New secrets revealed?

Modern technology may be the key to unlock hidden secrets about an ancient monument: Stonehenge.

Researchers are using lasers to scan the nearly three dozen stones, or megaliths, that make up the famous circular complex on the Salisbury Plain of southern England.

The vertical stones — over 10 feet tall and weighing many tons — form the site that’s believed to be nearly 5,000 years old. And nobody is sure why or how Stonehenge was originally built.

“This new survey will capture a lot more information on the subtleties of the monument and its surrounding landscape,” said Paul Bryan of English Heritage, an adviser to the British government on historic buildings and monuments.

Read complete article here. {via aolnews.com}

Stonehenge (Wikipedia)

Druids, Romans, Priests, Goddesses, extra terrestrial aliens, prehistoric people. Who builtStonehenge and why?

Nearly everyone appreciates a good mystery. If you fit into those who do, then Stonehenge is for you.

This ancient earthwork near the city ofSalisbury in Wiltshire captivates. We are visiting our second time, this time as part of a group of North American journalists who had been invited to attend the “naming” ceremony of Celebrity Cruises’ new Equinox. Part of our post tour is a stop at these mystical ruins, and we consider how appropriate it is that we have come from a ship in the new “Solstice Class” of vessels built by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., since the placement of the pillars at Stonehenge accurate predict the summer and winter solstices and equinoxes.

Read complete article here. {via The Examiner}

The Monolith? (Liz and Mark Brown)

Friends returned from a visit of the Ancient mysterious Stonehenge. I suggested they go there for it is something to see. Liz and Mark my dearest friends were fascinated and awed at this ancient structure. It is always good to go see these mysterious places for your self. Mark and Liz discovered something not seen in many of their tour books. They took a picture of it and sent it to me.

They believe Arthur C. Clarke’s movie 2001 Space Odyssey may be more real than fiction. They saw what appears to be a dark Monolith inside one of the deteriorating Sarsen stones.

Read complete article here. {via UFO Digest}

One Big Cemetery

So after all the theories and studies it’s really no secret, just a big cemetery.

Huge, intriguing stones mark burial site, archaeologists conclude, for family that ruled region many generations.

Washington —- The secret of Stonehenge has been solved: The mysterious circle of large stones in southern England was a burial ground for almost five centuries, and it probably holds the remains of a family that long ruled the area, new research concludes.

Based on radiocarbon-dating of cremated bones up to 5,000 years old, researchers with the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project said they are convinced that the area was built and grew as a “domain of the ancestors.”

“It’s now clear that burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages,” said Mike Parker Pearson, archaeology professor at the University of Sheffield in England and head of the project. “Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid-third millennium B.C.”

Read complete article here. {via ajc.com}

Bronze Age burial mounds (Credit: Damian Grady/ English Heritage)

It will be interesting if anything is discovered in these new tombs which are reportedly 1000 years older than Stonehenge. The tombs have yet to be excavated but experts are claiming that they likely contain chambers with human remains from the Bronze Age (roughly 2000 to 700 B.C. in Britain).

Given away by strange, crop circle-like formations seen from the air, a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has taken archaeologists by surprise.

A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among “Britain’s first architecture,” according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project.

For such a site to have lain hidden for so long is “completely amazing,” said Wickstead, of Kingston University in London.

Read complete article here. {via National Geographic News}