There is a prehistoric and mysterious monument on Salisbury Plain about which we have restrict-ed information: Stonehenge. For years there have been claimed plenty of arguments about Stone-henge; some people think that it was created by aliens and many people associate it with Druids and Merlin. On this paper, it will be instructed when Stonehenge was built, by whom it was built and what theories were about Stonehenge’s mystery.
Stonehenge is a statue that had been placed on Wessex, England and was not known pre-cisely who built it or for what purpose it was built. As it was told in Caroline Malone and Nancy Stone Bernard’s Stonehenge book “the meaning of the name of Stonehenge is ‘hanging stones’ because people thought the stones were hanging from the uprights” (10). Stonehenge was de-clared as World Heritage Site by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza-tion (UNESCO) (Malone, 8). Unfortunately Stonehenge was affected badly by negligent people and much of that bad effect are tourist erosion. Even though deterioration on surface of stones, many archeologists and historians made numerous researches about it. Today one of the facts that we gain is Stonehenge’s age. Thanks to the 21st century technology, we learned that Stonehenge is some 5.000 years old (Malone, 10).
When we look at the pictures showing us how Stonehenge was been seeing at past and compare these pictures with Stonehenge’s current looking, we can easily say that only half of the great sarsens have survived, some of lintels fallen. Most deplorable part about stones is about bluestones; in The Making of Stonehenge Castleden thinks that “Bluestones are more manageable in size, so more of them have been carted away”. (5)
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...e main purpose and design of Stonehenge is thought to be create a horseshoe and circle. Their builders were most probably Beaker people who lived 3,500 years ago. They came and invaded Salisbury Plain. It is possible that Beaker people build Stonehenge because they wanted to create a home for their an-cestors and dead ones. According to archeologists Stonehenge is only part of a monument which is more enormous design. Other part of religious monument could had been a wooden structure.
It is believed that in some parts of year, people went there for religious ceremonies. Ac-cording to their beliefs death and life symbolize cycles. When they travel to the area where Stonehenge places, they took their relatives’ dead bodies. At last, it can be claimed that Stone-henge have been used as a temple, it was precious and in the center of many religious feelings.
Stonehenge was built in several different phases beginning with the large white circle, 330 feet in diameter, surrounded by an eight foot-high embankment and a ring of fifty-six pits now referred to as the Aubrey Holes.(Stokstad, p.53; Hoyle) In a subsequent building phase, thirty huge pillars of stone were erected and capped by stone lintels in the central Sarsen Circle, which is 106 feet in diameter.(Stokstad, p.54) This circle is so named because the stone of which the pillars and lintels were made was sarsen. Within the Sarsen Circle were an incomplete ring and a horsesho...
The content of this project is based on the largest and most complete megalithic structure in Europe, The Stonehenge. It resides in center of the southern England; on the wide spread Salisbury Plains. It is said to be old approximately four thousand years, and it is even considered older than the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Standing there over such a long time, it has been the subject of research and mystery in general, for a really long time. Dozens of notable scientists, emperors and others expressed their admiration and interest through different means of explorations and excavations. There have been various theories on how it was built, and what the purpose of it was, and some of them are really intriguing and interesting such. Some thought it was built as a solar-lunar calendar, some said that it had medical purposes for the giants that had built it, it was considered a ceremonial place, temple of veneration, a portal and lastly but not less important, there were some associations of Stonehenge to the aliens. The two specific theories on the Stonehenge’s importance will be discussed and summarized in this essay. First theory comes from an astronomical stand point interpreted by Mr. Chris Witcombe, and the second theory might sound unusual when said the Stonehenge represents the human vulva, and this theory is interpreted by Anthony Perks(PhD) and Darlene Bailey(BA).
Stonehenge is located in Southern England on what is known as the Salisbury Plain. The structure looks different than it once did, however. Today, Stonehenge suffers the effects of time and pernicious acts by people. Originally, in the years after completion, the structure was made up of “several concentric circles of megaliths, very large stones.” (5) Stonehenge consists a circular layout of approximately one hundred megaliths. On the tops of them another flat stone was placed to make a continuous ring of horizontal stones. These structures are known as trilithons.
There are some, however, who have speculated as to what the giant stone structure could have been constructed for. Theories such as observatory, burial grounds, temple, and others are much debated among those who care to look into these matters. Among those who do not care to question its existence, Stonehenge is just a large pile of huge stones that happen to make a circle. No matter which side a person might take, there is no definite way to prove what Stonehenge was used for. There is no way to know because there are no written records of the construction of Stonehenge, there are not even depictive carvings on the stones themselves that suggest a purpose to the massive
Recent research from the Stonehenge Riverside Project suggests that when Stonehenge was first assembled (c2500 BC), its main purpose was to serve as a burial ground. However, it seems clear that for those who came in possession of it later on, it would have been used as a statement of power – "These are my lands, this is my construction and is an example of my wealth in resources". (Riverside, P.4).
in the uneducated minds of popular culture from tie seventeenth century to the present. It
Stonehenge is located on Salisbury Plain in Southern England. Although it is not the largest henge (circle of stones) of the Neolithic Period, it is a remarkable site because it is one of the most complicated megalithic sites. Stonehenge was repeatedly reworked from 3100 to 1500 B.C.E. (Encyclopedia Brittanica 287). Each new major building phase added new elements to the site. The present-day arrangement at Stonehenge is the result of the last building phase which ended nearly 3,500 years ago.
The Stonehenge at Salisbury Plains has been shrouded in mystery even before the time of Christ, but the truth of the matter is that nobody truly knows how this monument came to be. The origins of this monument range from logical theories to totally far fetched science fiction and middle age theories. This site has been around for over 4 millennia, but before the stones were even erected or on British land, it was used as a burial site. Then comes the weird theories, like Merlin from the King Arthur tales using his powers to move all of the stones into their formation or extraterrestrials coming down from outer space and giving knowledge to the ancient people in the area. Aside from these theories that lack any form of logical reasoning, the most widely accepted theory is that the monument was created as a religious shrine for the Druids of the area.
The first permanent stone fortifications was built in Jericho. They constructed the building using roughly shaped stones laid without mortar (Kleiner, 24). Once Jericho’s inhabitants left their site, a different group of people came to settle there. They used different techniques, “…established a farming community of rectangular mud-brick houses on stone foundations with plastered and painted floors and walls” (Kleiner, 25). The megalithic tomb in Ireland was built in the form of a passage grave. “At Newgrandge, the huge megaliths forming the vaulted passage and the dome are held in place by their own weight without mortar, each stone countering the thrust o neighboring stones. Decorating some of the megaliths are incised spirals and other motifs” (Kleiner, 27). The main chamber used early examples of corralled vaulting and in addition the Newgrandge tomb illuminates sunlight through the passage and the burial chamber during the winter solstice. Nearing the end of the fourth millennium BCE, Neolithic civilization had spread in every diffraction even to small remote areas. “…Hagar Quim is one of many constructed on Malta between 3200 and 2500 BCE” (Kleiner, 27).The builders of Malta constructed the temple by pilling cut stone blocks very carefully in stacked horizontal rows. “To construct the doorways at Hagar Qim, the builders employed the post-and-lintel system in which two upright stones
English American author and journalist, Christopher Eric Hitchens, asserts his opinion on the unification, or lack thereof, of the Parthenon in his adaptation of his essay, “The Lovely Stones,” published in the July of 2009. Hitchens informs his readers, the modern youth, about the importance of this topic, and wants said readers to sympathize with his point and to do something to fix a travesty. Hitchens conveys a disappointed then hopeful tone to highlight his desire for a unification of the scattered pieces of the Parthenon. Hitchens also uses anecdotes from the Parthenon’s history to fortify the importance of this union.
The mysteries of Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plains of England have perplexed human-kind since the beginning of recorded history. Some of the stones weighing as much as 40 tons were said to be transferred from Wales, which was a distance of about 137 miles. With the use of radiocarbon analysis at the site of Stonehenge it has been determined that the monument was built between 3000 and 1500 BC. The original purpose of Stonehenge has been lost in the pages of time, and therefore has been a major topic of discussion for archaeologists. Since the mid 12th century archaeologist, geologists, historians, and even some authors have put forth their own opinion of when and why Stonehenge was built. Throughout this essay I shall analyse and interpret different theories on Stonehenge in an attempt to understand what we know so far. It is in the mid 1100’s that we come across our first theory on Stonehenge, given by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
White, John B. Afterword. Stonehenge Decoded. By Gerald S. Hawkins. New York: Doubleday, 1965. 191-197.
... What pride, what arrogance, and what kind of (apparently) falsely heightened sense of self-worth did the vast and trunkless legs of stone once support? The answer comes straight from Shelley: "the lone and level sands stretch far away, boundless and bare; encircling the entirety of a lifeless wreck, nothing beside remains." This is the kingdom of Ozymandias like a playground bully with the rug pulled out from under him years after his defeat.
There are several theories as to what Stonehenge was. These ideas range from a calendar to an astronomical observatory to sacred grounds. These inferences are based upon the shape and positions of the stones that make up the monument. Stonehenge is made up of megaliths, or giant rocks. There are two kinds of these rocks at the structure, bluestones, which are about 8,000 pounds each, and sarsen stones, which can weigh up to 100,000 pounds each (Rattini, 2008). These rocks make up a henge, a group of circular ritual structures unique to the Late Neolithic era in Britain (Pitts, 2008). The first ring is a sarsen stone circle, the next ring a smaller circle of blue stones, then an even sm...
The Stonehenge's construction was a mystery itself. With no exact or similar precedent and no future plans of anything like this, it makes it hard to understand it's existence. The monument as a whole was constructed over fourteen or fifteen hundred years, equivalent to seventy generations. It is easy to wonder how each generation even knew the intentions of the first. It is also still unknown why this position was chosen. It was built on an uneven surface in which just about any other place could have been a better choice. This has lead people to believe maybe this was already a place with significance. The long and complex process of construction is put into three different phases broken down by people who have studied this monument.