Month: September 2018

So mysterious that people actually theorize that ancient aliens built it. Stonehenge is one of the most impressive, if not the most, architectural feats of the prehistoric era. There is such a compelling thing about how it was built as a massive monument whose meaning still remains rather undefined.

The main reason this arrangement of simply rocks is so impressive to us, Homo sapiens sapiens, is that the MASSIVE slabs that compose the monument, (sarsen and bluestone) are brought all the way from Wales, England to Wiltshire, England which is almost 135 miles apart. What is most impressive of this is the fact that this was all before the invention of the wheel, so these peoples had to come up with the most clever way to move these around. After arduous research done by many, many researchers, one, Andrew Young, deciphered a way in which these stone slabs could have been moved around.

TRACKS! ball bearing tracks. which were probably made of oak with granite and wooden balls. He came to this odd but very true conclusion by studying these granite balls found in large quantities around the Stonehenge site. So this finally rules out these ancient aliens theories, because there is also an explanation to what was the purpose to this monument.

Aside from the granite balls and bluestone slabs, there were also findings of a cremated cemetery called the Aubrey Holes under the smaller slabs that line the inner circle in Stonehenge. These were actually discarded the first time they were dug out and were reburied at the site. One archeologist believed that there had to be some clues in these bones, and there were! They could trace the gender and the health of the people that were buried there, which opened way to knowing a little more about this Stonehenge mystery.

The bones belonged to healthy men, which meant that this was a cemetery for the elite and the important in prehistoric society. Knowing this burial site was for elite males, this meant that these people were settling and had to have a place to live nearby. Given this theory they found that the river between the Durington Walls and Stonehenge was a connection between the two, making it seem as a connection between the realm of the living and the dead. An astronomer noticed that these two connected during the winter and summer solstices, the sun shone through the middle of each monument going directly though the middle of the other during these days.

Overall, Stonehenge is simply ideas, theories, and research, but the actual story and reality of the feat still remains unclear. It could be said that Stonehenge is one of the earliest signs of the beliefs of the dead being in a realm and the living being in theirs, the river being the carrier to the afterlife, and the exclusivity and eliteness of burial.

STONEHENGE DURING SUMMER SOLSTICE!! AMAZING RIGHT??

SO YOU CAN SEE HOW HUGE THESE SLABS REALLY ARE, AND CAN VISUALIZE THESE PEOPLE PUSHING THEM ON TRACKS WITH SIMPLY GRANITE BALLS.

Where it all started… I needed an elective to fulfill my senior year credits. Psychology? Done. Drawing? Done. Even photography, done. But art history? Interestingly not done. So, basically that is how I embarked on a journey that made me fall in love with the mystery and uncertainty of prehistoric art and what it narrates about the earliest peoples. There is a void in this specific time period that allows for the interpreter and apprentice to imagine, analyze, and critically develop theories or ideas in order to find an explanation to something that cannot be explained, read, or researched anywhere. This is what makes me passionate about prehistoric art, every time you are appreciating a piece, it gives you an imminent urge to jump in a time machine and travel back to where it all started.

From cave paintings deep down in the caves of Lascaux, France, the tiny Woman of Willendorf figure, to the mystery of Stonehenge in England, these art pieces do not only represent what we can see in surface but carry with them the culture of the earliest peoples, their life styles, their beliefs, and they way the innovated and evolved to become the newer and modern version of the Homo sapiens sapiens, well, us. Even-though, prehistoric art is so questionable due to its lack of written information, it manages to explain many aspects of daily life during the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic time periods.