Stonehenge

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a symbol of mystery , endurance and strength according to Geoffrey Ashe in his Britannia Article `Stonehenge . I t is a place that provokes questions . Nowadays a busy motorway and other main roads pass very near and it is in view for a long distance in the flat landscape of Salisbury plain . I t seems to invite us to question . Why is it there What is it for ? Who built it ? How did they get those huge stones here

The original purpose has long been forgotten , but there have been many

br speculations - a temple , an astrological observatory , a burial site and so on . In all this uncertainty one thing is certain - it was a very important place to its builders . I t must have been to justify the effort involved

What we see today is of course only a ruin . Of the original 30 standing stones only 17 remain . Many of the original stones fell long ago . Some were removed by our ancestors , and used them for their own purposes as they have done at the much larger henge in nearby Avebury , and some of the smaller blue stones , so called from their original coloring when first broken from their mountain , show signs of damage . The larger stones still show their pre-historic carved marks , but naturally these are fainter than they once were

How was it built ? I t might seem to the modern mind that it would be almost impossible to create such a construction without modern earth movers , cranes ,lorries and so on . The construction was an enormous engineering feat and required communal and well organised labor and a big commitment both in time and effort . It seems likely that this began about 5 ,000 years ago , about 3 ,000 years after the site was first cleared in the forest that once grew there and an avenue made to reach the local river at Amesbury . Postholes from that time , that possibly held 'totem ' poles , have been found . These were aligned west - east and could have acted as means of marking the equinox . In 7460 BC it is known that the whole of Britain was flooded waters due to the impact of a comet . A 1000 years later these two posts were replaced by two more poles only 350 meters away from the first ones , and in the same alignment . It is thought that a ditch was dug with such tools as deer antlers - this was before the Iron Age or even the use of bronze tools The chalk that lies close to the surface of the plain was loosened with picks made from antlers and moved with shovels made from the shoulder blades of cattle . Recent research has proved that tools such as these were perfectly able to do this . The embankment and ditch were made around 3020BC . The ditch was built outside the bank , not the usual format for a henge . The ditch or moat was 97 meters in diameter : 6 meters wide and varied...