Author: Paul Leach
Stonehenge
Situated on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, Stonehenge is likely to be on the sightseeing list of any traveler planning a trip to the UK. Before planning your pilgrimage to the ancient monument, read this brief account of its history. Being familiar with the site’s past will intensify the moving effect it’s sure to have on you.
Stonehenge was actually built in four phases, the first of which began about 5,000 years ago (around 3100 B.C.). This first stage includes a ditch, bank and the Aubrey holes, which are round pits in the chalk. Each hole measures approximately one metre wide and one metre deep. Steep sides lead to flat bottoms. A circle of nearly 285 feet in diameter is formed by the Aubrey holes.
Archaeologists speculate that the holes were used as part of a religious ceremony—and not as graves, although some human remains have been discovered in some of the chalk filling. At the conclusion of this first stage, no further construction was done at Stonehenge for over 1,000 years.
In about 2150 B.C., Stonehenge’s second building phase began. It was during this stage that the impressive bluestones were brought to the site from the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales.
Some of these stones weigh as much as four tons, and while it is impossible to know for certain how they were transported to Salisbury Plain, it is believed that they were dragged on rollers and sledges to the headwaters on Milford Haven where they would’ve been loaded onto rafts. After traveling by water along the south coast of Wales and up the Avon and Frome Rivers, the massive stones would have been dragged over land to Wiltshire. It is here that the stones are thought to have embarked on the final leg of their journey, which was again traveled by water down the Wylye River to Salisbury and then the Salisbury Avon to west Amesbury. In total, the trek is nearly 240 miles.
Upon reaching their new home, the bluestones were erected in the centre of Stonehenge in an incomplete double circle. The original entrance of the circular earthwork was also widened during this stage, and a pair of Heel Stones was added. Additionally constructed was the nearer part of the Avenue, which aligns with the sunrise in midsummer.
Around 2000 B.C., the third Stonehenge building stage commenced. This stage included the addition of the sarsen stones, which almost certainly came from the Marlborough Downs, which is near Avebury in north Wiltshire and is approximately 25 miles north of Stonehenge. The largest of the sarsen stones weighs in at an immense 50 tons.
Transporting the sarsen stones by water would not have been possible, so the only conceivable way for the stones to have been moved is with the use of sledges and ropes. Experts have calculated that moving just one of the enormous stones would have required the combined effort of 500 men using leather ropes to pull it and an additional 100 men to position the gigantic rollers in front of the sledge.
Once the daunting task of simply getting the sarsen stones to Stonehenge had been completed, the stones were arranged in an outer circle with a continuous run of lintels. Stonehenge’s distinctive trilithons were then arranged in a horseshoe pattern within the circle.
In Stonehenge’s final building stage—which began shortly after 1500 B.C.—the bluestones were rearranged in the horseshoe and circle pattern that can be seen by today’s visitors to the site. There were probably somewhere around 60 bluestones at Stonehenge originally, but most of these have been removed or broken up over time. Still, others have been reduced to mere underground stumps.
As you take in the awesome presence of Stonehenge, bear in mind the unbelievable hardships ancient peoples endured to erect it, and let this convince you that humanity is capable of achieving anything it wants badly enough.
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