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stonehenge dusk
Photograph by Richard Nowitz
The 5,000-year-old Stonehenge monument in Wiltshire, England, shown here bathed in pastel twilight, has been examined by scientists for centuries. And though our understanding of the structure has increased greatly, particularly in recent years, questions persist about who built Stonehenge and why.
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stonehenge settlement
Photograph by Adam Stanford/Aerial-Cam for National Geographic
An aerial view shows excavations of a cluster of homes in the ancient English village of Durrington Walls. Archaeologists think the Neolithic settlement may have been connected with nearby Stonehenge as part of a large religious complex. The houses being excavated may have even been occupied by some of the builders of Stonehenge.
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stonehenge above
Photograph by Joe McNally/Sygma
At ground level, the ruins of Stonehenge appear somewhat random and chaotic, but a view from the air reveals the monument's circular order. The site started out modestly around 3100 B.C. as a wide ring of wood posts surrounded by a ditch and bank. The familiar enormous rock slabs, some brought from hundreds of miles away, were added to the interior over a period of about 1,500 years.
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stonehenge solstice
Photograph by Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
Each year, thousands come to watch the sunrise pierce Stonehenge's entranceway on summer solstice day. The wildly popular solstice festival was banned at the site in 1985 following violent clashes with police that came to be known as the Battle of the Beanfield. English Heritage, the monument's caretaker, reopened the site to solstice revelers in 2000.
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stonehenge crane
Photograph by Fox Photos/Getty Images
It required one of the largest cranes in England to lift Stonehenge's massive rock lintels during a rehabilitation project at the site in 1958. The size of the stones used to build the ancient monument—some pillars are 30 feet (9 meters) long and weigh 50 tons (45 metric tons)—and the distances they were moved have led to wild theories of supernatural involvement in the building of the structure.
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stonehenge restoration
Photograph by Three Lions/Getty Images
Thousands of years of settling, weathering, and stone pilfering left the once orderly Stonehenge complex in substantial disarray. What we see now is the result of several restoration projects carried out between 1901 and 1964 to stabilize leaning uprights and replace fallen stones. Here, a crane fits a lintel atop one of the site's towering pi symbol-shaped trilithons.
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stonehenge picnic
Photograph by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
An 1877 photo shows a group of highbrow picnickers relaxing in the shade of one of Stonehenge's giant trilithons. Included in the gathering is Queen Victoria's son, Prince Leopold (reclining, looking at camera).
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stonehenge fire breather
Photograph by Jim Richardson
Prehistoric remains found in and around Stonehenge suggest visitors came to the site not only from southern Britain but possibly from as far as mainland Europe. The mystical monument is still a beacon to pilgrims, from Druids to pagans, hippies to hedonists, New Agers to the merely curious. Here, revelers surround a fire breather during a popular summer solstice celebration.
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stonehenge sunset
Photograph by Jim Richardson
The beauty and mystery of Stonehenge, seen here at sunset, have made it one of the world's most popular and beloved ancient landmarks, with nearly a million people visiting the site each year. It's even inspired an American homage in Nebraska: an exact replica—made from 33 welded-together vintage automobiles—called Carhenge.
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stonehenge stars
Photograph by Richard Nowitz
A time-lapse image makes stars appear to whirl above an illuminated trilithon at Stonehenge. The monument's earliest and largest megaliths are made of immense blocks of locally available sandstone called sarsen. Other configurations within the site are made using smaller igneous slabs called bluestone, some of which weigh 4 tons and had to be hauled about 153 miles (246 kilometers) from the Preseli mountains in southern Wales.
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