Stonehenge

The wind whispers across the vast, green Salisbury Plain, a constant companion I have known for millennia. It brushes against my skin, which is not soft, but rough, cold, and immensely heavy. I stand in a great circle under an endless sky, a gathering of silent, gray giants. Some of us wear heavy stone hats, known as lintels, connecting us like a crown. Others lie on the cool earth, sleeping through the ages. I have watched the sun rise and set more than a million times, seen the stars wheel overhead in their slow, predictable dance, and felt the passing of countless seasons. Visitors who walk among my fallen and standing forms always ask the same hushed questions: Who had the strength to build me? What grand purpose did I serve? Their wonder is my echo. I am a riddle carved in stone, a circle of secrets. I am Stonehenge.

My first memory is not of stone, but of earth. Travel back with me, more than five thousand years, to around 3100 BCE. The world was younger then, and so was I. My first shape was not of towering pillars, but a great circular ditch and a raised bank, carefully dug from the chalky ground by Neolithic people. Their tools were not made of metal, but of deer antlers for picks and the shoulder blades of cattle for shovels. They were farmers, living in communities, and they worked together to carve my first form into the land. It must have been a project of immense importance to them. Inside my earthen bank, they dug a circle of 56 deep pits, which today are called the Aubrey Holes. Their purpose is one of my oldest mysteries. Perhaps they held enormous wooden posts that reached for the sky, or maybe they were sacred markers for tracking the cycles of the moon. From my very beginning, I was a special place, set apart from the everyday world.

Centuries passed, and around 2600 BCE, I witnessed an almost unbelievable feat. The first of my stones began to arrive. They were not the colossal giants you see today, but smaller, darker stones with a bluish tint when wet. These are my bluestones, and their story is one of incredible perseverance. They were not found nearby. Their home was the Preseli Hills in Wales, a rugged land more than 150 miles away from here. Imagine the people of the Bronze Age embarking on such a quest. They had no wheels for transport, no engines, only their own strength and intelligence. They likely hauled these stones, each weighing several tons, on wooden sledges over rough land and then floated them on great rafts along rivers and across the sea. The journey must have taken years, a true test of their commitment. Why these specific stones? Many believe they were thought to hold special healing powers, making the immense effort to bring them here an act of deep faith. Their arrival began to transform me from an earthen circle into a temple of stone.

My most famous transformation began around 2500 BCE when the true giants arrived. These were the sarsen stones, magnificent pillars of hard sandstone, some weighing as much as a truck. They were brought from the Marlborough Downs, a journey of about 20 miles that was still a monumental undertaking. The ingenuity of these builders was breathtaking. They shaped the incredibly hard sarsen rock by pounding it for hours with heavy stone balls called mauls. They didn't just stand me up; they crafted me with the precision of a woodworker. Look closely at my lintels, the stones that sit on top. You can see how they carved protruding bumps called tenons on the upright stones to fit perfectly into matching holes, or mortises, carved into the lintels. This interlocking system has helped me stand against the winds of time. But my greatest secret is my connection to the sun. My builders perfectly aligned my main entrance with the rising sun on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. On that one morning, the first rays of light shine directly into my heart. I am not just a circle of stones; I am a giant, ancient calendar, connecting the earth to the heavens.

I have stood for more than 4,000 years, watching empires rise and fall, seeing forests grow and shrink, and feeling the world change in ways my builders could never have imagined. I am a survivor. Though some of my stones have fallen and my original purpose is debated, my power to inspire wonder has never faded. Archaeologists with incredible tools study my secrets, and children laugh as they run through the grass where ancient ceremonies once took place. I am more than just stone and time. I am a testament to what people can achieve when they share a vision and work together with purpose. I connect everyone who visits me to our most distant ancestors and remind us of our place in the universe, forever tied to the sun and the seasons. Even today, people gather here to watch the solstice sunrise, sharing a moment of awe, just as my builders did, so very long ago.