Stonehenges: Megalithic
Europe
“Megaliths”
Carnac, France
Newgrange, Ireland
Avebury, England
Stonehenge, England
Meanings of the Stones
*Photos Courtesy of Windows to the Universe: http://www.windows.ucar.edu,
http://knowth.com/index.htm, http://www.sacredsites.com/2nd56/133.html,
http://www.sacredsites.com/1st30/stonehen.html
Megaliths
A megalithic structure is a prehistoric monument made of
large stones. Megalith comes from Greek; "mega" means
big and "lithos" means stone.
Megalithic structures can be found across Europe in Great
Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Sweden,
Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Corsica, and Malta. These
structures can also be found in Russia, the Americas,
Africa, and Asia.
Even though separated by great distances, many of the
structures look alike and can be separated into three
categories:
– Menhir structures-the upright or standing stones. Standing stones
are often arranged in circles or lines.
– Dolmens-three or more upright stones with a stone that balances
on top. Dolmen structures acted as a burial ground. A Cairn is a
dry-stone encasement of one or several burial chambers.
– Tumulus is a mound of earth, grass, and stones that covers a
tomb. Whereas the Dolmen and Cairn provide access to the burial
chamber, a Tumulus is totally closed off by dirt.
Carnac
The Carnac area has many different types of
stones and ancient markings.
Carnac may also be the site of the world's oldest
megaliths, the earliest stones dating from
around 4,500 B.C.
The Carnac region contains many Menhir or
upright stones.
– The Menhir stones are sometimes found in a line and
sometimes in a circle.
– They can be anywhere from 0.8 meters high to 6.5
meters high and rows lined with stones can extend for
distances of over a kilometer.
– An enclosure of Menhirs is called a Cromleclh.
Standing Stones (Menhirs)
from Carnac
Dolmens & Tumulus
The area is also home to Dolmens, burial places formed
out of large stones.
Archeologists have found many bone fragments in these
structures and so can be almost certain they were used
as burial grounds.
Dolmens would have a funeral chamber where people
were buried and an access to that chamber.
– They basically look like a stone fort.
A Tumulus is a huge mound of earth and stones that
covers a burial place.
– It looks like a well-formed hill of dirt, now covered with grass.
– A Tumulus didn't allow any access to the burial places.
– It is thought that sometimes a Dolmen burial ground would be
covered with a Tumulus.
Dolmen Structure
Dolmen at Carnac
Tumulus
Silbury Hill, Avebury, England
Newgrange, Ireland*
The Megalithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange
was built about 3200 BC.
The mound covers an area of over one acre and
is surrounded by 97 kerbstones, some of which
are richly decorated with megalithic art.
The 19 meter long inner passage leads to a
cruciform chamber with a corbelled roof.
It is estimated that the construction of the
Passage Tomb at Newgrange would have taken
a work force of 300 at least 20 years.
*Information and photos from http://knowth.com/index.htm
County Meath, Ireland
http://www.meathtourism.ie/historicmeath/hm2main.htm
Newgrange site
Newgrange Megalithic Passage
Tomb
Decorations
The large stones surrounding and inside
the Passage Tombs are decorated with
Megalithic Art such as spirals, concentric
circles, triangles, zigzags and images
which have been interpreted as the sun,
moon and the human face.
Newgrange
The winter solstice at
the main entrance (top)
illuminates the chamber
within (bottom).
Roofbox (Where winter solstice sun shines through)
Avebury, England
Avebury is a composite construction that was added to
and altered during several periods.
As the site currently exists, the great circle consists of a
grass-covered, chalk-stone bank that is 1,396 feet in
diameter (427 meters) and 20 feet high (6 meters) with a
deep inner ditch having four entrances at the cardinal
compass points.
Just inside the ditch, which was clearly not used for
defensive purposes, lies a grand circle of massive and
irregular sarsen stones enclosing approximately 28
acres of land.
This circle, originally composed of at least 98 stones but
now having only 27, itself encloses two smaller stone
circles, each being about 340 feet (104 meters) in
diameter.
Avebury, England
Construction of Avebury
The two inner circles are believed to have been
constructed first, around 2600 BC, while the large outer
ring and earthwork dates from 2500 BC.
The construction of the Avebury complex must have
required enormous efforts on the part of the local
inhabitants.
The sarsen stones, ranging in height from nine to over
twenty feet and weighing as much as 40 tons, were first
hewn from bedrock and then dragged or sledded a
distance of nearly two miles from their quarry site.
These stones were then erected and anchored in the
ground to depths between 6 and 24 inches.
The excavation of the encircling ditch required an
estimated 200,000 tons of rock to be chipped and
scraped away with the crudest of stone tools and antler
picks (there is some evidence that this ditch was once
filled with water, thereby giving the inner stone rings the
appearance of being set upon an island).
Overview of Averbury
Standing Stones
The Swinden stone-marks the north
Entrance.
The Cove-stones in the inner circle.
Stonehenge, England
Stonehenge, the most visited and well known of the
British stone rings, is a composite structure built during
three distinct periods.
In Period I (radiocarbon-dated to 3100 BC), Stonehenge
was a circular ditch with an internal bank.
The circle, 320 feet in diameter, had a single entrance,
56 mysterious holes around its perimeter (with remains
in them of human cremations), and a wooden sanctuary
in the middle.
The circle was aligned with the midsummer sunrise, the
midwinter sunset, and the most southerly rising and
northerly setting of the moon.
http://www.sacredsites.com/1st30/stonehen.html
Period I
Stonehenge
The view
includes the
circular bank,
ditch, and
counterscarp
bank. A number
of the Aubrey
holes are also
visible.
The Heel Stone can be seen in the lower
right.
Stonehenge Period II
Period II (2150 BC) saw the replacement of the
wooden sanctuary with two circles of
"bluestones" (dolerite stone with a bluish tint),
the widening of the entrance, the construction of
an entrance avenue marked by parallel ditches
aligned to the midsummer sunrise, and the
erection, outside the circle, of the thirty-five ton
"Heel Stone".
The eighty bluestones, some weighing as much
as four tons, were transported from the Prescelly
Mountains in Wales, 240 miles away.
Period II
Bluestones & Sarsens
Bluestones
Sarsen
lintel
If the Bluestones were
brought from the Preseli
Mountains of Wales, it
would have been difficult, if
not impossible, to boat the
stones on rafts down the
Bristol Channel, as some
archaeologists have
suggested.
Dragging them on
sleds over rough ground
from the landing to the site
would have been an even
more demanding task.
Period III (2075-1100 BC)
During Period III (2075 BC), the bluestones were taken
down and the enormous "sarsen" stones - which still
stand today - were erected.
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.
Sometime between 1500 and 1100 BC, approximately
sixty of the bluestones were reset in a circle immediately
inside the sarsen circle, and another nineteen were
placed in a horseshoe pattern, also inside the circle.
It has been estimated that the three phases of the
construction required more than thirty million hours of
labor. It is unlikely that Stonehenge was functioning
much after 1100 BC.
Period III
Period III
Building Stages
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_stonehenge/stonehenge_flash.html
Constructing the Monument
This drawing shows how a pit was dug with three straight sides
and one angled. These stones were slid into place on rollers,
and eventually rocks were put around the base to hold it firmly.
Placing the lintel
This illustration of the laborious process of raising and
placing the lintel shows how the workers used platforms
and crossed timbers to support the lintel as it was
levered up inches at a time.
Meanings of the Stones
Ancient Route Markers?
Female Anatomy?
Religious Centers?
Astronomical Observatories?
Ancient Route Markers?
Stones connected important sites across the
landscape.
Were used to signify territories and the areas
occupied by “clans”.
The Ley lines. Leys are straight tracks or paths
which connect up ancient and sacred sites in
straight lines which cover the countryside.
These lines had been totally forgotten, and were
only rediscovered in the 20th century. After it had
been accepted that megalithic sites could form
short alignments, the idea was extended
dramatically by a retired amateur antiquarian
called Alfred Watkins, in the 1920s.
Female Anatomy?
Feb. 28, 2003 —The design of Stonehenge, the 4,800year-old monument in southwestern England, was based
on female sexual anatomy, according to a paper in the
current Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Anthony Perks, a professor emeritus of obstetrics and
gynecology at the University of British Colombia in
Vancouver noticed how the inner stone trilithons were
arranged in a more elliptical, or egg-shaped, pattern than
a true circle. Comparing the layout with the shape of
female sexual organs showed surprising parallels.
In support of the theory, the body of a sacrificial child
was found buried at the center of the circles at nearby
Woodhenge, suggesting both monuments followed
similar layouts. Perks even speculates a child's body
might lie buried at the center of Stonehenge.
An obstetrician sees the layout of the female reproducitive system when he looks at
Stonehenge, seen up close in the above photograph. He theorizes that Stonehenge
overall represents an Earth Mother goddess.
Religion?
Megalithic mounds such as Newgrange entered Irish mythology as
sídhe or fairy mounds. Newgrange was said to be the home of
Oenghus, the god of love.
In the seventeenth century, well before the development of
archaeological dating methods and accurate historical research, the
antiquarian John Aubrey surmised that Stonehenge and other
megalithic structures were constructed by the Druids.
While this idea (and a whole collection of related fanciful notions)
has become deeply ingrained in the uneducated minds of popular
culture from the seventeenth century to the present age, it is a
matter of certain knowledge that the Druids had nothing whatsoever
to do with the construction of the stone rings.
The Celtic society in which the Druid priesthood flourished came into
existence in Britain only after 300 BC, more than 1500 years after
the last stone rings were constructed.
Regardless, the stones obviously had ritual significance given the
extent of the building and human cremations found in association
with them.
Astronomical Observatory?
We do know that many of the structures have an
astronomical alignment.
Some are oriented towards the solstice points on the
horizon (points where the Sun rises or sets on the
summer or winter solstice).
Some structures point to certain stars or the Moon's
rising or setting on special days. Others point to Venus.
Still others are aligned with the cardinal directions of
north, south, east and west.
The alignment of megalithic structures is of prime
concern to those who study the structures.
Because alignment can be so complicated, structures
must be taken case by case.
Some alignments point to social and religious beliefs of
the community, other alignments seem to suggest
deliberate sky observing and astronomical activity.
Alignment at Stonehenge
Summer Solstice
A diagram showing how the
Sun moves through the sky on
the Summer solstice.
Summer solstice at Stonehenge
Stonehenge
From inner circle to heel stone.
Photograph of the sun rising
over the heel stone.
Astronomical Observations from
Newgrange
The winter solstice sunrise behind a standing stone, photographed from the
entrance of the passage tomb at Newgrange.
Winter Solstice
A diagram showing how the Sun
moves through the sky on the
Winter solstice.
Light through the roof box at
Newgrange at Winter Solstice
The Enduring Mystery of the
Megalithic sites
Copyright © Clive Ruggles, University of Leicester.
America’s Stonehenge
North Salem, New Hampshire
http://www.stonehengeusa.com/