Stonehenge

In this essay, the author

• Analyzes how stonehenge and the processes by which it was built reveal much about the intelligence and sophistication of the civilizations that designed and built the monument.
• Explains that stonehenge planning and assembling took a very long time, and how they came about plays an important role in understanding them.
• Explains that the windmill hill people were semi-nomadic farmers who had arrived as the last neolithic (or new stone age) newcomers in england. they hunted, mined flint, made and traded axes, and could be called industrialists.

• Analyzes how stonehenge and the processes by which it was built reveal much about the intelligence and sophistication of the civilizations that designed and built the monument.
• Explains that stonehenge planning and assembling took a very long time, and how they came about plays an important role in understanding them.
• Explains that the windmill hill people were semi-nomadic farmers who had arrived as the last neolithic (or new stone age) newcomers in england. they hunted, mined flint, made and traded axes, and could be called industrialists.
• Explains that the beaker people contributed to stonehenge. they were well organized, active, powerful, and territorial.
• Explains that the wessex culture group, who arrived on salisbury plain around 1400 bc, built the most prominent part of stonehenge- the great stone circles.
• Explains that stonehenge was built on salisbury plain, which was open with farmland, grazing land, and less forest. chalk made building rudimentary structures easier.
• Explains that stonehenge i, built by the windmill hill people, took from about 2950 to 2900 bc to construct.
• Explains that the second phase of building stonehenge involved the creation of a wooden monument.
• Explains that stonehenge iii was the longest and most complex of the three and was divided up into six sub phases. the builders were the wessex culture.
• Explains that the bluestones had to be carried by waterways from their source in the prescelly mountains back to the stonehenge site. the sarsen stones were put into large holes and joined to each other with a tongue-and-groove joint.
• Describes how the sarsen stones were dressed and shaped to exaggerate the grandeur of the monuments.
• Explains that there is little evidence for what stonehenge could have been created, other than the people buried in and what we directly observe about the monument.
• Analyzes how the main entrance of stonehenge points directly at the sunrise on the summer solstice.
• Explains that the 56 aubrey holes correspond to 3 cycles of the moon's orbital wobble and could be used to line up with various solar alignments in stonehenge to predict when the sun and moon would be at the same point in the sky.
• Concludes that stonehenge was used as a primary burial site in the stone and bronze ages.
• Analyzes how stonehenge's celestial alignments put focus on things that are greater and more eternal than humans. the fixation with death and the afterlife among the peoples of salisbury plain seems to be a religion in itself.
• Explains the complexity and intelligence of the peoples of stonehenge can be seen in surrounding monuments created by them and their neighbors. most enclosures and round barrows were created for burial purposes, with one or two people buried within them.
• Analyzes how stonehenge represents the evolving and changing society of prehistoric times. the idea that men from the stone age were unintelligent, ill-mannered barbarians is far from truth.
• Explains that ancient voices: the secret of stonehenge was produced by jean-claude bragard and mark hammil.
• Narrates mackie, euan, niel, fernand, service, alastair, and jean bradbery's the mysteries of stonehenge.