You’ve Got To See Stonehenge
23 Aug, 2009 by James L. Clark in Travel, United Kingdom
I lived less than 35 minutes drive from Stonehenge for three years, and didn’t go to see this prehistoric megalith until I had already returned back to the United States for a while.
What? Who does that?
Well, I guess me and millions of Brits who have this incredible piece of history sitting right in their back yard. That’s actually one of the things that bothered me about living in the United Kingdom; so much history, and so few who seem to care about it.
Some of my best friends who were born and raised in Scotland, for example, haven’t even been to some of the most well known and historically significant sights very near their own homes. Of course, they’re not the only people—this phenomena happens all over the planet. I think, honestly, it’s just sometimes hard to see what you have around you—sort of that forest through the trees thing.
Where do you live? Have you seen all there is to see in your back yard? I sure haven’t. And this is but one illustration of that farsightedness I had developed. While living in the UK, I was always dying to fly to Germany, or France, or Italy, or Switzerland, or Russia, and so on. Even though I had joined both Scotland and English historical societies and went to tons of sites like castles, I often forgot that I had things right down the street from me with thousands of years of history passing them by every day.
So on my last trip with my family back "home", my wife encouraged me to make the trip out to Stonehenge in the middle of Wiltshire, the very county I called home for years, to see what all the hub bub was about.
First, let me say that the drive out there is pretty. But there’s not much there. From London, get to the train station and just tell the ticket agent you want to get to Stonehenge; they’ll be able to direct you. Expect bus rides or an expensive taxi once you get into the nearest station. If you’re driving, which is what I did, make sure you stop and get some snacks, drinks, and gas for the trip out into the middle of nowhere, England.
Once you get there, it’s pretty simple. Walk in, buy a ticket, and walk around back and through a path for about 5 miutes. Then, there it is… as big as day, and about as exciting as watching paint dry. Really.
The monument itself is estimated to have been built by persons unknown about 2500 years before Christ or the Common Era if you prefer. Some anthropologists believe that the original structure may have been built as early as 3000 BC or more. That’s a long damn time ago. It’s composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of massive standing stones.
There’s a lot of speculation about what significance the stones hold, how they got there since there aren’t any quarries with rock of that specific composition nearby, and a bunch of religious themed ideas on the place being used for rituals, sacrifice, and as a burial site.
Neo-pagans, neo-druids, and new agers claim it as a site for pilgrimage and government controlled ceremonies, but there’s little evidence of anything of that nature predating the modern proliferation of such fads and foibles in our modern culture over the last few decades. Fact is, the people who built this and it’s predecessor monuments were nothing like the fruit cakes who in looking for personal meaning try to link Stonehenge with their own modern quasi-religious concepts.
The problem is, Stonehenge was produced by a culture that didn’t have the means to document their intentions for future generations. That is, they didn’t have a written language. Attempts at re-writing their history to reflect one’s personal views are therefore commonplace. And as a result, you get some of the strangest stories of what actually did or didn’t happen there.
Uggg.
What’s known for certain is there were a lot of people buried there. Top researchers speculate that the site was actually multifunctional and may have included both ancestral burial sites, to serve as a place for pilgrimage and as a way to give homage to the dead, and perhaps as a healing site much like Lourdes, the French commune in the Pyrenees.
I’m telling you, that’s all there is to it. Make the long trip, check it out, and then head out to somewhere else. We stayed all of about 15 minutes in the bitter cold, walked around the whole path, took photos, and then got our butts back to the gift shop for some tea. You’ll do the same if it as cold when you go as it was when we did.
Even though there’s not much to this, it’s a fascinating piece of world history, and undisputedly one of the most interesting mysteries of the ancient world that draws tourists from all over the world to this dark, damp, and often very cold part of England. I’d say you have to do it. It’s far less painful than a tattoo, and more exciting than watching American Idol. I’m one of the many who got out and when there to see a bunch of big friggin stones standing in the middle of a fenced off field, and I even bought a mug, a painting, and t-shirt to prove it to anyone who ever asks, "Hey, you ever been to Stonehenge?" Why yes I have, thank you.
