Did you know that Stonehenge was periodically added to,
changed and rearranged for around 1,500 years?
Hello and welcome to World History Encyclopedia! My name is Kelly and today's video is all about
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Stonehenge is a site that dates back to the Neolithic Period in circa 3000 BCE on the
Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, in southern England. It wasn't a site built in the
Late Neolithic Period which then sat stagnant for 5,000 years, oh no. The site was built,
changed and altered numerous times across approximately 1,500 years. The large circular site
consisting of numerous large and smaller stones went through a number of changes and additions
until circa 1500 BCE, after which no further construction has been identified. Today,
it is an incredibly popular tourist destination in England and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The present Stonehenge went through a whole bunch of construction phases before it turned into the
site we would recognise today. The first phase of its construction dates to around 3000 BCE,
and during this phase, what may have once been 56 timber posts were placed in a ring
around the site and the remaining holes are known as Holes. It is generally believed that
timber posts were once placed in these holes, but recently it's been thought that perhaps once
upright stones were placed in them instead. During its first 300 to 500 years, Stonehenge was
actually used for cremation burials with 64 cremations and perhaps around 150 individuals
having been identified; this makes it the largest Neolithic cemetery in the British Isles.
From the beginning of the site's history, there was also what is known as the Heel Stone,
which is a huge boulder that wasn't shaped and that stands away from the main site but
is surrounded by a small circular ditch. During the second phase of the construction of Stonehenge
in around 2500 BCE is where the stones came into it all. During this phase, there were two major
changes to the site: the incorporation of the huge sarsen stones and the smaller blue stones.
The large sarsen stones are generally accepted to have come from Marlborough Down, about 19 miles or
around 30 kilometres north of the site, and they are incredibly heavy; they are large sandstones
that average about 20 tons and they were shaped. When the sarsen stones were first added to the
site, the 30 outer sarsens would have made an unbroken ring around the inner stones and they
were all topped with horizontal lintels, however now many have fallen over with only six of the
outer sarsen lintels remaining. The lintel is the horizontal stone placed atop two vertical sarsens,
and a mortice and tenon joint was used to lock the lintels in place. In a mortice and tenon joint,
the protruding stick (the tongue) is cut to fit the mortice hole exactly, which made it
a tricky joint since the measurements had to be perfect and it's a technique
very common in woodworking, that was used mostly to join two pieces at a right angle. There was
also an inner horseshoe created out of sarsens and these were free-standing triads of stones
known as trilithons. Of course, there were also the 56 blue stones that were brought to the site;
these blue stone pillars weren't just any stones that could be found lying around, no,
they travelled 200 kilometres or around 124 miles from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, Wales and
they average a weight of around two tons so it wouldn't have been an easy journey to have made.
The blue stones were erected in a double arc between the outer sarsen circle and the sarsen
trilithon horseshoe in the middle. A trilithon or triloth is a structure of two vertical stones
with a third placed horizontally along the top which is known as the lintel.
In addition to the sarsens and blue stones, four stones known as station stones were
also erected during this phase of construction. The four station stones marked the corners of a
perfect rectangle with its center point also being the center point of the whole monument.
We're still not 100% sure about the reason for the alignment of these four station stones,
but they do mirror the solstice alignment of the other stones- something we will get to very soon,
and they may have also marked lunar alignment. 200 to 300 years later, so between circa 2300
and 2200 BCE, during phases three and four of the site, the blue stones were rearranged
until they formed an inner circle between the sarsen circle and sarsen trilithon horseshoe,
and an oval in the middle of the site around the altar stone which is now a partially buried stone
beneath two fallen stones. During this time, the avenue was also constructed,
which is a walkway that links the henge to the River Avon. After this rearrangement, there was
no more major changes made to the site, although during the bronze age between 1750 and 1500 BCE,
four of the sarsens were carved into with hundreds of daggers and axes. Axes of the same shape as
these carvings were found in the archaeological record and from burial mounds around Stonehenge.
The purpose of Stonehenge is still quite a mystery and, because of this,
many different theories have been suggested throughout the years, including a Druid temple,
a calendar, a place for kings to be crowned or a place for ancestor worship, just to name a few.
Before the stones were erected, it was used as a place for cremation burial but in phase two of the
construction in circa 2500 BCE, and the erection of the sarsens and blue stones, they were placed
with great precision to line up with the sun's movements on midwinter and midsummer. You may
recall the Heel Stone that was placed on its own on the outskirts of the site during the earliest
phase of the site, but in fact there is a pit next to the Heel Stone that suggests there may have
been another large boulder of similar size next to it, that would have framed the midsummer sunrise.
On midwinter's day towards the south-west, the sun would have set between the two upright sarsens
in the largest trilothon of the inner horseshoe, although half of this structure has since fallen
over and so the effect has been lost. The stones that would have framed the sun's movements during
the solstices were the most carefully worked and the entire site was carefully thought out
in relation to the solstices. With all this in mind, it is generally agreed that stonehenge was
a temple aligned with the sun's movements, but why and what happened at the site during these
times of year is a mystery. Why do you think Stonehenge was built? Let us know what you
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