Stone Henge

The group traveled to Stone Henge and Bath this week. Though the weather was "severe" even by British standards (a month's rain due to fall in one day and gale force winds), the tour guide Jeanie assured the group, "but maybe it won't happen...and besides, that's just a fact of life." (It sounded a bit like the other expression the captain has heard in London, "Nothing to grumble about...").

Sadly enough, it took 3 PhDs and 2 students to figure out how to open 1 well constructed British umbrella (see photos). Good construction seemed key though as many students' umbrellas turned inside out as they braced against the winds. But that didn't stop the group from experiencing the significance of the place itself.

Stone Henge, south west of London approximately an hour by coach, is a 5000 year old monument (even before the Egyptian pyramids). Recent archaeological carbon dating suggests that the site was built as a cemetery of sorts. The design and construction however are highly sophisticated. For example, the site has multiple perfectly concentric circles made from trenches dug with deer antlers and stones larger than 50 tons coming from nearly 20 miles away (without the luxury of trucks or cranes or pulleys of course). A "heel stone" aligns to the north with a "slaughter stone" such that at precisely the mid-summer solstice the sun shines through the monument and can appear to rest on its top. And the tops of the largest stones are chiseled such that they are more narrow at the top than the bottom (thereby appearing to be taller than they actually are) and flat on top with pegs such that the lentil stones across the up right stones rest flat and firm. As they stand, the stones create both a lunar and solar calendar.

The monument grew in 3 main phases over 1300 years, students were told. Phase 1 in about 3100 B.C. as a simple ditch-and-bank circle. Phase 2 in approximately 2100 B.C. as a double circle of more than 80 bluestones (each weighing 2-5 tons) that are believed to have come from Wales on a raft across the English Channel (a journey and process modern experts were unsuccessful at repeating when attempted for a millennial commemoration activity)! And Phase 3 approximately 1550 B.C. when the bluestones were rearranged and the larger 50 ton sandstone boulders were assembled (coming from approximately 20 miles away, presumably being dragged and each estimated to need as many as 600 men working an entire year to move).

Impressed, and soaked through and through, students and the captain re-boarded their coach to depart for the historic town of Bath.