You were walking in the British countryside in the early morning. You came upon these huge rocks that are arranged in a circle. You asked the person next to you what they are. He told you that it was the Stonehenge. Also that no one knows who made the Stonehenge, and what they were used for. More than nine hundred stone rings exist in the British Isles. Stonehenge is surely Britain's greatest national icon, symbolizing mystery, power and endurance.  

The first thing that many people think of when you say the word Stonehenge is what is it. Well the Stonehenge is huge rocks that are arranged in a ring. Some of the rocks have big rocks across the top of them. These look like huge horseshoes. These are more than just rocks. It is huge ditch and banks that sounds the stone circles. Many people think that the Stonehenge look nothing like it used to. Stonehenge looked liked a circular ditch with banks on inside at the time of 1500 BC. The bank consisted of 30 Sarsen stones arranged in a circle and had lintels. Within the ring were five stones arranged in what many people think looks like a horseshoe. Today only few of the lintels are still standing and only 17 of the stones are still in the right spot. On the open side of the horseshoe a heel stone sits about 120 feet form the ring. Every year on summer solstice the sun rises. The shadow of the heel stone will align with the center stone of the horseshoe. “Stonehenge is surely Britain's greatest national icon, symbolizing mystery, power and endurance” (Norris). The Stonehenge is located in the British Isles in all different places. Some have been located in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The most famous one is located on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England just south of London.

Many different people have different suggestions on when Stonehenge was built. The most common answer is between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. This is back in the Neolithic period. Druids constructed the Stonehenge is one of the stories that people think is true to who built the Stonehenge. Many people don’t think this is true though because this was in the seventeenth century. That was not the approximated time of the construction of the Stonehenge, which was around 4000 years ago. “During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the development of Carbon-14 dating techniques, the infusion- diffusion conception of British Neolithic history was abandoned and the megalithic monuments of Britain“ (Culbreath) .

Today many different theories on the people who made the Stonehenge make them think twice on who really built the Stonehenge. “One of them is that the Druids built them.  In the Seventeenth century the antiquarian John Aubery said that the Druids built them and many other structures. As time went on, the Celtic society found that this could not be true because the records date them back to only after 300 BC and that was more than 1500 years after the last rings were built (Culbreath).  Another theory brought up by seventeenth and eighteenth century visitors say that the Romans built the Stonehenge. This is less true than the Druids because the Romans did not set foot in the British Isles until the last year of the First century BC. This was nearly 200 years after the construction the Stonehenge” (Culbreath) . Egyptians and the Mesopotamian cultures helped out with idea of the constructions is one more of the theories that people have come up with on who built them, and there is many more. No one is really sure who made the Stonehenge, but many people are still trying to find this out.  

Not knowing who built the Stonehenge makes it even harder to find out why it was  built. Since only  one written language existed,  no records are left to find out what they used it for. The Carbon-14 helped tell the date of it but doesn’t really help with what it was used for. Some people assume that the Stonehenge was used for ritual activities and marking the territory of the different Neolithic Chief s’ land. One of the things that researchers found was that no garbage or was found round here. This gives the idea that it was used for ceremonies. Also axes, flint and antlers of animals were found near the Stonehenge, which helps with idea.  

Another idea is that it was used for a ritual for cattle. The cattle would be moved here and they would be enclosed there. As time went on the cattle function was not used as much, and it became a purely religious structures. The Stonehenge has been said to have astronomical alignments built into their design. “As Professor Richard Atkinson, of University College, Cardiff, a researcher at Stonehenge, once said, "You have to settle for the fact that there are large areas of the past we cannot find out about..."”(Krystek).  

The Stonehenge is a great icon that symbolizes mystery, power, and endurance. The purpose of the Stonehenge is still uncertain to us. “Stonehenge maybe, in many peoples' minds, is the most mysterious place in the world. This set of concentric rings and horseshoe shapes on the empty Salisbury Plain, is, at the age of 4,000 years, one of the oldest, and certainly best preserved, megalithic structures on Earth. It is a fantastic construction with many of the larger stones involved weighing 25 tons and quarried from a location 18 miles away. The rings and horseshoes of Sarsen also carry massive lintels connecting them so that when they were all in place there was a ring of stone in the sky as well as on the ground.” (Krystek). Her statement here best describes the Stonehenge. The Stonehenge is very mysterious, and many people don’t know who made the Stonehenge, why the Stonehenge was made, what the Stonehenge was used for, and where the Stonehenge is located. The Scientists are getting very close to finding these answers. They are learning more and more everyday.  The answers are there inside the Stonehenge. Everything we want to know about it is there. The Stonehenge will go on as a mystery. One day we will find the answer.