For centuries, historians and archaeologists have puzzled over the many mysteries of Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument that took Neolithic builders an estimated 1,500 years to erect. Located in southern England, it is comprised of roughly 100 massive upright stones placed in a circular layout.
While many modern scholars now agree that Stonehenge was once a burial ground, they have yet to determine what other purposes it served and how a civilization without modern technology—or even the wheel—produced the mighty monument. Its construction is all the more baffling because, while the sandstone slabs of its outer ring hail from local quarries, scientists have traced the bluestones that make up its inner ring all the way to the Preseli Hills in Wales, some 200 miles from where Stonehenge sits on Salisbury Plain.
Today, nearly 1 million people visit Stonehenge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986, every year. Continue reading from History
Stonehenge was carefully designed to align with the movements of the sun. The enormous sarsen stones and smaller bluestones, set up in the centre of the site in about 2500 BC, were precisely arranged to frame two particular events in the year: the sunrise at summer solstice, and the sunset at winter solstice. These are the extreme limits of the sun's movement; the word solstice is derived from the Latin sol ("sun") and sistere ("to stand still").
Standing in the centre of the monument on midsummer's day, the longest day of the year, the sun rises just to the left of the outlying Heel Stone to the north-east and the first rays of the day shine into the heart of Stonehenge. Archaeological excavations have found a large stone hole to the left of the Heel Stone and it may have held a partner stone, the two stones framing the sunrise. Continue reading from British Museum
