No place has generated so much speculation
and wild theories as the standing stones of Stonehenge. After driving
for miles through the rolling hills and plains of the English countryside
the sight of this unusual structure makes people gasp. A walk around
it only provokes more strange feelings. There's a sense that this
is something very important. It taunts us with it's mystery. For over
5000 years it has stood silent vigil over the earth. It has been excavated,
x-rayed, measured, and surveyed. Yet despite all that has been learned
about its age and construction, its purpose still remains one of the
great mysteries of the world. Taken at sunrise, sunset and mid day,
these are quality images, some on 4 x 5 film for exceptional quality.
An excellent image to illustrate concepts of time, mystery, stability
and craftsmanship!
Why Stonehenge was built is unknown, though it probably
was constructed as a place of worship of some kind. Notions that
it was built as a temple for Druids or Romans are unsound, because
neither was in the area until long after Stonehenge was last constructed.
Early in the 20th century, the English astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer
demonstrated that the northeast axis aligned with the sunrise at
the summer solstice, leading other scholars to speculate that the
builders were sun worshipers. In 1963 an American astronomer, Gerald
Hawkins, purported that Stonehenge was a complicated computer for
predicting lunar and solar eclipses. These
speculations, however, have been severely criticized by most Stonehenge
archaeologists. "Most of what has been written about Stonehenge
is nonsense or speculation," said R.J.C. Atkinson, archaeologist
from University College Cardiff. "No one will ever have a clue
what its significance was."
