Stonehenge

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fanatics, who felt threatened by the mysteries posed by Stonehenge, knocked over many of the standing stones. They toppled some of the huge stones, which then split into pieces; they buried others.

Other stones were "quarried" over the centuries as free building material and hauled away. Even into this century, visitors have come with hammers to carry away a chip of stone with them.

III. Only in recent years have the stones been protected from the huge amounts of people that see them every year. No longer can anyone roam among the stones. Too much damage, intentional or not, has been done by the hundreds of thousands of visitors. Today, tourists are even prevented from walking between the stones for fear that the millions of footsteps every year might make the stones unstable.

IV. The twelfth-century English writer and historian, Geoffrey of Monmouth, first recorded Merlin's building of Stonehenge in his famous book History of the Kings of Britain. Geoffrey claimed ...

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four Stones of the Seasons, placed according to the position of the sun at the dawn of the summer solstice, were in the center of the platform.

Stonehenge II (2150 to 2000 B.C.)

Europe was still in the Neolithic age when the second phase of Stonehenge began. The entrance was widened into an avenue to the end stone, or Heel Stone, just outside the main group. Blue/hued stones were brought from the Prescelly Mountains in Wales, some 125 miles away. They were arranged in two concentric circles on the platform. How these stones were transported is one of the greatest mysteries of Stonehenge, even today.

This second phase was never fully completed. Suddenly it was replaced by a ...

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