EVER WONDER by Jacque Scott: Stone Monuments

Stone Monuments

Ever wonder about the great stone monuments found in many parts of the world? In western Europe, northern Africa, the Near East, India, Japan, and parts of Southeast Asia there are strange old monuments formed of enormous stones. Some of these monuments are simply single tall stones just standing all by themselves. Other are rings, rows, and clusters of many huge stones standing upright. Some are groupings of large stones piled together to form large rooms.

Some of these monuments are prehistoric and were made thousands of years ago. Others were made less than a thousand years ago. But there are mysteries connected with all of them. what were they for? Why do they often seem so alike when they are in places thousands of miles apart? Did the original builders just happen to get the idea all at the same time or did the ideas for these monuments all start in one place and slowly spread out around the world?

Some of these piles of stones that formed large rooms were used for burial chambers. Later when these tombs were opened, scientists found that they were jam-packed with the bones of hundreds of people, and that the bones were all broken into small pieces. Why? And why was each monument built so that it lines up in an east-west or north-south direction. Why?

Although it took many people to make the room monuments, it must have taken hundreds of people to make some of the others like Stonehenge in England. Today many of its stones are toppled over and lay on the ground. But when it was built about 3,500 years ago, it was a ring of thirty huge, gray stones, with long flat stones laying across their tops. Inside this ring were other rings and half-rings, one inside another.

Not far from Stonehenge, there are the remains of another ancient monument known as Avebury. Very little is left of it today, but originally it was a great ring of one hundred stones with two smaller rings inside. It had two stone lined paths leading to it.

Across the English Channel on the coast of France, there are other stone monuments. One of these, near a town called Carnac, is formed of more than three thousand tall, heavy boulders. These all stand row upon row and spread out over two miles. Hundreds of other monuments ranging from small circles to a single tall stones, exist throughout England, Scotland, France, Denmark and other parts of western Europe.

The people who built these huge things were what we often call “cave people”. They lived in huts and wore clothes made of animal skins. Their tools were primitive and very simple. With these crude tools, they dug huge stones out of the ground and often cut them into special shapes.

The stones for Stonehenge came from as far as three hundred miles away. People dragged other stones weighing as much as fifty tons more than twenty miles from where they were dug to where Stonehenge was built. And then the stones were stood on end exactly where they belonged. Other stones were raised as high as twenty-two feet to place them on top of the upright stones. And remember – no machinery!

Why did the people of so long ago work so hard? It is thought that Stonehenge had something to do with worshipping the sun. the ancient people made a broad path leading into Stonehenge. Someone standing in the very center of the monument at dawn on the longest day of the year would see the sun rise exactly at the end of the path. This only happens on this one particular day and gives us proof that as a temple to that the people could meet on the first day of summer and worship the rising sun.

Some scientists today think that it is far more important, and that it was used as an ancient observatory to track the sun, moon, and stars. It seems that almost every stone lines up with something that happens in the sky on certain days of the year.

If this is all true, then the ancient people who built these stone monuments so very long ago were much more advanced that most people today think they are. Not only did they know about astronomy, but they knew a great deal about mathematics.

But we will never really know for sure. There are no written documents telling us what the monuments were for.

So there you have it…a bit about ancient stone monuments…

God Bless you.

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