Stonehenge is a megalithic monument located in the Salisbury plain in England. Perhaps, it is one of the most famous megalithic monuments in the world of this type. Similar structures that consist of several vertically standing stones that form a ring or a coil can be found throughout the whole Europe, in the Caucasus and in other parts of the world. In the same Great Britain and Ireland such cromlechs are often found. It is likely that these cromlechs represented a unified system on the territory of Britain.
Stonehenge makes up a moat around it and an earthen banking area of around 100 meters in diameter. There is an Altar Stone in the centre, which is a large-tonnage monolith made of sandstone. It is surrounded by 5 pairs of stones with jumpers on the top (trilithons) that have a horse-shoe shape and it is open towards the northeast. The horse-shoe base consists of the biggest stones and the edges of the horseshoes them go down.
The horseshoe is arranged in a ring of the so-called bluestones. They are tinged with blue at the shears and become dark blue when you make them wet. They are followed by the sarsen trilithons which form a 33 meter ring in diameter. Generally there are 30 stones of that type, the 13 curve stones preserved together with the top stones. They were linked using complex jointing. These stones are surrounded by two concentric arrays of holes (the Q and R Holes). Closer to the ramparts and moats there is a circle of 56 pits, known as the Aubrey holes, named by the surname of its investigator, who discovered them. In the south the small entrance is located but the main entrance is considered to be northeast the one that faces the alley limited by parallel moats and ramparts, which leads to the River Avon. There a so-called Heelstone standing in the alley.
There is no exact date for Stonehenge; however, a lot of archeologists believe that the first construction phase that included the moat and the ramparts is about 3000 B.C., still the most recent signs of human activity held in this place is dated back to 8000 B.C. About 2600 B.C. the bluestones are being made up. It is necessary to mention that the place where the bluestone is generated was only recently discovered, in 1923. This is the Preseli region in the on the southwest of the Wales, it’s 200 km away from the Stonehenge. It is likely that the Altar Stone was brought from that place. The way they were transported remains a mystery for the archeologists and historians who vary different techniques: this could be wooden graders, a kind of a sled, a method of so-called “walking stones” and they also suggested that they could transport the blocks by rivers. The following 200 years the sarsen trilithons were set up, the northeastern entrance was enlarged and the alley was built up.
The function of Stonehenge also stays a mystery. There are a lot of versions, the most common are: it is closely oriented with the sun and the moon in different directions, which is no mere coincidence. Together with these, there also exist some fantastic versions: for example, the Stonehenge is a landing site for the alien ships or that this is the ruins left from the atomic electro station of the Atlantean civilization.
