Stonehenge: an Ancient Monument that Impresses Across Cultures

Stonehenge! The very name evokes images of bearded, fur-clad shamans under a full moon, chanting in an obscure dialect as they call forth their ancient gods.



My first knowledge of this ring of ancient stones that sit on Salisbury Plain in England came when I was seven or eight, sitting on my aunt's living room floor among the plastic-covered furniture, leafing through her ancient set of Encyclopedia Britannica, books that she would only ever let me touch. I was fascinated by this monument of piled stones; built before winches or cranes; for what purpose even the venerable EB could not really say.



I was born with the wanderlust; even as a child I'd promised myself that I would one day travel the world and see all the ancient wonders. But, the one that I was most resolved to see, even more than the pyramids at Giza, was this mystical looking circle of stones, that some photos made look like a portal to another world or another dimension.



It took nearly forty years for me to realize my dream.



After completing my tour of duty at the American Embassy in war-torn Sierra Leone in 1996, my wife and I decided to take a detour to England on our way back to the United States. On the flight from Freetown to London, by way of Amsterdam, I bored her nearly to tears with my babbling about going to Stonehenge. A native of South Korea, a country that has more than its share of ancient structures, she couldn't understand my fascination with this pile of stones that was less than 4,000 years old.



We spent two days in London, visiting Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, and riding on a double-decker tram, but none of that really caught my imagination, or unduly impressed me. That was just an appetizer. I was waiting for the main course; a day trip to Stonehenge.



During the van ride from London, I bored my wife further with the things I'd remembered reading about Stonehenge; the Neolithic people had dug a circular moat about 320 feet in diameter, using deer antler as spades, and over a period of a thousand years had erected this stone monument, using stones from a quarry over 300 miles away in Wales. Unlike the Egyptians, who had tens of thousands of slave laborers to build the pyramids, the population of Bronze Age Britain wouldn't have had as many people to do such work. Some of the stones in the monument weigh as much as 50 tons, and moving them would be a task with modern equipment.



When we first arrived, and as I approached the circle of stones, I was at first disappointed; they didn't appear as huge or majestic as they did in the photographs I'd stared out for hours on my aunt's living room floor. I was visiting Stonehenge for the first time, and it didn't seem to be living up to my expectations. But, the closer I got, the more the mystical aura of the place seeped into my soul. More than the engineering feat of moving and erecting such heavy stones, it was the stately precision of the construction that impressed itself upon me. It was for a moment as if I'd been transported back in time 3,000 years. I could smell the odor of the rich earth, and the smoke from ceremonial fires; could hear the guttural chants of Druids. Whether this place had built in honor of some unknown gods, as a memorial to the dead, or as some kind of astrological and astronomical calendar, it was clearly a sacred place. I could feel the spirits hovering protectively over it.



The most amazing thing about that day, aside from finally realizing a childhood dream, was the transformation in my wife. Skeptical at first, and just going along to humor me, she was soon transfixed, gazing in awe. She didn't speak '" and for her, that represents a tectonic shift in behavior, because normally when we're on tour, she never stops talking, and she wouldn't tell me what she was thinking. But, the expression on her face spoke volumes. She was affected by Stonehenge, much as I had been staring at those cryptic photographs as a child. She was experiencing what many feel when visiting Stonehenge for the first time '" absolute amazement and awe.



We've not talked about Stonehenge since our trip. But, I took lots of photographs, and I notice that from time to time, my wife takes that particular album out and looks at the pictures; and, when she gets to the page with the Stonehenge photos, she lingers just a bit.



References:



http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/stonehenge-landmark.htm



http://www.stonehenge.co.uk/