NAME: ELIZABETH VEGA

UNIT 14: WRITING 3

STONEHENGE

Stonehenge is the most famous prehistoric monument in England, if not the world, and
yet it remains shrouded in mystery. Both its origins and use have puzzled archaeologists
for centuries.
It’s located on a flat plain north of Salisbury, England, Stonehenge is a circular formation
of massive stones (the largest are 30 feet tall and weigh 25 tons). Scientists believe it
was a monument marking a massive burial site that was built between four and five
thousand years ago. No one has ever been able to figure out how or why the monument
was built—or whether it was even built by humans; archaeologists this past month
uncovered evidence that at least two of the stones had been in place long before humans
dwelled on Earth, shares Forbes.
There are fundamentally three strands of theories about Stonehenge of how and why it
was built:
-The Archaeologist's viewpoint is based on observation, digs in and around Stonehenge,
carbon dating and conclusions at other Neolithic sites all around the British Isles.
- The Archaeoastronomer's viewpoint stems from the fact that nearly all the stones at
Stonehenge are precisely sited and correlate to significant events of the planets orbit like
solstices. A suggestion that Stonehenge is perhaps a place where ancient astronomy
took place, perhaps part driven by the need to predict agricultural seasons.
-The New Age viewpoint is a loose term we have used to summarise a spiritual input.
Religion for want of a better term in Neolithic times had similarities to pagan religions
nowadays.
But both of these mysteries seem to have been solved by an archeologist who published
his findings not long ago in the Journal of British Archaeology. Seems the two largest
stones weren’t placed by humans but had been in place for millions of years before
humans decided to create a monument around them.