Stonehenge World Heritage Site in Wiltshire
Introduction to Stonehenge, managed by English Heritage
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of a ring of standing stones, with each standing stone around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide and weighs around 25 tons. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds.
Archaeologists believe it was constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones were raised between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as early as 3000 BC.
One of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom, Stonehenge is regarded as a British cultural icon. It has been a legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument since 1882 when legislation to protect historic monuments was first successfully introduced in Britain. The site and its surroundings were added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage; the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.
Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at least another five hundred years.
My thoughts on the origins of Stonehenge
I know some answers as to how and why Stonehenge was probably built, but to me I think we still have much more to work out, so many more of those answers to find. Locating suitable blocks of stone and transporting them vast distances with no access to modern technology is an incredible feat of engineering. As for the why, even if you accept the logic behind what it was for, why those types of rock, especially when they could only be found so very far away? These days if a shop 5 miles away does good ice cream and a shop 10 miles away does amazing ice cream, most of us humans would make do with the good ice cream! So why pick the parts for Stonehenge so far away? Surely the amount of hours work it took to move them to that part of Wiltshire must have been very complex and extremely costly?