STONEHENGE | Prehistoric Architecture | Design | History of Architecture | B.Arch

Stonehenge is a massive stone monument located on a chalky plain north of the modern-day city of Salisbury, England. Research shows that the site has continuously evolved over a period of about 10,000 years. The structure that we call Stonehenge was built between roughly 5,000 and 4,000 years ago and was one part of a larger sacred landscape that included a massive stone monument that was 15 times the size of Stonehenge. For centuries, historians and archaeologists have puzzled over the many mysteries of Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument that took Neolithic builders an estimated 1,500 years to erect. Located in southern England, it comprises roughly 100 massive upright stones placed in a circular layout. 4,000 years ago, Stonehenge was made up of an outer circle of 30 standing stones called sarsens, which surrounded five huge stone arches in a horseshoe shape. There were also two circles made of smaller glue stones, one inside the outer circle and one inside the horseshoe, as well as four station stones positioned outside the central monument. Stonehenge was built within an area that was already special to Mesolithic and Neolithic people. About 8,000 to 7,000 BCE, early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers dug pits and erected pine posts within 650 feet 200 meters of Stonehenge's future location. It was unusual for prehistoric hunter-gatherers to build monuments, and there are no comparable structures from this era in northwestern Europe.