tonehenge is perhaps the world’s most famous prehistoric monument. It was built in several stages: the first monument was an early henge monument, built about 5,000 years ago, and the unique stone circle was erected in the late Neolithic period about 2500 BC. In the early Bronze Age many burial mounds were built nearby.
Today, together with Avebury, Stonehenge forms the heart of a World Heritage Site, with a unique concentration of prehistoric monuments.
The Greater, or Stonehenge, Cursus, a huge rectangular earthwork enclosure 1.7 miles long, seen from the air in 2000
The Greater, or Stonehenge, Cursus, a huge rectangular earthwork enclosure 1.7 miles long, seen from the air in 2000
BEFORE STONEHENGE
The earliest structures known in the immediate area are four or five pits, three of which appear to have held large pine ‘totem-pole like’ posts erected in the Mesolithic period, between 8500 and 7000 BC.[1] It is not known how these posts relate to the later monument of Stonehenge.
At this time, when much of the rest of southern England was largely covered by woodland, the chalk downland in the area of Stonehenge may have been an unusually open landscape.[2] It is possible that this is why it became the site of an early Neolithic monument complex.
