Big Ben aside, Stonehenge can be considered the main visual symbol of England. Everyone has seen a ring of old huge slabs standing on a low mound on a green lawn. Although from a distance, even close, Stonehenge is impressive, inspiring reverence for the times when Atlanteans seemed to live on Earth.
The first natural question that arises from many at the first glance at Stonehenge - why? Why were these monstrous stone blocks arranged this way? What mysterious ceremonies took place in this ring of time-beaten stone blocks?
As for the methods of delivering stones and building Stonehenge, then there are much fewer options due to the limited (if not taking into account aliens and telekinesis) number of methods. The same applies to the people who built the megalith - in the then England there were no kings or slaves, so Stonehenge was built, guided exclusively by spiritual motives. Times when the question: "Do you want to participate in the greatest construction project in the whole world?" answer "What is the salary?" then they had not yet come.
1. Stonehenge was built over the centuries, from about 3000 to 2100 BC. e. Moreover, already at about the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. they seem to have forgotten about him. Even the Romans, who diligently documented everything, do not mention a single word about the megalith comparable to the Egyptian pyramids. Stonehenge "pops up" again only in 1130 in the work of Heinrich Huntingdon "History of the English people". He compiled a list of four wonders of England, and only Stonehenge on this list was the work of man.
2. Quite conventionally, the construction of Stonehenge can be divided into three stages. First, the ramparts were poured and a ditch was dug between them. Then the megalith was built of wood. At the third stage, wooden structures were replaced with stone ones.
3. Stonehenge consists of two ramparts with a moat between them, the Altar Stone, 4 vertically standing stones (2 survived, and they were moved), three rings of holes, 30 vertical sarsen stones of the outer fence, connected by jumpers (17 and 5 jumpers survived) , 59 or 61 blue stones (9 survived), and 5 more triliths (U-shaped structures) in the inner circle (3 survived). The word “survived” means “stood upright” - some of the stones lie, and for some reason they were not touched during reconstruction, although some of the standing stones moved. Separately, outside the circle, stands the Heel Stone. It is above him that the Sun rises on the day of the summer solstice. Stonehenge had two entrances: a small one, etc. The Avenue is an outward-facing road bounded by earthen ramparts.
4. The official history of Stonehenge reports that by the end of the 19th century, Stonehenge had come to such a state that it had to be reconstructed. Already after the first phase of the reconstruction (1901), during which only one stone was raised and allegedly installed exactly in place, a wave of criticism arose. Immediately after the end of the First World War, a new reconstruction began. By the way, the Germans successfully bombed London and other cities in England in the First World War, so there was something to restore there. But they decided to restore a pile of dead stones as a matter of priority. These works were much larger, but after the bloody war the public was not up to protests. Finally, the most serious phase of reconstruction took place in 1958-1964. Here heavy equipment, concrete, sighting devices, theodolites, etc. were already used. And immediately after the end, Gerald Hawkins's book "The Solution to the Secret of Stonehenge" is published, in which he quite reasonably claims that Stonehenge was an observatory. Conspiracy theorists have received rich food for reasoning and accusations. But Hawkins' books sold very well and provided Stonehenge with immense popularity.
5. Already by 1900, scientists, researchers, engineers and simply interested people put forward 947 theories of the purpose of Stonehenge (calculated by the Austrian Walter Musse). Such a multitude of hypotheses, of course, is explained not only by the irrepressible imagination of their authors, but also by the established methodology of antiquity research. In those days it was considered completely normal that you can study any science without leaving your office. It is enough just to study the available documents and evidence, to comprehend them and draw the right conclusions. And on the basis of poor lithographs of pencil sketches and enthusiastic descriptions of those who have personally visited Stonehenge, one can put forward an infinite number of hypotheses.
6. The first mention of the astronomical and geographical orientation of Stonehenge belongs to William Stukeley. In his 1740 work Stonehenge: A Temple Returned to the British Druids, he wrote that the megalith is oriented to the northeast and indicates the summer solstice. This inspires respect for the scientist and researcher - as can be seen even from the title of his book, Stukeley was firmly convinced that Stonehenge was the sanctuary of the Druids. But at the same time he was also a good field researcher, paid attention to the orientation of the structure, and did not keep silent about his observation. In addition, Stukeley made a number of excavations and noticed several important details.
7. Already in the 19th century, Stonehenge was a popular destination for country walks and picnics. Sir Edmund Antrobus, who owned the land around the megalith, was forced to hire, in today's parlance, security guards to keep order. According to English law, he had no right to restrict access to Stonehenge by outsiders (remember how Jerome K. Jerome ridiculed signs prohibiting passage anywhere in his story Three Men in a Boat, Not including a Dog). And the guards did not help much. They tried to persuade the respectable audience not to burn fires, not throw garbage and not chipping off too large pieces from stones. Violators were severely punished by writing down their name and address. Rather, the name and the address that they called - there was no question of identity cards then. In 1898, Sir Edmund I died, and the land was inherited by Sir Edmund II, the nephew of the deceased. Young Antrobus had fenced off Stonehenge right off the bat and charged the entrance fee. The audience was depressed, but the druids intervened, considering Stonehenge their sanctuary. Again, by law, no one has the right to restrict access to places of worship. That is, a young man who came to Stonehenge with a girl by his arm and a picnic basket, for free admission, it was enough to declare to the minister that he was a druid. Desperate, Antrobus offered the government to buy Stonehenge and 12 hectares of land around it for 50,000 pounds - there is an airfield and an artillery range nearby, why not expand them? The government refused such a deal. Antrobus Jr. went to the First World War and died there, leaving no heirs.
8. In Stonehenge, the final scene of Thomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the D'Urberville" takes place. The main character, who committed the murder, and her husband Claire try to escape from the police. They roam the south of England, sleeping in forests and empty houses. They stumble upon Stonehenge almost in the dark, feeling one of the stones in the outer circle. Both Tess and Claire consider Stonehenge to be a place of sacrifice. Tess falls asleep on the Altarstone. At night, Tess and her husband are surrounded by police. Waiting, at the request of her husband, Tess awakening, they arrest her.
9. Released in 1965, Gerald Hawkins' book "Deciphered Stonehenge" literally blew up the world of archaeologists and researchers of the megalith. It turned out that they had been puzzling over the riddle of Stonehenge for many decades, and then an amateur, and even an American, took it and decided everything! Meanwhile, despite many flaws, Hawkins came up with a number of irrefutable ideas. According to Hawkins, with the help of stones and holes of Stonehenge, it was possible to predict not only the time of the solstices, but also solar and lunar eclipses. To do this, it was necessary to move the stones along the holes in a certain sequence. Of course, some of Hawkins's statements were not entirely correct, but on the whole, his theory, confirmed by computer calculations, looks harmonious and consistent.
10. Stung by the courage of Hawkins, the British asked the famous astronomer and, concurrently, science fiction writer Fred Hoyle to put the upstart in place. Hoyle by that time had enormous scientific authority. It was he who first used the phrase "Big Bang" to describe the origin of the universe. Hoyle, to his credit, did not "fulfill the order", but wrote his own work, in which he not only confirmed, but also supplemented Hawkins' calculations. In "Decoded Stonehenge," Hawkins described a method for predicting lunar eclipses, but some eclipses did not fall under this method. Hoyle, who slightly complicated the way of moving stones along the holes, turned out that ancient people could predict even those eclipses that are not visible in this area of the Earth.
11. Perhaps Stonehenge was the most extravagant gift in history. In 1915 (yes, to whom the war, and to whom and Stonehenge), the lot, described as "a sacred place to observe and worship the Sun" was bought at auction by Cecil Chubb. He was born into a saddlery family in a village not far from Stonehenge, but he was able, as they say, to break out into the people, and became a successful lawyer. In family life, Chubb succeeded less than in jurisprudence - he got to the auction at the whim of his wife, who sent him to buy either curtains or chairs. I went to the wrong room, heard about Stonehenge, and bought it for £ 6,600 with a starting price of 5,000. Mary Chubb was not inspired by the gift. Three years later, Chubb gave Stonehenge to the government free of charge, but on the condition that admission for the druids would be free, and the British would not pay more than 1 shilling. The government agreed and kept its word (see next fact).
12. Every year on June 21, Stonehenge hosts a music festival in honor of the summer solstice, which attracts tens of thousands of people. In 1985, the festival was banned due to inappropriate behavior of the audience. However, then the British Heritage Foundation, which manages Stonehenge, decided that it was useless to miss the profits. The festival has resumed with an admission ticket for £ 17.5 plus £ 10 for a bus from nearby cities.
13. Since 2010, a systematic archaeological survey of the vicinity of Stonehenge has been carried out. 17 stone and wooden buildings were found, and dozens of tombs and simple burials were found. With the help of a magnetometer, a kilometer from the “main” Stonehenge, the remains of a smaller wooden copy were found. Most likely, these finds confirm the hypothesis that Stonehenge was the largest religious center, a kind of Vatican of the Bronze Age.
14. Massive stones of the outer fence and inner triliths - sarsens - were made relatively close - 30 kilometers north of Stonehenge there is a large accumulation of huge boulders brought by the glacier. There, the necessary slabs were hewn out of the blocks. They were polished already at the construction site. Transporting the 30-ton blocks was, of course, difficult, especially given the fairly rough terrain. Most likely, they were dragged along rollers from logs on skids made, again, from logs. Part of the way could be done along the Avon River. Now it has become shallow, but 5,000 years ago, when the ice age retreated relatively recently, the Avon could well have been fuller. Snow and ice transportation would have been ideal, but research shows the climate was mild back then.
15. It is more difficult to imagine the transportation of blue stones. They are lighter - about 7 tons - but their field is located in the south of Wales, about 300 kilometers in a straight line from Stonehenge. The shortest real path increases the distance to 400 kilometers. But here most of the way can be done by sea and river. The overland part of the road is only 40 kilometers. It is possible that the blue stones were delivered along the so-called Stonehenge Road from Bluhenge, a primitive megalith made of blue stones laid on the ground. In this case, the delivery shoulder would be only 14 kilometers. However, the delivery of building materials most likely required more labor than the actual construction of Stonehenge.
16. The procedure for installing sarsens, apparently, looked like this. The stone was dragged to a pre-dug hole. As the stone was lifted with ropes, one end of it slid into the pit. Then the pit was covered with earth with small stones and tamped. The crossbar was raised up with the help of a scaffold made of logs. This required a fair amount of timber, but it is unlikely that several crossbeams were raised at the same time during construction.
17. The construction of Stonehenge is unlikely to be carried out by more than 2 - 3 thousand people at the same time. Firstly, most of them simply have nowhere to turn around. Secondly, the then population of the whole of England is estimated at 300,000 people. For the delivery of stones, perhaps, they organized a short mobilization at a time when there was no field work. Gerald Hawkins estimated that it took 1.5 million man-days to build Stonehenge. In 2003, a group of archaeologist Parker Pearson discovered a large village 3 kilometers from Stonehenge. The houses are well preserved. Radiocarbon analysis showed that they were built between 2,600 and 2,500 BC. - just when the construction of the stone Stonehenge was being completed. The houses were poorly suited for living - they were like cheap hostels, where people only come to spend the night. In total, Pearson's group dug up about 250 houses that could house 1,200 people. The archaeologist himself suggests that it was possible to squeeze twice as many people into them. The most important thing is that bones with the remains of meat were found, but there are no traces of the economy: sheds, barns, etc. Most likely, Parker discovered the world's first working hostel.
18. The latest methods of researching human remains have revealed a curious detail - people from all over Europe came to Stonehenge. This was determined by the teeth, the enamel of which, as it turned out, documents the entire geography of human life. The same Peter Parker, having discovered the remains of two men, was surprised to learn that they came from the shores of the Mediterranean. Even after 3,000 years, such a journey was not easy and dangerous. Later, the remains of people born in the territory of modern Germany and Switzerland were discovered. It is characteristic that almost all "foreigners" had serious injuries or injuries. Perhaps at Stonehenge, they intended to be healed or relieve their suffering.
19. The popularity of Stonehenge could not but be expressed in copies, imitations and parodies. In the United States, copies of the world famous megalith were created from cars, telephone booths, boats and refrigerators. The most accurate copy was built by Mark Kline. He not only made copies of the Stonehenge stones from expanded polystyrene, but also placed them in exactly the same order as they were installed in the original complex. To prevent the blocks from being blown away by the wind, Kline planted them on steel pipes dug into the ground. When installing, the American consulted with the tour guides of the original Stonehenge.
20. In 2012, British archaeologists examined all the stones of Stonehenge using a 3D scanner. Most of their prey was the graffiti of modern times - until the end of the 1970s, visitors were allowed to pick stones, and at the beginning of the 20th century, they generally rented a chisel. However, among the traces of vandals in the images, it was possible to see ancient drawings, mainly depicting axes and daggers, which is typical for rock art of those times throughout Europe.To the great surprise of archaeologists, one of the slabs contained the autograph of a man who, without scratching the walls, immortalized his name not only in English, but also in world architecture. It's about Sir Christopher Rene. It turned out that the outstanding mathematician, physiologist, but, above all, the architect (there is even an architectural style called “Renov classicism”), nothing human was also alien.
