stonehenge

Stonehenge

I have been fortunate to visit Stonehenge 3 times.

In 1985 on my first European trip.
In 2016 we extensively toured England, Scotland and Wales.
In 2018 we visited Stonehenge during our Operatif Music Lovers tour of England and Wales.

Stonehenge's ring of standing stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England.
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.

Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records. Many aspects of Stonehenge remain subject to debate. A number of myths surround the stones.
The site, specifically the great trilithon, the encompassing horseshoe arrangement of the five central trilithons, the heel stone, and the embanked avenue,
are aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the opposing sunrise of the summer solstice.

A recent new theory has suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing — the primeval equivalent of Lourdes.
They argue that this accounts for the high number of burials in the area and for the evidence of trauma deformity in some of the graves.
However, they do concede that the site was probably multifunctional and used for ancestor worship as well.

There are other hypotheses and theories, one suggesting that Stonehenge may have been built as a symbol of "peace and unity",
indicated in part by the fact that at the time of its construction, Britain's Neolithic people were experiencing a period of cultural unification.