Stonehenge is a group of standing stones. As to what it is for no-one really knows,
Where is Stonehenge?
Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, S England.
The Facts About Stonehenge...
The word ‘Henge’...
'Henge" simply means
hang! Hang means to support from above or the side, like you "hang" a
door! Bruce spoke to a builder and asked him - what is meant by
"the hang of a roof?" He was told " When you put the joists in place
they stretch from one wall to the other. That's the hang of the roof!"
Even today the word Hanger is used for a large building with no internal
supports. Stonehenge is the perfect description of such a building.
The roof is supported by the Sarsen Circle alone.
The Location & Details...
Stonehenge is a group of
standing stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, S. England. Pre-eminent
among megalithic monuments in the British Isles, it is similar to an
older and larger monument at Avebury. The great prehistoric structure is
enclosed within a circular ditch 300 ft (91 m) in diameter, with a bank
on its inner side, and is approached by a broad roadway called the
Avenue. Within the circular trench the stones are arranged in four
series: The outermost is a circle of sandstones about 13.5 ft (4.1 m)
high connected by lintels; the second is a circle of bluestone menhirs;
the third is horseshoe shaped;and the innermost is ovoid. Within the
ovoid lies the Altar Stone. The Heel Stone is a great upright stone in
the Avenue, northeast of the circle.
When was it built ?
Around
3500 BC the semi-nomadic peoples that populated the Salisbury Plain
began to build the monument now known as Stonehenge. The original
construction was a circular ditch and mound with 56 holes forming a
ring around its perimeter. The first stone to be placed at the site was
the Heel Stone. It was erected outside of a single entrance to the
site. 200 years later 80 blocks of Bluestone was transported from a
quarry almost 200 miles away in the Preseli Mountains. It is surmised
that these blocks were transported by way of rafts along the Welsh
coast and up local rivers, finally to be dragged overland to the site.
These stones were erected forming two concentric circles.
At
some point this construction was dismantled and work began on the final
phase of the site. The Bluestones were moved within the circle and the
gigantic stones that give Stonehenge its distinctive look were
installed. Some of these massive stones weigh as much as 26 tons!
Bruce believes
he has solved the age-old conundrum of how such enormous monoliths
could have been moved over these great distances by a supposedly
primitive people. And if their technical and logistical skills were
capable of such a feat, he believes it would be no great imaginative
leap to suppose that they would have been able to design and build the
wooden structure illustrated here.
