Stonehenge

[Bob]

The megalithic ruin known as Stonehenge stands on the open downland of Salisbury, England. Stonehenge is claimed to be one of the wonders of the world and I took this pic when was there in 2003. It dates from the time of the pyramids, said to be built by the druids, surrounded in mysticism but no one actually knows why it was built. But I could cleary feel that the place was charged with some kind of power or energy. Not kidding you.



www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.876

Info stolen from the English Heritage site:
About 4,500 years ago – 2,500 BC Stonehenge was rebuilt. Bluestones were used which are the smaller stones that you can see in the picture. These came from the Prescelli Mountains in Pembroke, South Wales 245 miles (380kms), dragged down to the sea, floated on huge rafts, brought up the River Avon, finally overland to where they are today. It was an amazing feat when you consider that each stone weighs about five tons. It required unbelievable dedication from ancient man to bring these stones all the way from South Wales.

How did they get these stones to stand upright? The truth is nobody really knows. It required sheer muscle power and hundreds of men to move one of these megaliths, the heaviest of them weighing probably about 45 tons.

[Summer]

I have always wanted to go there, since I was a little girl. I was watching a special on TV, and one recent theory for the making of Stonehenge was that it is a lunar as well as a solar calender. So that's a possibility. I will someday make it to England to see that site, it's just a matter of when.

[lordjagged]

There are many megaliths and standing stones in England. Here is one that BobinBed missed on her recent visit to England. Not that the weather was too pleasant. It's not very far from where I live.

www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artgra/kitcoit.htm

[pledm]

Scientists set out to unlock secrets of Stonehenge

STONEHENGE (Reuters) - Archaeologists set out on Monday to unlock one of the secrets of Stonehenge, the majestic monument in southern England -- when were the first standing stones placed at the ancient religious site?

The concentric stone circles that make up Stonehenge, 80 miles southwest of London on the sweep of Salisbury Plain, consist of giant sandstone blocks or sarsens and smaller bluestones -- volcanic rock of a blueish tint with white flecks.

Stonehenge experts Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright will use modern carbon dating techniques and analysis of soil pollen and sea shells to work out when the stones were set up, in the first archaeological dig at the World Heritage site since 1964.

"If you want to find out why Stonehenge was built, you need to look 250 kilometers away to the Presili Hills in north Pembrokeshire, where the first bluestones that built Stonehenge come from," Wainwright told reporters as the two-week dig began.

The two archaeologists, who have worked extensively in the Presili Hills in recent years, believe the bluestones, which made up the first stone circles at Stonehenge, were thought to have magical curative powers.

The massive standing stones, set up as long as 5,000 years ago, dominate the even older religious site, marked by numerous burial mounds or barrows.

"If you want to find out when the first stone was placed at Stonehenge, you need to dig a small trench round one of the stone's sockets and date what you find. That is what we are doing," Wainwright said.

Theories of the role of Stonehenge range from the supernatural -- one says the legendary wizard Merlin built it -- to sacrifices linked to sun worship.

Wainwright, president of the Society of Antiquaries, and Darvill, archaeology professor at Bournemouth University, hope their findings will support their theory that Stonehenge was the ancient equivalent of a health spa.

"This was a place of healing, for the soul and the body," said Darvill. "The Presili Hills is a magical place. The stones from there are regarded as having healing properties."

Some 80 bluestones, weighing between one and four tonnes each, were transported by land and sea from South Wales to the Salisbury Plain site between 4,500 and 5,000 years ago.

Only about one-third of them remain on the site, the rest having been stolen or broken up over the millennia.

"In the early 1900s there were signs in Amesbury (the nearest town to the site) offering the hire of a hammer so that people could come up here to chip off their own bit of bluestone," Darvill said.

They are distinct from the massive sandstone sarsens that make the monument instantly recognizable.

The excavation has even been blessed by Druids, spiritual descendants of the learned priests of pre-Christian Celtic Europe, who had links with the site in ancient times.

[Summer]

Cool information about Stonehenge, Pledm. Thanks for posting it!

[moondaddy]

I've felt a kinship with that place from way back. Wrote my term paper on it senior year of high school. My parents visited it several years ago. More recently wrote a screenplay (not as yet produced, ha ha) in which it plays a part.

[Summer]

I have always felt a kinship with Stonehenge as well. I have never been able to figure out why for sure, but I have often wondered if it was a past life thing.

[moondaddy]

I almost said the same thing! Perhaps we knew each other there.

[Summer]

It wouldn't surprise me that much if we did, Moondaddy! I have met a lot of people in this life that I have known in other lives, and I tend to think that it is very normal to do so. It seems that we are just destined to meet over and over again, don't you think? It is one of my life's goals to make it over to England. I know it is going to take me awhile to do so, but I am not going to give up that easily, so I should make it one of these days. And I want to go to Stonehenge when I do.

[moondaddy]

Yes I do think that we meet people over and over. England would be cool. Anyplace with a history older than a couple hundred years and plus the ancestral angle. Sometimes wish I'd get more into my genealogy.

[pledm]

Stonehenge may have been royal cemetery

LONDON (Reuters) - Stonehenge may have been a burial ground for an ancient royal family, British researchers said on Thursday.

New radiocarbon dates of human remains excavated from the ancient stone monument in southwest England suggest it was used as a cemetery from its inception just after 3000 BC until well after the larger circle of stones went up around 2500 BC.

Previously, archaeologists had believed people were buried at Stonehenge between 2700 and 2600 B.C.

"The hypothesis we are working on is that Stonehenge represents a place of the dead," said Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at the University of Sheffield, who is leading an excavation of the site. "That seems to be very clear."

"A further twist is that the people buried at Stonehenge may have been the elite of their society, an ancient royal British dynasty, perhaps."

Built between 3000 and 1600 BC as a temple, burial ground, astronomical calendar or all three, the stone circle is sometimes called "Britain's pyramids."

Tourists are drawn to Stonehenge throughout the year and on the summer solstice -- the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere -- up to 30,000 revelers and druids converge on the stones for a night of celebration.

"DOMAIN OF THE DEAD"

Who built Stonehenge and why is debated among scientists, although growing evidence points to the monument's use as a burial place, Parker Pearson told reporters.

Last year the same researchers found evidence of a large settlement of houses nearby. They said the latest findings reinforced their belief that the settlement and Stonehenge form part of a larger ancient ceremonial complex along the nearby River Avon.

"What we suspect is that the river is the conduit between the two realms of the living and the dead," Parker Pearson said. "It was the prehistoric version of the river Styx."

The team estimates that between 150 to 240 men, women and children were buried at Stonehenge over a 600-year period, making it likely that the relatively low figure over such a long points to a single elite family.

A clue is the few burials in Stonehenge's earliest phase, a number that grows larger in following centuries as offspring would have multiplied, said Andrew Chamberlain, a specialist in ancient demography at the University of Sheffield.

Placement of the graves and artifacts such as a small stone mace are evidence the site was reserved as a "domain of the dead" for the elite, Parker Pearson added.

"I don't think it was the common people getting buried at Stonehenge -- it was clearly a special place at the time," he said. "One has to assume anyone buried there had some good credentials."

[Bob]

Interesting new aspect to be considered indeed. Not sure I believe it though.

[Summer]

I believe that Stonehenge might have been used as a burial place, but I believe that it was used for many other things too. I don't think they have it all figured out yet myself.

[pledm]

LONDON, England (AP) -- Two British archeologists declared Monday that they have uncovered the core reason behind the construction of one of the world's best known and least understood landmarks.

The stone circle at Stonehenge has stood for thousands of years -- and bred endless debate over whether it was a temple for ancient sun-worshippers, a sacred burial site, or even a kind of massive prehistoric astronomical calculator.

Professors Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill argued their own explanation for the mysterious monument: Stonehenge, they said, was a kind of primeval Lourdes, drawing prehistoric pilgrims from around Europe.

"We found several reasons to believe that the stones were built as part of a belief in a healing process," Wainwright told journalists assembled at London's Society of Antiquaries.

Wainwright and Darvill, the first to excavate the site in more than 40 years, said the key to their theory was Stonehenge's double circle of bluestones -- a rare rock known to geologists as spotted dolomite -- which lie at the center of the monument.

Dragged or floated on rafts from Pembrokeshire in Wales to Salisbury Plain in southern England, he said the bluestones were prized for their healing properties -- as evidenced by the small mountain of flakes the scientists uncovered during their dig.

Pieces ended up buried in tombs across the area, a testament to people's fascination with the rocks, Wainwright said.

The proof was not only in the stones -- but also in the bones. Skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury.

"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill said.

The evidence, they said, pointed to a kind of shrine where people from across the Europe would go to seek healing. But they cautioned that that did not rule out alternative theories for Stonehenge's uses.

"It could have been a temple, even as it was a healing center," Darvill said. "Just as Lourdes, for example, is still a religious center."


Professor Timothy Darvill, Head of the Archaeology Group at Bournemouth University, has breathed new life into the controversy surrounding the origins of Stonehenge by publishing a theory which suggests that the ancient monument was a source and centre for healing and not a place for the dead as believed by many previous scholars.
After publication of his new book on the subject - Stonehenge: The Biography of a Landscape (Tempus Publishing) - Professor Darvill also makes a case for revellers who travel to be near the ancient monument for the summer solstice in June to reconsider. Instead, Professor Darvill believes that those seeking to tap into the monument’s powers at its most potent time of the year should do so in December during the winter solstice when our ancestors believed that the henge was ‘occupied’ by a prehistoric god - the equivalent of the Roman and Greek god of healing, Apollo – who ‘chose’ to reside in winter with the Hyborians, long believed to be the ancient Britons.

The basis for Professor Darvill’s findings lies in the Preseli Mountains in west Wales where he and colleague Professor Geoffrey Wainwright have located an exact origin for the bluestones used in the construction of Stonehenge some 250 km away.

“The questions most people ask when they consider Stonehenge is ‘why was it built?’ and ‘how was it was used?’” says Professor Darvill. “Our work has taken us to the Preseli Mountains to provide a robust context for the source of the bluestones and to explore various ideas about why those mountains were so special to prehistoric people”.

“We have several strands of evidence to consider. First, there have folklore in the form of accounts written in the 14th century which refer to a magician bringing the stones from the west of the British Isles to what we know as Salisbury Plain,” he continues. “It was believed that these particular stones had many healing properties because in Preseli, there are many sacred springs that are considered to have health-giving qualities; the water comes out of the rocks used to build Stonehenge and it’s well established that as recently as the late 18th century, people went to Stonehenge to break off bits of rock as talismans.

“Also, around the Stonehenge landscape, there are many burials, some of which have been excavated and amongst these there are a good proportion of people who show sings of being unwell – some would have walked with a limp or had broken bones – just the sort of thing that in modern times pressurises people to seek help from the Almighty.

“In the case of Stonehenge, I suggest that the presiding deity was a prehistoric equivalent of the Greek and Roman god of healing, Apollo. Although his main sanctuary was at Delphi in Greece, it is widely believed that he left Greece in the winter months to reside in the land of the Hyborians – usually taken to be Britain.

“Altogether, and with the incorporation of the stones from Wales, Stonehenge is a very powerful and positive place of pilgrimage, although whether the monument’s healing power actually worked is a matter for further discussion,” he concludes.

[Bob]

Very interesting theory. Thanks for posting it Pledm!