Stonehenge

Stonehenge is the third oldest Neolithic site. It is located 13 km from Salisbury, in Wiltshire, south of England. It is thought that this work was erected by the ancestors of the Britons, a little known people living 2400 years BC, between the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age. Stonehenge is thus anterior to the pyramids of Egypt.

The oldest part (the 56 holes Aubrey located on the periphery of the site and forming a circle around the central monument) would date back to around 3000 BC while the most recent stones were erected no later than 1600 before Our era.

The Stonehenge site is located in an open and well-worn place far from any stone quarry, so one wonders where these huge stones came from and how were they erected? After decades of research, archaeologists have come to the conclusion that the 33-tonne stones were quarried from a quarry 40 km away and probably pulled on wooden sledges to Stonehenge. The small raised stones called blue stones weighing 4 tons come from Preseli, a quarry located 300 km away, in southern Wales. It is possible that the stones were transported by sea on large large flat-bottomed pirogues acting as rafts.

As for the erection of stones on the site, experiments have shown that with the installation of wooden scaffolding, a ramp and a workforce consisting of a few dozen men, the ancestors of the Britons were able to erect this monument with all the precision required. In total it is estimated that several hundred men worked on this project for several years, accumulating several million hours of work, a real business.

More surprisingly, tombs containing the skeletons of 6 archers were discovered at Stonehenge. After investigation, it turned out that these skeletons dated back to 2300 BC and men from South Wales. They would have been involved either in the transport of stones or in the construction of the monument. One of these archers shows no signs of violent death or illness. His analysis, as well as that of the other cremated bones, made an important discovery on the function of Stonehenge