Stonehenge

Out of a lush green plain in southwest England, there rises mysteriously, an impressive group of enormous gray stones. The site is called Stonehenge, and for many years it has been a subject of wonder and controversy between scientist and scholars. (Dimitrakopulos). One of the Seven Wonders of the World, but what is really known about it. What was the purpose, how was it built, how was the stones brought here, where did they come from, how were they set upright, how were the smaller stones placed atop the high, who built them, and when was it built. The mysteries of Stonehenge.

No one knows what Stonehenge was used for, but a couple of theories for Stonehenge range from being a temple, a burial site, and as a sundial. Scientist believed that Stonehenge was once a temple due to the circular shape and the towering stones (Hawkins 109). Many people considered Stonehenge a holy place.

Over the last hundred years druids have come to worship at Stonehenge in which they considered their Religious Temple. From early digs at Stonehenge we know it was once used for burial ceremonies because of the human remains that was found. Some scientist believes it was used for as a sundial to tell time or as a calendar to tell the date. Scientist come to this conclusion due to the way the sun hits the stones at different times during the day (Cohen 59).

There are more of the mysteries of Stonehenge. Perhaps we shall never know the answers to them. But the archeologist, anthropologists, and engineers who study this monument have developed theories about how it may have been built.

The outer ring of stones at Stonehenge was made of 30 massive pillars, some of them weighing as mush as 40 tons. No stones like these can be found anywhere else on the surrounding plain. They probably cam from a quarry that is located 24 miles away. (Branley 6). The stones had to be hauled over this distance by men building Stonehenge. Then they had to be cut into shape and set in place. After that the smaller stone were set on top of them.

The builders of Stonehenge must have moved the huge stones over land. Yet they had no horses to pull them. They had no carts, nor did they have wheels.

On theory of how the men of Stonehenge hauled the stones and set them in place suggests that sledges were built from heavy logs (Branley 7). Perhaps the logs were tied together with ropes made from the skins of animals. Or the sledges may have been little more than the forks from large, heavy trees, dragged along the ground with stones resting upon them.

A lot of men helped to push and pull the heavy stones onto the sledges. Long ropes were fastened to each stone, and teams of men pulled while other pushed. One time, by accident, a sledge may have been pulled up onto a log. (Branley 8). As the men pulled, the log rolled, and the sledge moved more easily. And so the men building Stonehenge may have learned to use rollers.

There may have been some teams of men whose job it was to put rollers in front of the sledge. According to this theory, as the sledge was pulled along, the men transferred the rollers from back to front (Souden 89). And so there grew a continuous roadway of rollers to make the task easier.

Some scientists think that the builders may have moved the stones only during winter. When the ground was covered with snow and ice, the sledges would have slid along quite easily. Teams of men holding control ropes would have been needed to keep the sledges from sliding to one side, or from speeding down hill and crushing the hauling teams.

Archeologists think that 800 men would have been needed to haul the stones. It would have taken 200 more men to move the rollers and to keep the heavy stone blocks form sliding (Mackie 101).

Within the main circle of pillars at Stonehenge is another ring of smaller stones that weigh about 5 tons each. These are of a different type of rock from the large pillars. They are called bluestones, because of their coloration (Mackie 106). Stones like these can be found no nearer than about 250 miles from the Salisbury Plain.

Scientists think that expeditions of Stonehenge men searched for these special stones because they were thought to contain mystic qualities. Moving them over 250 miles must have been very difficult. They may have been floated on rafts for a part of this distance, or drawn through the water hung between dugout canoes or boats made of animal skins (Dimitrakoulos). But they had to be hauled overland at least part of the way, perhaps on sledges. When the Avon River, which flows through the Salisbury Plain, was reached, the stones were probably loaded onto rafts and floated to within 2 miles of the site of Stonehenge.

Both the tall stone pillars and the smaller bluestones were shaped by human effort. Some of them are squared off, and some are tapered or rounded. The stones are shaped yet Stonehenge was built before metal tools were used in England (Souden 92). The men probably used smaller stones, weighing up to 60 pounds, to bask the large pillars and chip them, hoping the breaks would occur in the right places. To increase the chances of splitting the stones as desired, fire was probably used.

With a hard, shark rock, a line would first be scratched across a stone where then men wanted it to break. Then laying cattails soaked in animal fat on the stone and then setting them on fire made fires along this line, perhaps. When the stone was hot, the ashes would be brushed away, and cold water splashed along the line. Possible heavy boulders were dropped on the hot stone at the same time. The large stones might then have split because of the sudden change in temperature or large chips might have broken free (Souden 98). The process would have had to be repeated over and over again, until the stone split through.

Large stones also were broken into smaller ones by using stone and wooden wedges (Cohen 98). The stone wedges would by pounded into a crack, and water was poured over the wood, making it swell. As the wood expanded, it would split the rock. Maybe the crack was just a little bit wider at first but after the operation was repeated again and again, the rock would finally be split through.

Rough shaping of the stones was probably done at the place where they were found. After the stones were brought to the Salisbury Plain, the shaping was completed. Months of pounding were needed to square off each stone. Sometimes the rough edges were removed, and the surfaces were smoothed by grinding (Hawkins 140). To grind the stones, one stone was pushed and pulled back and forth across another one. Particles of hard stone, as small as grains of sand, were mixed with water to make a grinding compound that was spread between the two surfaces.

The tops of the main pillars are not flat. Each has a knoblike

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