Essay on Stonehenge

Stonehenge is located on Salsbury Plain in southern England and was built thousands of years ago for a purpose that still remains unknown today. Some people believe that it was built for religious purposes while others believe that it was a temple for the dead. This theory was more accepted. It was built in a circle which represented the world linking to the cosmos. Where the water entered is where the spirits arrived and left. Ancient people believed in regeneration because the moon was a place for the dead. When the keltic priests built the henge they aligned the recumbent stone with the moon thinking that the moon would take the souls of the dead. Also on the day of the summer solstice the sun is directly lined up with the avenue stone and on the winter solstice the sun lines up directly opposite of the avenue stone.

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Stonehenge was built with blue stone. Ironically the only place that the stone was found was in the Welsh Mountains which is about a hundred miles away from the site of Stonehenge. One theory was that the stones were brought over by a glacier but there are no remains of the glacier. I believe they moved the stones by hand to the site. The stones formed an arc and were eventually replaced. They replaced the wood with stone for a few reasons. Stone possessed a mystical energy, it also lasted forever, and they believed the stones harbored the spirits of the ancestors.

In the earlier phases of Stonehenge many bones were found but the skulls were never found with the rest of the bones. The skulls were always buried. When a person died they would leave the body inside of the henge until it rotted. Then they would dissemble the body which symbolized the soul being released from the body and lastly the skulls were separated. In the later stages of Stonehenge nothing was found inside of it.

People would communicate with the spirits by going into trances. They would eat hallucinogenic foods such as mushrooms to get into these deep trances. Then they would go inside Stonehenge and talk with the spirits who resided between the rocks.

In my opinion Stonehenge was built as a sign of respect for the dead. There were similar megaliths built off the coast of South Africa. The two places were almost identical with the tombs and what they believed in. They believed that they had to make a nice tomb or else the ancestor will come back. The ancestors can do good or bad. Stonehenge is still a mystery today. Archeologists are just beginning to understand why Stonehenge was made and eventually we will know.

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