Seven Wonders: Stonehenge

Stonehenge is hailed as one of the seven wonders of the world. But why is it called a

"wonder" ? With science so advanced as to being able to clone mammals, one would thing their would be rarely any discoveries left to be made. However Stonehenge is shrouded in nothing more than merely theories and guesses based on little or no fact. Being that we do know very little, You have to ask yourself a few questions. What was the purpose of Stonehenge being built, and that being said how was it constructed. There are thousands of ideas and speculations. The more likely correct and accepted theories may just surprise you.

As you know, there has not been even one major structure built in the future nor the past that was ever completed by one man alone. Like Stonehenge they were major undertakings involving many people with many skills. Those who made Stonehenge succeeded in creating an incredibly complex and mysterious structure that lived on long after its creators had passed on. The many aspects of Stonehenge and the processes by which it was built delve into the levels of intelligence and sophistication of the civilizations used to designed and build massive the monument, despite the fact that it is difficult to find out who exactly these people were. They have left very little evidence behind with which we could get a better idea of their everyday lives, their culture, their surroundings, and their affairs with other peoples. The technology and wisdom

that are inevitably required in constructing such a monument show that these prehistoric peoples had had more expertise than expected.

The planning and assembling of Stonehenge took a very long time ( 1000 years, from 2900 B.C. to 1600 B.C.), and not one but many different groups of people were

involved in the process. How they came about plays an important role in understanding them. Some of the first men to come to England that are identified as Stonehenge architects came when the massive mountains of sheet ice that were then blocking England and France melted around 12,000 B.C. After their safe journey through the barrens, people came from the mainland, and had great influence on those already living there.

The first Tribe involved in the construction of Stonehenge was the Windmill Hill Tribe who arrived in the Neolithic Era of time. These people were semi-nomadic agriculturalists who mainly just fed and maintained their flocks of cattle, sheep, goats, and wild dogs. Not only were they agriculturalist, but they also hunted, mined for flint, crafted and bartered axes, and could almost be called early industrialists. The Windmill Hill people had a very strong ties and beliefs in their religion with a great respect for their dead and their ancestors. They have exceptional collective graves, in the form of long burrows, or long manmade piles of dirt, sometimes 400 feet long. Many riches such as food, tools, and pottery were buried with the dead.

The next group to contribute to Stonehenge was the Beaker people; known for the

beaker-like pottery they would frequently bury with their dead. These people did not practice the ritual of collective burials, rather single or double burials, and the dead were accompanied by more items used as weapons during the time, such as daggers and battleaxes. These single burials were in the form of round barrows. The Beaker people were well organized, active, and powerful, and also probably more territorial. They practiced commerce with other cultures, and their graves give an impression of there being an aristocracy in the society.

The last major group to put time into the construction of Stonehenge was the Wessex Tribe. They arrived on Salisbury plain around 1450 B.C., and were involved in building the most prominent part of Stonehenge, the great stone circles. These people were well organized, and probably less aggressive or assertive than their predecessors, while more industrious with the technology they used to farm as well as build the great monuments. The people of Wessex were less concerned with war and centered rather around art, poetry, and trade. Philosophically and scientifically the Wessex were far ahead of the rest of the world, some rival their ingenuity to that of the Ancient Greeks. In the graves of their chieftains, were goods such as daggers, bows, and various other ornaments. Their access to such luxuries can perhaps be attributed to their great international barters who probably traded with people from the Mediterranean Sea area. They built the final phase of Stonehenge, and brought about many cultural changes to the monument such as giving the monument visual magnificence, through artistic designs portraying the afterlife, and more astronomical precision.

It is important to understand the problems and great strife that was encountered during theassembling of Stonehenge. As well as to understand the process the surrounding environment was put through in order to start the great and unsurpassed undertaking. By the time Stonehenge was built, the landscape around the area on Salisbury Plain was rather open with more tilling soil and open prairie land, and less woodland. Underneath the first few feet of soil on Salisbury Plain there was a large layer of hard chalk, which made putting together rudimentary structures somewhat easier for the people of the era .

The first phase of construction for Stonehenge was that of the earth monument, which consisted of a circular bank of dirt with a ditch running along the outside of the bank. There are two breaks in the ditch and bank, forming two entrances, and in addition there are 56 Aubrey Holes, named for John Aubrey, their discoverer, in a circle just inside the earth bank. This first phase, Stonehenge I, built by the Windmill Hill people, took from about 2,950 B.C. to 2,900 B.C. to construct.

The second phase of Stonehenge brings on the building a large intricate wooden

monument. This stage is backed by evidence of wooden stabilizing poles which are scattered all along the project area. There also seems to have been a roughly octagonal shaped structure at the southern entrance of the earth monument, and a more complex foundation around the northwestern entrance. The Avenue which is made up of a pair of straight, long, and parallel trenches was also said by many to have been part of this second phase of Stonehenge as well. Stonehenge II has been be linked to the Beaker people, approximately between the years 2,900 and 2,350 B.C.

The third and most architecturally impressive stage of the landmark is that of the stone constructions. The builders