Stonehenge

DRAFT 2.

STONEHENGE.

The ruins of Stonehenge are placed in Wiltshire's county; 48 kilometers separate them to the north of the channel of the spot and to 13 km to Salisbury's northwest in England.

According to several investigations, the Stonehenge was constructed in several phases for 600 years, it is believed that between the years of 2200 and 1600 B.C., and the majority of these stones are put in agreement by the positions of the Moon and of the Sun.

Stonehenge could be constructed by the Roman culture but also by the Celt since all the architectural influences that Stonehenge had can be found in monuments and previous buildings of Wales and Scotland. In addition, there exist popular beliefs of which the set of enormous rocks of the Stonehenge was a circle of petrified giants, but at the same time one believed that the rocks had been taken by the magician Merlin, or that the construction had been an extraterrestrial beings work.

These ruins are formed by rocks of different sizes of height that are between 3 meters up to 8 meters, weight from 20 tons up to 30 tons and sizes of width between 2 meters up to 5 meters.

Stonehenge is shaped by big blocks of stone distributed in four concentric circumferences. Exterior, of thirty meters of diameter, is formed by big rectangular stones of sandstone that, originally, were crowned by lintels, also of stone, remaining nowadays only seven in his site. Inside this exterior row one finds another circle of smaller blocks of bluish sandstone. This one encloses a structure with form horse-shoe constructed by stones of sandstone of the same color. In his interior it remains a slab of sandstone micácea known as the Altar.

The whole set is surrounded by a circular pit that measures 104 meters of diameter. Inside this space there raises a bench-cover in which there appear 56 pits known as Aubrey's holes. It is composed of a great circle of big megaliths which construction is dated towards 2500 B.C. The circle of sand that surrounds the megaliths is considered to be the most ancient part of the monument, having being dated on 3100 B.C.

In his beginning it was a circular monument of ritual character surrounded by a bank and a pit, in a way similar to many others placed in the south of England.

Probably the biggest rocks, the calls sarsen, they were to approximately 30-50 kilometers, in what now it is England, where the sandstone is a common material.

Stonehenge was in use as religious temple, funeral monument or astronomic observatory that was serving to predict the stations. In there have been found 240 burials of human remains before cremated, dated between 3030 and 2340 B.C. In view of little number of burials for a period so length, it thinks that it is not a question of a cemetery for the generality of the dead men but for certain select persons. For the pagans,

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