Normally, rainfall waters the grass growing around the standing stones and during the dryer months of summer stewards use long hoses to keep the earth moist and the grass green. In the summer of 2014, however, the hoses used were too short to reach the whole site. Answer and Explanation: Stonehenge is considered to be sacred because it is a prehistoric burial ground dating back as far as 3,000 BCE. The dry summer of 2014 revealed the faint outline of the missing megaliths proving that Stonehenge had once been a complete circle.Recent studies conducted by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project (2010-2014) have revealed that Stonehenge was not an isolated structure on the edge of Salisbury Plain, but the center of a complex and widespread arrangement of ritual monuments that had grown and expanded over time. Apart from its architectural significance, Stonehenge holds a place of sacred importance to many. The stones that make up the massive circle are thought to have been collected from distant places, some as far as 150 miles away, and brought to this … The current appearance of Stonehenge is reminiscent of what the site might have looked like thousands of years ago.More than nine hundred stone rings exist in the British Isles and twice that number may originally have been built. The alignment also made it clear that whoever built Stonehenge had precise astronomical knowledge of the path of the sun and, moreover, must have known before construction began precisely where the sun rose at dawn on midsummer's morning while standing on the future site of the monument. We need you to answer this question! During Period III (2075 BC), the Bluestones were taken down and the enormous Sarsen stones - which still stand today - were erected. It is difficult to precisely date the stone rings because of the scarcity of datable remains associated with them, but it is known that they were constructed during the Neolithic period, which in southern England lasted from approximately 4000 to 2000 BC.In the summer of 2014 a perplexing question regarding Stonehenge – whether the arrangement of standing stones once formed a complete circle – was fortuitously answered. An extraordinary source for the study of prehistory, it holds a pivotal place in the development of archaeology.
These megalithic structures are more accurately called rings rather than circles because they often display non-circular elliptical shapes; Stonehenge, however, is circular. Stonehenge: Why is it so special? These stones, averaging eighteen feet in height and weighing twenty-five tons, were transported from near the Avebury stone rings twenty miles to the north. It was an astronomical observation device used to predict, in advance of their occurrence, particular periods in the annual cycle when the earth energies were most highly influenced by the sun, moon and stars. This point needs to be made because, as I suspect, with Stonehenge and many other such monuments, it was the … It has been estimated that the three phases of the construction required more than thirty million hours of labor. Seventeen previously unknown wooden or stone structures as well as dozens of burial mounds were discovered. Stonehenge is the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world, while Avebury is the largest in the world. The circle was aligned with the midsummer sunrise, the midwinter sunset, and the most southerly rising and northerly setting of the moon.Copyright ©1982-2020 Martin Gray, ALL RIGHTS RESERVEDStonehenge was a structure with multiple purposes.