Back to the Stone Age calendar
I told you a little earlier about the beginning of people building stone circles. They appear all over Europe at this time but,
in England, the stone circle will often become a henge. This is a circular ditch with a bank outside (a grass bank not NatWest) inside of which you will find
the stone circle. Quite often they will have an avenue, marked out with some more standing stones, leading to the circle. The most famous of these was started
at this time. It is what we call Stonehenge but it was not completed until some 700 years later and that is no longer in the Stone Age.
Recently, well 1998 which is recent to me, a henge was discovered
on a quiet Norfolk beach. It was a huge tree stump buried upside down and surrounded by 55 wooden posts. It was called Seahenge because it looked a bit like
Stonehenge. No one knows why it was built and the timbers were all removed by archaeologists and you can now see some of the timbers and the upturned tree
stump at the Lynn Museum in Norfolk.
However, back to Stonehenge and we will be able to look at some ideas
as to why it was built and what purpose it may have served when we get to the Bronze Age.
As far as I know, Stonehenge is the only stone circle in the United Kingdom that had a top stone, called a lintel, laid across other stones.
You probably know a bit about how Stonehenge looks but, funnily
enough, a few years ago when I was travelling in a place called Tonga (well get your map out) I saw this. I was told that there were marks on the top stone which
indicated it was used as some form of calendar. Strange that two peoples, so far apart and when travel was so difficult, should build a similar structure or is the Tongan one really as old as
they told me.
However, if you look closely at the side view of the Tongan stone you will see the lintel isn't laid across the two standings stones, but fitted into a specially made groove.
Forward to 2300BC
