h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Stonehenge - A2523188
Author: Galaxy Babe - front page author - U128652

This is a previous topic of the day, hopefully I've not missed anyone's contributions and willing to add more info if you have it.


GB

Looking good

As for the Weird and Whacky suggeestions, I think there may be a Doctor Who episode somewhere that tells of him actually putting them there (Tom Baker I think). Perhaps Jimster might be the one to ask about that though

MJ

Congratulations on tackling such an immense task as 'Stonehenge', GB.

However, IMO, you do leap in rather 'at the deep end'. I think the opening para (after the lyric) needs to explain what and where Stonehenge is i.e. almost the standard encyclopaedia entry.

The bit about 'alignment'(and therefore possible function(s) needs to come much later.


The bit about protests needs to come right at the end (i.e. it's very recent history)


'Stonehenge is part of a landscape of stone circles, avenues and burial mounds. The south west of England is littered with them'

I think you just need to stick to stone circles at this point. - most famous (obviously) being Stonehenge itself, and Avebury. The burial mounds (IMO) are incidental - as there's such a wealth of material to say about SH itself.



'Stonehenge is located about 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Salisbury in Wiltshire, England'. This needs to come near the start.


'You need to be a member of the National Trust to get inside the surrounding fence. The NT does small tours, usually guided by an archaeologist, at unearthly hours of the morning. You can listen to the educated chat, or you can wander off a bit and absorb the atmosphere. You'd need to contact the National Trust for current details'.

This needs to come right at the end, perhaps under a Header of 'Visitng SH'

You've spelt 'Prescelly' in two different ways: Prescelly' and 'Preseli'.

'The Prescelly Mountains of North Pembrokeshire provide a prime candidate'. > If I recall correctly, onew can see a partly hewn blue stone in the Prescelly mountains. This means the stones certainly came from their, and also precludes glaciation as a transport mechanism.
Furthermore, the icesheet theory was disproved in 1994 using chlorine-36 dating. The icesheet theory propounds that the stones were carried by ice 40000 years ago, and were lying around ready for use when the first stone riung was built. However the chlorine-36 dating shows that the stone was first exposed to air only 14000 years ago., too late for any icesheet to have carried it to Wiltshire.

Furthermore, as you say, the theory is that the stones were transported around the coast and inland up rivers. This means that stones would almost certainly have fallen off the barges during transport - but NO TRACE of sunken stones has EVER been found.

'The project did prove that it was an immense task to build that monument', This is a rather 'obvious' statement - one would need to conduct an experiment to find this out. Perhaps word it as:

'The project did underscore the immense immense task it was to transport the stones to build that monument'

with this project. (I was thinking of tackling it at the next LENGTHY holiday, i.e. next summer.

PS I think the connection between crop circles and Stonehenge (presently) comes into the category of 'whacky ideas' and should be omitted. As I say, just sticking to the title of 'Stonehenge' still leaves you with an enormous task.

Hmm, I'm not very happy with this, Galaxy Babe. It doesn't give any clear idea what Stonehenge is or when the various bits of it were built. The whole thing seems rather confused, and I think a reader would end up being confused rather than educated by it.

I don't want to write your entry for you, but I'll see if I can come up with some details over the next day or so which might make this a bit more straightforward.

Can you provide a definition of megalithic, perhaps in a footnote?

Megalithic = Big Rocks

It needs to be in the entry, because I didn't know what it meant. I thought it might have been a period in history, like neolithic...

Oh, I don't think I'll bother. Sorry, GB, nothing to do with you. I'll remove my name from this entry.

Was it me?

I'm not sure what to say.

In my own defence currently the entry contains (copy & paste) everyone's posts at the original "Topic of the Week" - hence the different styles (and spellings)

I already tried to put BigAl's suggestions into effect yesterday but I got interrupted part-way through and now I have to face getting back to it.



I don't think I'll bother today.

OK, GB. Sorry if I seemed in a huff. As I said before, it was nothing to do with you.

If you accept my criticism of the entry as valid, here is what you have to do.

1. Start with a description of Stonehenge. Mention all the features and how they relate to each other. Start at the centre:

The horseshoe ring of enormous stones, 10 stones grouped into 5 trilithons (groups of 3 stones) by putting one stone across the top of two standing ones.

The ring of big stones, originally a full circle and capped all the way.

The three rings of holes: Y, Z and Aubrey.

The bank

The ditch

Outside of the ditch is the avenue heading off to the northwest. Where the avenue meets hte bank and ditch there is a gap in the bank and ditch.

There are two barrows, in the north and sout, each topped with a standing stone. There is the so called slaughter stone which is probably a collapsed portal stone. There is the heel stone.

2. Next you should describe the three phases of construction of Stonehenge.

Phase 1 - 3100 BC - the avenue, bank and ditch, barrows, aubrey holes
Phase 2 - 2100 BC - a central collection of standing stones that were later cleared away
Phase 3 - 1550 BC - the part that most people think of as Stonehenge - the big standing stones and the Y and Z holes.

3. You need to talk about the summer solstice and what happens.

4. You need to add a decent section at the end talking about the visitor centre, admission prices, what you get for your money, the extra priviliges of NT members and the hippy gatherings.

Traveller in Time once walking between the stones
"What I miss in most, if not all, discriptions of Stone Henge is the notches and holes used in the 'Horseshoe Ring' to fix the stones.

It is a gigantic LEGO construction , makes you wonder what toys the stone age children had to play with "

>>You need to be a member of the National Trust to get inside<<

Is Stonehenge not English Heritage?

In fact, from the NT website:
>>The stone circle is owned and administered by English Heritage. All grassland areas on the estate are designated NT open access and are open to everyone, but on foot only.<<

And from the EH website:
>>Managed by English Heritage, the site is surrounded by 1,500 acres of land, owned by the National Trust<<

I'm not sure exactly what this means, except that the brown road signs on the A303 are EH, and EH run the visitor centre.

Well, SH has a fence around it, abnd you have to pay to get inside. So, the area inside the fence (which contains Sh) is owned by EH.

Other than that, I like this entry.

"10 stones grouped into 5 trilithons (groups of 3 stones) by putting one stone across the top of two standing ones."

How can you put 10 stones into 5 groups of three?

Are there any groups of pagans today that use Stonehenge as a place of worship? I have a picture in a book of some druids at the site, but I didn't know if it's a staged photo or something that really happens.

Just found this, GB, whilst I was searching for info on Druids for emr. (It's interesting about the stone found on the sea bed at Milford Haven. I did know about this, but had forgotten it. That, obviously, also discounts the 'erratics' theory, and proves that the stones were brought from Preseli)

'Some time later the first stone circle was erected. This consisted of bluestones brought from the Preseli Mountains in South Wales. Quite why our ancestors should have gone to so much trouble to bring these stones hundreds of miles from Wales remains open to conjecture. There was a source of sarsen stones much closer to hand in the stone fields near Avebury. The Stonehenge folk had already used stones from this area to mark the major solar alignments referred to above. The bluestones obviously had some special qualities that our ancestors valued. Perhaps they were taken from an existing stone circle which held some particular meaning for them. Perhaps the Preseli Mountains were regarded as sacred, a home to gods or ancestral spirits. Perhaps, as later commentators suggested, there is some inherent magical property in the stones themselves. For whatever reason, our ancestors brought the bluestones down from the mountains to the beach at Milford Haven, lashed them to rafts and floated them along the coast. How do we know this? Well, in 1997 one of the stones was found on the sea bed just off Milford Haven where it had lain since it was lost during transportation five thousand years ago. In the same year, fragments of bluestones were found on Caldey Island in Caermarthen Bay, clearly indicating the direction in which the stones were being taken. The remainder of the route is speculative, but it seems most likely that the stones were rafted along the Welsh coast into the mouth of the River Severn to somewhere around Redwick. From there they could have been floated across the Severn to the mouth of the River Avon where the city of Bristol now stands. Following the course of the Avon inland and branching off into its tributary, the River Frome, would have brought the stones within a few miles of the River Wylie. The Wylie in turn connects with the Hampshire Avon, which runs to within two miles of Stonehenge. The final part of the stones' journey was marked by our ancestors with the construction of a trackway between two parallel banks and ditches. This feature is now called the Avenue and is still visible today for most of its length. Beginning at the Avon, it bends twice, finally approaching Stonehenge from the northeast, the direction of the midummer sunrise'