Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

Ignoring Stonehenge

The Guardian Online has an excellent opinion piece titled “The final insult“, which asks a very good question – why is Stonehenge not treated by officials as being on a par with other great ancient sites such as the Giza pyramids?

The first view of Stonehenge as you approach from Salisbury is a clutter of what looks like scrap metal. It reminded me of a rural junk yard, but on closer inspection this turns out to be the Stonehenge car park. You can see why English Heritage feels the need to apologise to visitors before they even reach the turnstile; plaques acknowledge the unsatisfactory state of Stonehenge and describe, with beautiful diagrams of an underground museum and visitors’ centre, the utopian near-future. None of this is now going to happen.

I was lucky enough to visit Stonehenge at first light on a Spring morning (some ten years ago to the day). The morning mist slowly cleared to reveal stark, grassy terrain and a monument that, quite simply, encapsulated the word “ancient”. It was a wonderful space to be in, and I can only hope that more people in future get to experience it – whether at Stonehenge, or other wonderful ‘sacred sites’ in the United Kingdom.

In the writer’s words, “Stonehenge has been talked down by the experts. And now the philistines have an excuse to treat it as if it was nothing special.” That truly would be a crime.

Editor
  1. the pesky Romans
    Western culture defines itself as a continuation of Roman and Greek culture. Our Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Briton etc ancestors wre seen as barbarians – basically because the Romans and Greeks told us so. Well, they told our ancestors centuries ago.

    There is a problem that historians have with cultures that didn’t write much on durable materials, and that didn’t build big cities. Those cultures are assumed to be primitive. I say some of them were much more advanced than we think, we are just missing the evidence.

    —-
    wherever you go, there you are

    1. Those Pesky Brits …
      I just ‘stumbled’ this site, and I must admit, it tells a story that I had never heard before. Could this be the dark secret reason why there seems no real resolve to ‘preserve’ the ‘site’ today, lest word get out that its, well, not exactly a forgery but …

      the majority of the stone circle was restored in a series of makeovers which have left it, in the words of one archaeologist, as ‘a product of the 20th century heritage industry’.
      [ Stonehenge Rebuilt ]

      Ok, it is at ufos-aliens.co.uk, but I don’t think we should hold that against them. There’s plenty of checkable facts and photos, or there appears to be. Unless it’s been ‘rebuilt’ before you click through to get there …

    1. Stonehenge
      Tony Hawzat here.
      It is well known that all pseudoscholars are crackpots, and I won’t have them anywhere near my Stonehenge.
      They keep ruining the polystyrene :-)<----- ... The balanced adult retains an inner child Anthony North

  2. Maybe …
    we should thank the folk who went to all the trouble to rescue a significant monument from total disrepair.

    I can’t help feeling that those who were involved in restoration work would have tried to reset these stones in a way that they should have been had they not fallen, leaned or toppled.

    If no-one had bothered, Stonehenge might today look no different from the multitude of sarsen monoliths that litter the hillsides of the nearby Marlborough Downs.

    Anthony – you’re very naughty – but you did make me laugh!

    Regards, Kathrinn

  3. Would just be a pile of fallen stones…
    Here’s a statement by British Archaeology about the work done. It may not answer all of your questions, but it is a start.

    http://www.britarch.ac.uk/stonehenge/stone23.html

    I’m glad the stones have been reset. And if a mistake has been made…it would someday be moved accordingly. When I do go to Britain one day, this is one of the sites I wish to see.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal