The mysteries of Stonehenge and how it came to be have been challenging scientists for as long as we can remember. There are some great theories and explanations making it clear that the giant rocks could "easily" have been placed by ordinary bronze age folk, and not necessarily extra-terrestrial beings or druids with magical powers.

Now's the question, if "they" had the technology and know-how to move and place these huge stones, why did they keep on using the "technology" and build more structures of the same sort? Why did they stop at one? For instance the Egyptians figured out how to move giant "rocks" and place them in a nice pyramid shape. And they continued to do so. They didn't stop at one. In fact the pyramid building is so "common" that you can see them all around the world. The world seems to have gone through a kind of megalithic period where they were moving large stones around and putting them into various positions in the landscape. Stonehenge, compared to those, is a fairly sophisticated piece of architecture.

There are similar structures to Stonehenge, but somehow they feel/look like cheap copies. The main difference is the lintels (the stones set on top of the pillars). Other circles have massive raised stones, but only Stonehenge has the lintels that form a complete circle. Shaping the lintels so that they remained flat but still formed a gentle circle needed architectural techniques that were very advanced for the time period. In addition to this, these top stones were attached to the pillars in a technique still being used by carpenters today: mortise-and-tenon joints. The top of the upright stones are shaped with a protruding section called a tenon. The tenon fits perfectly into a carved out mortise in the lintel to form a stable joint.

So, if they really had the technology, why build just one - and why did the technology "disappear" and not develop like most other technologies?

Originally posted by Gaspode
There are similar structures to Stonehenge, but somehow they feel/look like cheap copies. The main difference is the lintels (the stones set on top of the pillars). Other circles have massive raised stones, but only Stonehenge has the lintels that form a complete circle.

I take your point about the lintels, but I'm not sure "cheap copies" is quite fair. Take a complex building operation like Silbury Hill, for example. The archaeological evidence points to a massive undertaking over a number of years. Also, evidence from the site suggests that wood and stone were combined in the stone circle just down the road from the hill ("The Sanctuary" - from memory but I'm not 100% sure) - presumably at least partly because of the ease of constructing with wood over stone.

However, whereas earth-fixed wooden posts can still be traced, the existence of wooden lintels cannot so easily be proven as there is much less evidence of them within the surrounding earth.

I'm pretty sure that Stonehenge is indeed the largest such construction in England, but I'm not sure that it can be demonstrated for sure that when built it was necessarily the most impressive. That it has stone lintels suggests some clever engineering, and probably a fair few very sore arms, but it's not quite the astonishing feat that is sometimes suggested.

Certainly not on the scale of structural engineering that the Pyramids were.

LW

there was a documentry on the discovery channel not so long ago, aprently the stones that where used did not come from where stonehedge is located, one type of stone cam e from south wales the other from near corwall.

Originally posted by sonicX007
there was a documentry on the discovery channel not so long ago, aprently the stones that where used did not come from where stonehedge is located, one type of stone cam e from south wales the other from near corwall.

Indeed, they had to drag them quite a bit (over water too).

Anyway, the reason Stonehenge is one of a kind is probably the same reason why the Great Pyramid is one of a kind, or the Great Wall, or the Colloseum, take your pick. Either:

- They didnt need more of the megalithic sites
- It was so time consuming and hard work it wasnt worth it anymore

Or of course:

- We just havent found one to rival it yet, despite it being out there.

IMO someone had the bright idea that you COULD just do it with wood instead, saving yourself 100,000,000x the effort to construct it.

OR on the opposite side, maybe someone decided that using alot of wood and little stone just wasnt enough: they needed more stone. So they cannibalized the other smaller "woodhenges" around todays stonehenge (ie it would been alot easier to build since they stones where already finished).