Stonehenge is the most famous megalithic structure in Europe. Every year, about a million tourists come to England and rush to Wiltshire, in the Salisbury Valley, in order to look at the ring complex of earthen ramparts and horseshoe-shaped stone structures. The official date of the construction of the monument is 1900-1700 BC. e. Its venerable age puts it on a par with the Egyptian pyramids.
The grandeur and scale of Stonehenge, considering that construction took place thousands of years ago, is impressive. But what if we have before us not a monument to an irrevocably bygone era, but a skillful forgery?
PRHISTORIC DESIGNER
We want to emphasize right away: everything stated in the material is only a version. We are also much more pleased to believe that long before us there were highly developed civilizations on the planet, that history keeps a lot of secrets and mysteries, and that millions of years ago our ancestors did not sit on a tree, as Darwin's theory claims.
It was beyond the strength of savages and warring tribes to build such a building like Stonehenge: they lacked knowledge and skills. Here much more advanced "foremen" obviously tried. To make sure of this, it is enough to look at the building material from which the giant cromlech is made, to estimate the size and weight of the stone blocks. And this - neither more nor less - 82 five-ton megaliths in the outer ring of the structure, 30 twenty-five-ton boulders in the inner ring and five huge triliths in the center!
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The latter consist of two double blocks weighing 50 tons each, covered from above with heavy slabs. Heavy parts, even for a prehistoric constructor, isn't it? Especially considering the fact that, according to the official version, the stones were delivered to the place of work from afar.
The main building material was dolerite, but in the construction of Stonehenge volcanic lava (rhyolite), volcanic tuff, sandstone and limestone were also used. At the same time, three components - dolerite, rhyolite and volcanic tuff - are found in the British Isles only in one place - in Wales, in the Preselli Mountains, near the coast of the Bay of Bristol.
The straight distance from Stonehenge to the above-mentioned quarry is 220 kilometers. But if you calculate the real route along which the stones could be brought, dragged, delivered, then this is 380 kilometers! In this regard, a quite reasonable question arises: how obsessed the builders of Stonehenge had to be in order to complete such a titanic work? After all, according to scientists, given several thousand workers, it took at least 300 years of continuous work to build the monument!
1575 engraving
Who these workaholics who inhabited Britain in antiquity were is not known for certain. Over the years, researchers have put forward a wide variety of versions, from the ancient Romans to the Celts, Druids and the magician Merlin. The true purpose of the structure also remains a mystery.
In any case, in order to list all the theories voiced, there will not be enough fingers on both hands. The most popular say that Stonehenge could have been an ancient observatory, a temple to the pagan queen Boadicea, and even a giant sculpture of the female genital organ of Mother Earth …
We will also do our bit: we will make one little-known and very curious assumption, which, perhaps, will radically change your idea of Stonehenge.
Stonehenge in 1611
BRITISH RESTORATION
We will not reveal a big secret if we say that only in the 20th century, Stonehenge was restored several times. True, the processes that the structure underwent can be called "restoration" with a stretch. The word "reconstruction" will be more appropriate here.
It is extremely difficult to obtain official information on the scale of this work: the British are reluctant to wash dirty linen in public. Moreover, for a long time they denied the very fact of any restoration. Fortunately, there is the World Wide Web. And - madmen who are not afraid to go against the "line of the party and government."
Christopher Chippendale, curator of the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, was one of the few who confirmed the seriousness of the tampering with the monument. He honestly admitted that "almost all the stones were moved and reinforced with concrete." But there is reason to believe that the scope of the work carried out was much more grandiose.
Photo "restoration"
To get to the bottom of the truth, it is enough to compare various images of Stonehenge, from ancient engravings and drawings to modern photographs of the monument. Their differences are immediately apparent. In earlier images, many of the stones we see now are simply not there. And vice versa: those boulders that were before disappeared or were "transferred" to completely different places.
For example, one of the triliths of the central circle of Stonehenge is absent not only in the images of the 19th century, but also in the photographs of the first half of the 20th. Where did he come from now? Enthusiasts who dared to conduct an independent investigation have established that this trilith complex was built in 1958!
From "recent history" - and an upright monolith with a stone spike on the upper end part. The thorn is quite high - about 20 centimeters. To carve it from a solid block of stone, one had to work with a modern advanced tool - a cutter or a good jackhammer. A simple chisel and hammer cannot make such a thorn.
It is noteworthy that the horizontal “roof” of the neighboring trilite also contains a spike cut. What is a spike connection? But it is typical for wooden architecture. And for masonry, this technique is not only unusual, but also incredibly difficult. Or were the ancient builders of Stonehenge so sophisticated in stone cutting?
Stonehenge in a painting by John Constable (1835), probably drawn from life
It is unlikely, given the following circumstance: in order to put any block on a spike, the latter must be raised, and then carefully lowered to the right place, without breaking anything. This kind of filigree is quite achievable, but … only with the availability of modern technology. In ancient times, this technique would have been simply impossible.
An attentive visitor (or "caretaker" of photographs) of Stonehenge will certainly notice that plaster has fallen off on some of the stones, and completely flat gray concrete is visible under its thick layer, ten to fifteen centimeters thick. There are plenty of similar "falls" in the cromlech cladding.
Nowadays, there is such a way of finishing the facades of houses, as processing under a fur coat: an ordinary brick house is poured with thick cement plaster, to which small pieces of mica and beautiful stones are added. The result is a very beautiful, a bit harsh exterior. But it is unlikely that 5,000 years ago, the builders of Stonehenge knew how to do the same …
CLOSED AREA
What did the British do in the Salisbury Valley in the last century? Probably, they ennobled the territory, giving the complex the look that would be in demand among tourists.
Go on the Internet, and you can easily find a whole series of photographs, which show in detail the process of the restoration of Stonehenge in the middle of the 20th century. The pictures clearly show that the current Stonehenge was built literally from scratch, on a completely flat, prepared in advance.
All stones, no matter how old they were, were installed anew, and their location was carefully verified with modern geodetic instruments. And then we still wonder - where did the ancients get such astronomical knowledge? How did they manage to arrange the monoliths so that they accurately showed the points of sunrise and sunset on the days of the summer and winter solstices?
According to the aforementioned archaeologist Chippendale, "From 1901 to 1964, most of the stone circle was rebuilt and became a product of 20th century industry." As you can imagine, this is an unofficial point of view. Very, very few know that Stonehenge was thoroughly cleaned in the last century.
The reason for this lack of awareness is quite simple: in the 20th century, a dual-use military infrastructure was created around Stonehenge. After the Second World War, two airfields, barracks, numerous military hangars and even a railway were located next to the megalith complex …
It is very strange that one of the airfields was built literally 500 meters from the monument, although the territory of the Salisbury Valley is very extensive. The local residents were resettled by the military, any agricultural activity was banned: they say, it is impossible, here we have a testing ground for testing and firing artillery.
In our time, military facilities have been partially preserved, and, for obvious reasons, no one focuses the attention of tourists and the public on them. But for independent researchers and those who like to get to the bottom of the truth, the above facts raised a lot of questions, from which a rather bold assumption was born: what if Stonehenge is a fake built over several decades of the XX century?
CUPOROS AND PHOTOSHOP
Let's think about who originally built the structure, which the British were involved in renovating in the 20th century. And for this, let's go back to the stones that make up the whole complex.
It is known that the so-called blue stones give a special uniqueness to Stonehenge. However, nowhere is it described exactly, what kind of rocks it is, or where the quarries in which they were mined are located. As mentioned above, there is an assumption that the blocks for Stonehenge were cut in a quarry located in South Wales.
This theory was first voiced in 1923, but then scientists did not yet know one interesting detail. Near Stonehenge, in an artificially created hill, there is a lot of rubble and even monolithic blue boulders. Simply put, this "hillock" is deliberately hidden construction waste, which was left after the construction of the monument.
Further, it is worth noting that the composition of blue Stonehenge stones is heterogeneous, but a significant part of it is copper sulfate, which gives a characteristic color. In nature, this chemical compound in the composition of CuSO45H2O is found in the chalcanthite mineral, which is formed in mines, quarries, and mineral deposits.
For the appearance of hapkantite, two prerequisites are necessary - sunlight and water. Human intervention greatly speeds up the process. And if so, it is very possible that the blue stones of Stonehenge are not natural monolithic blocks, but concrete, to which the builders have added the necessary chemical compound.
In addition, copper sulfate, also known as CuSO4, can be obtained in laboratory conditions, and also in industry, where it is a by-product of bronze casting. Celts, druids and all other official builders of Stonehenge would have had to cast bronze and accumulate CuSO4 for hundreds of years to build a cromlech.
But they had neither the capacity nor the motive to complicate an already gigantic task. But the Earls of Salisbury, who owned the valley, had a whole factory, which massively cast bronze cannons for the Royal Navy!
Why did Salisbury and their entourage need to mix concrete blocks with the waste of their native plant? The following version looks the most reasonable. Most likely, the idea of building a complex of megaliths belonged to the royal family. The goal is very simple: to age the history of England and thus place it on a par with Egyptian civilization. To turn fairy tales into reality, the Stonehenge megaproject with its blue blocks and huge triliths was needed. The only one, unique and very ancient - the same age as the pyramids!
Here, very opportunely, I remembered one of the stories about the wizard Merlin, who, with the help of magic, created a certain stone structure. And in support of the legend, numerous “historical artifacts” were found. For example, "old" prints and sketches of Stonehenge were found, then novels like "Tess of the d'Urberville family" appeared, in which the main characters wander through the "forest of monoliths towering among the grass-covered plain" and talk about his age: " It's Stonehenge! Claire exclaimed.
- A pagan temple?
- Yes. It is older than centuries!"
And then early photographs of the 19th century entered the scene.
People who participated in the creation of "artifacts" received high awards and titles from the hands of the royal family. For example, Thomas Hardy, the author of the aforementioned book, from the son of a stonecutter and an illiterate mother turned into a Knight of the Order of Merit, which was established by King Edward VII of Great Britain in 1902. The author of the first photographs of Stonehenge, Henry James, received a knighthood for the creation of photozincography technology, which, in fact, can be called 19th century Photoshop.
Believe the voiced facts and assumptions or not - everyone is free to decide for themselves. But one thing can be said for sure: Stonehenge to this day remains a mysterious object that keeps a lot of secrets …
Andrey RUKHLOV, “Secrets and Riddles. Steps No. 8 April 2016