What's a Henge?

There are a pile of stones on Salisbury plain that poses questions, of which still remain...

Stone henge is one of the oldest known structures built on the British Isles, and from it we can see that our ancestors weren't a primitive as we may have once thought. In similar ways, it's like us thinking back 100 years and thinking how primitive they are. But individually they were masters of their craft, and as intelligent, if not more intelligent than their descendants. The superiority status that comes with the podium of knowing to not knowing is how creative intelligence is judged, and that is clearly wrong. Knowing of something and not knowing of something comes down to circumstances and has nothing to do with brain power. So in many ways, our forebears were more intelligent, for the population was smaller and the progress of science and understanding advanced in unsettled times regardless. So anyway, stone henge is not only an edifice or structure which has seen the sun and moon more times than most other man-made structures, but it is a look at the hands and minds of our forebears, which enables us to better grasp their minds, nature and lifestyles. This is why the structure is a hotly debated topic, not only for how it was constructed, but why it was.

As the years of its creation and modifications passed, people who ranged the land along the west coast of Salisbury would have marvelled at the monument nestled discretely on the brow of an unimposing hill. The area around would have been woodland, and where the henge was it would have been a clearing. It was built in stages in prehistory, as it has been identified from archaeological digs that wooden posts were erected in the area from as far back as 8500 bc. The henge really begun to take on its form from around 3000 bc from the establishment of a ring of center stones. It was extended a few hundred years later with the addition of an outer ring. The henge is made up of two types of stones; the sarsens (the tall standing uprights) and the 'blue stones' (sitting on top to form arches) stones which can be traced as coming from Wales.

Since the beginning of accountable history, the stones arrangement as well as their meaning have posed some very striking questions on historians, archaeologists as well as anthropologists, none of which have been dealt with in the same way. The theories have evolved over time and the evidence have forced a number to be rethought. The main question for instance, when seeing the stones for the first time is how they made it. Especially after discovering the origin for a large number of the stones – hundreds of miles away! It is of my opinion that barges of some kind were used to bridge the gap between Wales and southern England and then rollers were used to transport the large stones over land. This would seem to use the least amount of energy in transportation; something that would be essential to the success of such an ambitious task. Alternatively, as it has been hypothesised, a series of canals or streams were used to tow the stones down the bank. Another theory spoke of glaciers bringing the stones down from Wales to Amesbury, or even just depositing them on the bank near Western super-mare. The thing is, no one is too sure of any of the theories, as they are just theories and cannot tell us any more than that. In any case, science and data has told us a lot more of the stones and it has dismissed some of the more wacky ideas about them.

The future of the stones is likely to be assured for the next thousand years or so. Being part of our collective history, it will not only give us a brief glimpse back into time at an earlier world and a younger people, but pose as a symbol of roots and foundations to the world and to the very real inevitability of time. What legacy will we leave, and will they understand us as little as we understand the neolithic people?