Stonehenge, England
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1. How old is Stonehenge?
The site has undergone varying changes and never started as a circle of stones. While the round earth bank as well as the ditch surrounding the stones date as far back as to around 3100 BC, the initial stones are thought to have been brought to the site somewhere during the time period of 2400 and 2200 BC.
2. People built it, leaving behind no written records
This is the central reason causing a sort of mystery and constant stream of questions to flow about the site. "Who built Stonehenge?" is one of the most asked questions.
3. It might have served as a burial ground
In 2013, a group of archaeologists exhumed the cremated remains totaling 50,000 bones from the site, all belonging to sixty-three human beings that included children. Though these bones are believed to date back to 3000 BC, a few are just dated back to 2500 BC, which indicates that Stonehenge might have served as a graveyard at the onset of its history, but it's not absolutely certain that was the main purpose.
4. A few of the stones originally came from almost 200 miles away
After they were mined at a town close to Maenclochog, a Welsh town, they were then taken to Wiltshire; a feat which would have been marked as a milestone in technical achievement at the time.
5. They are called today “ringing rocks”
The monument’s stones have uncommon acoustic properties, because when struck by anything they create a loud clanging noise, which may help explain why anyone labored in moving them over nearly 200 miles. In some very old cultures, they cherish the belief that such rocks have healing powers. Actually, Maenclochog
6. An Arthurian legend exists about Stonehenge
According to the unproven legend, the famous wizard Merlin took Stonehenge from Ireland, where giants had raised it, and reconstructed it in Wiltshire to memorialize the 3,000 nobles dying in battle against the Saxons.
7. The remains of a beheaded man was unburied from the site
The seven-century man believed to be Saxon was discovered in 1923.
8. The earliest known real-life portrayal of Stonehenge was painted in 1600
9. It was the root cause of a real battle in 1985
The Battle of the Beanfield occurred between a group of about 600 New Age visitors and approximately 1,300 police officers over the period of many hours in 1985. The battle started when the travelers, going to Stonehenge to arrange the Stonehenge Free Festival, got stopped at an obstruction by police 7 miles from the famed landmark. The clash became violent, resulting in 16 travelers and 8 police officers getting hospitalized, plus 537 other travelers arrested, making English history as the largest mass arrests of average civilians.
10. Each year it attracts over a million visitors
The persisting myths that surround Stonehenge largely popularized the UNESCO World Heritage Site. When it initially opened to the general public to be visited in the twentieth century, tourists were allowed to move among the stones as well as climb on them. But because of the stones suffering major erosion, the monument has now been off limits from physical contact since 1997; visitors could just observe them from a distance.
