Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 79

The greatest megalithic structure is the circle of stone slabs known as Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in England. Stonehenge was erected between 2550 BC and 1600 BC in at least four stages. It was once believed to be a Druid (Celtic priest) temple. We now think that this elaborate network of stones was used to predict solstices and eclipses, vital knowledge for people dependent on the growing season.

From a distance, Stonehenge looks like an unfinished dominoes game played by giants. On closer inspection, it consists of a series of concentric circles and circular shapes:

 An inner horseshoe of five sets of gray sandstone is grouped in a post-and-lintel arrangement.

 An outer circle of 20-foot-high gray sandstones, called sarsen stones, is topped by lintels. Each sarsen stone weighs up to 50 tons. The lintels are connected, forming a continuous circle.

 A roughly 1,000-foot trench and embankment encircle the megaliths. This arrangement of circles within circles still baffles people today.

Until 1500 BC, a circle of bluestones stood between the sarsen stones and the horseshoe. The only available bluestone comes from Wales, 150 miles away. Stonehenge builders believed that bluestone possessed special properties, probably magical ones — otherwise, they wouldn’t have hauled them such a long distance. In 1500 BC, the last generation of Stonehenge builders moved the bluestones inside the horseshoe; researchers today have no idea why.

Prehistoric builders also smoothed the inside faces of the stone posts and lintels and tapered the posts at the top so that the bellies or midsections of the posts appear to bulge. Even more impressive, they “drilled” holes in the lintels and cut cone-shaped pegs into the posts so that the posts and lintels would fit together snuggly in a mortise and tenon joint like Lincoln Logs. The designers also curved the outer lintels so each would form an arc, enhancing the circular appearance of the outer ring.

So what’s the purpose of this network of stones? Was it a temple, a place of human sacrifice, or a stone calendar? The function of Stonehenge is still a mystery, but recent investigations show that it could have been used to accurately predict the phases of the moon, solstices, and eclipses.