<strong>                      </strong>Stonehenge

According to Dan Falk, Stonehenge was created by ancient Neolithic astronaut and was built around 3,000 and done around 2,300 B.C.. Stonehenge is a group of enormous standing stones, located in Salisbury Plain in England, that are enclosed within a circular ditch 300ft in diameter and consist of two kinds of stone: Sarsen (tertiary sandstone) and (igneous rock and other variety of stones). Stonehenge is a site of concentric rings of stones that are situated on a hinge, an area enclosed by a bank and ditch.<!--more--> There are four stone alignments—two are circles and two others are horseshoe-shaped patterns. The outer circle is about 100 feet in diameter and originally consisted of 30 upright stones (17 still stand), Pairs of standing stones are topped by a series of lintels". It was said that all of the stones had grooves cut out of them so that the lintels and the vertical stones fit together better. "The second ring consists of bluestones, a smaller-sized stone. Within that circle are five lintel pairs of Sarsen stones in a horseshoe shape. Another horseshoe, consisting of blue-stones, is at the center. A single standing stone, called the Heel Stone, is positioned in the center of the avenue just outside the outer circular ditch" (Falk).

       Some say that Stonehenge is connected to the Celtic culture and their "priestly caste among them called the Druids, who were believed to have supervised construction of Stonehenge and other stone circles in the region. Druids were keepers of lore and leaders of ceremonial rites among Celts. They have been associated with magic powers, human sacrifice, and various mystical rites" (Columbia).When the Druids were in charge, Stonehenge was a sacred ceremonial site. The famous Slaughter Stone at Stonehenge was believed to have been an altar where Druids performed human sacrifices. According to Gordon Melton, Stonehenge was also included in certain rituals by Christian missionaries that would hold ceremonies in which a single stone was attacked to symbolize and show "the victory of the Christian church over the devil" ( Columbia). It was also said by another scholar that medieval Britons thought that only the magic Merlin could have assemble the stones of Stonehenge.

"Archeologist announced, may of 2003, that they might have found the grave of three men who appear to have grown up in Wales and buried near Stonehenge around the same time it was built" (Steiger) but we still don’t know if the men found were the men who built Stonehenge.  So already, between a total of four peoples thoughts on why the Stonehenge was built, we have that it was built for religious purposes, that it was built for the use of slaughtering people or that astronomers built to correlate with the stars, the sun, and the moon but nobody really knows exact why it was built.

       The long standing stones are very unique and unusual for its time because it leaves modern civilization wondering how they put these stones in the order they are in today and why. Some of the many myths say that it was done by magic and nobody really knows why they were built, everything said about the stones are theories that have been created from what is observed.

          All of the stones were brought far distances to Salisbury Plain, using only muscle and ancient tools, like ropes and wooden levers. "The Sarcen stones are believed to have been brought from Marlborough Downs, 30 kilometers to the north of Stonehenge" (Burl). But even more intriguing than this is the mystery of the bluestones. "They are believed to have come from the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales, nearly 385 kilometers away"(Burl). Nobody knows how the stones, each being four tons, got to Salisbury Plain. No matter how it got to the location of Stonehenge it is obvious how much work it would have been since its time was before the invention of the wheel. This alone shows the importance of this particular structure.

A structure comparative to the Stonehenge is the Temple at Tarxien, Malta. They are both built with gigantic boulders made of white stone, they both have the same set up where there are two rocks standing vertically then another sitting on top of both laying horizontally, also known as the lintels. Another comparison is that when looking down on the structures there is the circle or oval shape to it which is very common in most Neolithic buildings or architectures. I find this very interesting because circle structures don’t seem as uniform as the types of structures we have now, which are mainly rectangular shaped. Although, I have a feeling they did most of their building that way for a reason, given their extreme intelligence.

I haven't found any information about what the civilizations thought about Stonehenge but I can assume that it wasn't as big of a deal as it is today. People back in the Neolithic age built their houses the same way as the Stonehenge was built. According to Eroin Groger, 90 structures that looked like houses, dated back to the Neolithic age, were found and " there was a considerable variations in size and form two principle types are disconcernable, the large rectangular buildings of the early Neolithic and the circular or oval structures that have a wider chronological span" (Groger). This information suggest that people of this era didn't know any better (that how they built the buildings were amazing and very skillful) and that's all they knew how to do things. They used the supplies that they had and hard work was normal to them.

The reason why it's such big deal today is because we don't know how or why it was built and it is astonishing to know that the people that built Stonehenge didn't have machines and had to do everything by hand. I argue the fact that this was preserved for apparent reasons. One of those reasons being that the stones were entirely too large (weighing tons) for just a couple of people to life and build Stonehenge. This architecture is very important because, I think, it shows the intelligence and knowledge that the "architects" put into this structure. I also think that this structure is very important and should be preserved for future generations because there is so much to learn from it and how or why it's still standing. The fact that people don't know very much about how or why it was built makes it even more interesting and more plausible to keep it and study it more to find out the facts about Stonehenge. The unknown has always need to be preserved so that assumptions can be replaced with facts and increase knowledge amongst society.

My personal reaction to Stonehenge is that I am very inspired by the way the builders of this structure were able to use what they had to construct such an enormous monument of rocks to use whatever they intended to use it for. I find that the way the stones are positioned within one another is very meaningful. We may not know why they a positioned the way they are but there has to be a reason why there are four layers of circles then a single stone in the middle. Also, like I said earlier, the construction of Stonehenge was before the invention of the wheel which makes Stonehenge even more exhilarating.

Works Cited

Burl, Aubrey. "STONEHENGE." History Today 51.3 (2001): 19. Academic Search

Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Feb. 2011.

Falk, Dan. "Did ancient astronomers build Stonehenge?." Astronomy 36.7

(2008): 52-57. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 31 Jan. 2011.

Grogan, Eoin. "Neolithic houses in Ireland: a broader perspective." Antiquity

76.292 (2002): 517. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 16 Feb. 2011.  "Stonehenge." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2010): 1. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 1 Feb. 2011.

Stonehenge." The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained. Ed. Brad

Steiger and Sherry Hanson Steiger. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 272-275. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Feb. 2011.