STONEHENGE

Not just another bunch of rocks

Intro

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in southern England just eight miles north of Salisbury. Stonehenge is one of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world. Around 3500 BC the semi-nomadic peoples that populated the Salisbury Plain began to build the monument now known as Stonehenge. It was built as a temple at first just a simple circular ditch and bank, within which lay a circle of upright timber posts.

By about 2500BC more timber structures had been built. Huge stones came from north Wiltshire and smaller bluestones from west Wales. This marked the beginning of over 800 years of construction stretching into the period known as the Bronze Age, when the first metal tools and weapons were made. By this time Stonehenge was the greatest temple in Britain, its stones arranged in sophisticated alignments to mark the passage of the sun and changing seasons. But Stonehenge was just one part of a remarkable ancient landscape.

Hundreds of burial mounds clustered on the surrounding hilltops, while smaller temples and other ceremonial sites were built nearby.

Stonehenge has inspired people to study and interpret it for centuries. Archeology provides the best hope of answering some of these fundamental questions about Stonehenge: how and when it was built, who built it and, perhaps most difficult of all, why it was built. But even with the evidence that archeology and modern science provide, not all these questions can be answered. Stonehenge will always keep some of its secrets.

The flat rock in front is called the Slaughter Stone, the stones name is a misnomer since there have not been blood sacrifices, after its rusted color, which was thought to be evidence of past sacrifices.

In conclusion,whats left of Stonehenge is believed to be the skeleton of a massive building that was designed to be some sort of ancient computer that measure time and dates.

Medieval writers used magic as an explanation of how it was created; antiquities, like William Stukeley in the early 18th century, guessed wrongly that the Druids had built it.

A druid was a member of the priestly and learned class active in Gaul, and perhaps in Celtic culture more generally, during the final centuries BC. They were suppressed by the Roman government from the 1st century and disappeared from the written record by the 2nd century, although there may have been later survivals in Britain and Ireland(from here the connection with Stonehenge)

The Celtic Druids served their communities by combining the duties of , priest, poet, philosopher,historian, scholar, teacher, doctor, astronomer and astrologer. The Druid priests and priestesses acted as mediums through which the spirits could be summoned and heard. Rituals throughout the history of the Celtic Druids were enacted in sacred groves of oak trees and circles of standing stones, another fact that send us to Stonehenge