge was listed to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites in 1986, along with Avebury, a Neolithic henge discovered 17 miles away that is more established and larger than its more well-known cousin. Stonehenge has undergone several repair efforts over the years, and some of its boulders have been cemented in cement to prevent collapse. Meanwhile, archaeological excavations and development of the surrounding area to promote tourism have revealed other notable nearby attractions, including many henges.
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