Stonehenge is a monument located in England. Experts say it was built sometime between 3,000 BC and 2,000 BC. Now that’s old! It’s prehistoric and one of the most famous sites in the world. But its just a bunch of rocks in a circle in the middle of nowhere. What could it possible mean?

Stonehenge is, in fact, a henge which means circular ditch. It has standing stones that are placed in the circle. Radiocarbon dating has been done on these stones and they are very old, and were placed there a long long time ago. Some archaeologists speculate that Stonehenge could have originally been used as burial ground. Remains have been found and have been verified to be some 500 years apart from each other. Stonehenge has had much speculation about what it really was. Some researchers say that because of the number of burial sites that have been found in the area, that it was a burial site and a place to come to meditate or worship.

Many believe that Stonehenge was a sort of dial that was aligned with the solstice. Since the 18th century, the horseshoe of great trilithons on the inside of the Stonehenge Monument and the horseshoe of 19 bluestones on the outer ring had their opening face the direction of the midsummer sunrise. Some came to the conclusion that the monument must have been deliberately placed so that on midsummer’s morning the sun rose directly over the Heel Stone, in the distance, and the first sunlight that shined on the center of the monument between horseshoe. The alignment also made it pretty clear that whoever built Stonehenge had to have astronomical knowledge relating to the sun’s path.

Researchers were also skeptical about the ability of men being able to lift and move such large heavy rocks into position. That hurdle was overcome when techniques were used to imitate how the people may have moved and stacked the enormous rocks.