President Barack Obama made an unscheduled visit to
the historic site at Stonehenge on his way from the NATO summit in Newport. The
first monument at the site on Salisbury Plain was probably built around 5,000
years ago, to mark where prehistoric people buried their cremated dead.
It was only later that the enormous sandstone
sarsens and smaller bluestones were set up in the centre, transported up to 150
miles. Historians believe the stone circle may have been a temple, a burial
ground, an astronomical calendar or all three.
Although it appears isolated, it is actually just
one part of a vast system of ancient earthworks on what would have been an
unusually open landscape when Britain was an island of forests.
Despite its significance, it continued deteriorating
badly until the turn of the last century, when passionate campaigns began to
save it after it was gifted to the nation in 1918. Historians still disagree
over the function of Stonehenge, which was far more extensive when it was
assembled thousands of years ago on Salisbury Plan.
Built between 3,000 and 1,600 BC, the stone circle
may have been a temple, a burial ground, an astronomical calendar or all three,
scholars say. No one knows for sure either how ancient Britons got
the stones, which weigh up to 45 tonnes, to the site or what they used them
for.
Source: English Heritage. Photo: AP
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