Stonehenge

Stonehenge BBC2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbrOLjkd8CA

Five thousand years ago. Think of that. Fifty centuries ago, human beings—if you rule out the theory that “the aliens did it”—took a supposed one thousand years to build this stone circle. For comparison purposes, the much grander Pyramids of Giza were, probably, under simultaneous construction by peoples who had no knowledge of each other’s existence.

Much of what was done here is still here, albeit modified over time, rebuilt by different waves of ancient peoples.

Research indicates that Stonehenge consisted of 30 standing stones, “sarsens,” which encircled five huge stone arches arranged in a horseshoe shape—they probably didn’t refer to that shape in that way because I would imagine that this was created long before somebody got the idea to make shoes for horses.

Also on the site were two more circles made of smaller “bluestones.” One of those was inside the horseshoe and the other was inside the outer circle. Don’t forget the four “station stones” that were outside the central collection. To top it all off, there was—and it remains so today—a surrounding circular ditch and bank.

Nobody knows how they did it. These stones are just too big and too heavy. The largest of these stones come in at just under fifty thousand pounds. As with other amazing sites such as this one, there is no quarry nearby from which these stones could have been acquired. One source is twenty miles distant. However, the “bluestones” were sourced, we think from 140 miles away. These stones were all carved, a process which would have taken thousands of hours. But then, thousands of hours isn’t a lot when you ponder what has lasted thousands of years.

We are here in October. It is not the best day because it is raining hard, it is quite windy and it is cold. And, it is crowded anyway. The best day to be here—if you don’t mind crowds of about 20,000 friends—is certainly June 21 (the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere). On that day and only on that day the sun rises over the “Heel Stone, a large “sarsen” which stands outside the main cluster. On September 21 (the shortest day of the year) the sun sets over the same stone. Are we looking at a calendar of sorts?

It is, and this is proven, a cemetery site. Approximately two-hundred bodies are buried here. We don’t know who they were or why the were given the honor—or suffered the indignity perhaps—of being interred here. If it were any more inclement, we might have been interred here as well.