
Today, visitors experience Stonehenge as a wonder of ancient achievement & an enduring symbol of mystery. But Stonehenge was built as a temple
- a place of ceremony, of burial & of celebration. The first Stonehenge was simple
- just a circular ditch & bank, perhaps with a few small upright timber posts or stones
- & was constructed about 5, 000 years ago, in the period of prehistory known as the Neolithic or New Stone Age. By about 2500 BC more & much larger stones had been brought to the site, huge sarsen stones from north Wiltshire & smaller bluestones from west Wales. This marked the beginning of over 800 years of construction & alteration stretching into the period known as the Bronze Age, when the first metal tools & weapons were made. By this time Stonehenge was the greatest temple in Britain, its banks, ditches & standing stones arranged in sophisticated alignments to mark the passage of the sun & the changing seasons. But Stonehenge was just one part of a remarkable ancient landscape. Hundreds of burial mounds clustered on the surrounding hilltops, while smaller temples & other ceremonial sites were built nearby. Stonehenge & these other ancient structures form an archaeological landscape so rich that it is classified as a World Heritage Site. Stonehenge has inspired people to study & interpret it for centuries. Medieval writers suggested magic as an explanation of how it was created; early antiquarians, like William Stukeley in the early 18th century, guessed
- wrongly- that the Druids had built it. Archaeology still provides the best hope of answering some of these fundamental questions about Stonehenge: how & when it was built, who built it &, perhaps most difficult of all, why it was built, But even with the evidence that archaeology & modern science provide, not all these questions can be answered. Stonehenge will always keep some of its secrets.