Solving Stonehenge: The Key To An Ancient EnigmaA completely new and convincing solution to the key puzzles of Stonehenge. As Anthony Johnson reveals in this astonishing book, patient detective work and detailed computer analysis of clues hidden within this famous monument can be made to yield remarkable new insights into how the earthwork and stone circle were conceived and laid out. The story begins with a reappraisal of over 250 years of fieldwork, excavation, and speculation, including John Wood's highly accurate but often overlooked survey of 1740. It is the most important record of Stonehenge ever made, and the only reliable plan of the monumentbefore the fall of several major stones and their subsequent re-erection in the twentieth century. The prehistoric engineering skills involved in the construction of Stonehenge have long been recognized, but Johnson presents for the first time tangible evidence to show that locked within the symmetry of the stones are precise formulae that determined their numbers, spacing, and relationships. He explains how the Neolithic surveyors set out the fifty-six Aubrey Holes, four Station Stones, and the thirty stones in the Sarsen Circle; and the significance of the horseshoe arrangement of massive trilithons at the heart of the monument. The implications are far reaching, demonstrating that the people who designed Stonehenge in all its phases of construction, spanning over 1,000 years, employed simple and elegant geometric rules. Elaborate sightline theories, alignments, and astronomical computations are questioned, allowing the rationale behind Stonehenge and other prehistoric sites, some of which conformed to the same model, to be reassessed. 135 illustrations, 35 in color. |
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Common terms and phrases
alignment ancient antiquarians Antiquity appear array astronomical Atkinson Aubrey Holes Avebury Avenue axis bank base baseline bluestone Bluestone Circle Bluestone Horseshoe Britain British Bronze Age builders burial Bush Barrow lozenge causeway centre century chalk Circle and Horseshoe circuit Cleal construction contemporary create Cunnington diameter dimensions ditch Durrington earlier early earthwork enclosure English Heritage entrance excavation fallen Geoffrey of Monmouth geometric Gowland ground Hawley Heelstone Heelstone ditch hexagon John landscape later lintels marker mortise Natural History Magazine Neolithic octagon original pair pegs phase Piggott pits portal positions postholes posts pottery radial radiocarbon dates relationship Richard Atkinson ring Salisbury Plain Sarsen Circle Sarsen Horseshoe sarsen monument sarsen uprights shows side Slaughter Stone South Barrow spacing Station Stones Stone 56 stone monument Stonehenge Stonehole structure Stukeley's suggested survey surviving symmetry tenons timber trenches trilithon trilithon Stones vertices William Cunnington William Stukeley Wiltshire Wood's