Who built Stonehenge?

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16891061/

Who built Stonehenge?
An archaeological find may help solve the ancient mystery
NBC VIDEO


? Village unearthed near Stonehenge
Jan. 30: Archaeologists have uncovered a village near Stonehenge that was carbon dated to about 2600 B.C., about the same time Stonehenge was built. NBC's Lester Holt reports.
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NEAR SALISBURY, England - For centuries, Stonehenge has drawn everyone from scientists to mystics ? all trying to glean the origins and meaning of the nearly 5,000-year-old circle of stones.

"Something special must have been about this place that we can't get to at the moment," says David Batchelor, an archeologist with English Heritage.

But now scientists may be closer. Just two miles from Stonehenge, in south-central England, a National Geographic team has unearthed the remains of a human settlement from about 2600 B.C. What its inhabitants left behind may explain a lot.

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"We've got enormous quantities of trash," says Michael Parker-Pearson, the archaeologist leading the dig. "They are feasting and eating huge amounts of beef and corn. It's a very substantial village. It's just over there, half an hour's walk [from Stonehenge]. It's the same date as this lot going up. So we think there's a very good case for this being the homes of builders of Stonehenge."

Parker-Pearson believes Stonehenge was part of a much larger complex of structures linked by a river and a prehistoric highway ? an avenue, perhaps the oldest roadway in Europe.

Carbon dating puts the construction of Stonehenge, at the same time as development in nearby Durrington Walls, where the village was found, and where a wooden circle once stood.

The team has also traced the avenues ? running to and from a river ? that formed what now appears to be funeral procession route leading to Stonehenge.

"I think what we're looking at is a procession that would have taken place at mid-winter," says Parker-Pearson.

Human remains have previously been found at Stonehenge itself, but no signs of anyone living there.

"The emphasis on timber for one and stone for the other, we think, is to do with transience in life, permanence in death," says Parker-Pearson.

And providing another clue to unlock the enduring mystery of Stonehenge.

Note: Join Lester Holt this Saturday, Feb. 3, on Weekend TODAY, for more secrets from Stonehenge ? part of a month-long series on unsolved mysteries.

? 2007 NBC News

[SparrowHawk62]

It was my ancestors.

[Keith_Hixson]

I thought it was built by some scottish, anglo/saxon, norwegian with a celtic heritage.
Or, Sparrowhawk and my ancestors.

Keith

[Jerry D]

I think my Ancestors from around Cricklaid, England also helped and I bet it took a bunch of beer drinking brits setting around one winter to think up Stonehenge and the other larger then life sites in england

[Packo]

The natives drew the design. Illegals from Mexico did the work. It eventually became a Mexican Restaurant, Mia Stonhengeia, until the plague killed off everybody.

Colon

[b3196]

Ya'll wrong
Back around 2651BC the Poles invaded England and after all was said and done, they built kilbasa factory. During the process of manufacturing kilbasa, An excess of mathane gas built up and due to poor ventilation the building exploded leaving the remanents which later became know as Stonehenge.....True Story
bOOger

[Packo]

Bob, that's impossible. If the Poles were there it was only because the Mexicans got them cheap to do their labor. The Poles, therefore, worked for the Mexicans until Druid INS saw what was happening and kicked the Poles out.

Guts

[Seascamp]

Ay sus, apparently our history is wanting. Actually the Poles were an experiment gone badly. The northern Celtics; today?s Scots, were against the idea but the head-strong western Celtics from the west across today?s Irish sea reckoned that interbreeding with the Norsemen and sending the resultant way east to be potato farmers was a hot idea.
Zo, two hardheaded cultures came together and created a culture four times more hardheaded than the first two and the world has never been the same since. Upon my Stone of Ione, tiz true.

Domingo Angus Mc Scamp

[b3196]

Colon
Au Contrare my oversized rectal buddy
The mexicans refused to cross any body of water that proceeded to cover their backs. Which left England vulnerable to the only powerful nation in Europe....Poland.
Did I ever tell you what the 2 smallest books in the Library of Congress are:

1. Who's Who in Buford S.C.
2. Polish War Heros
bOOger

[Packo]

Did I ever tell you that there is no such place as "Buford SC". Yep, your Polish.

Colon