Friday 21 December 2012

Druids having a whale of a time at Stonehenge

Stonehenge, a monument located 60 miles (100 km) south of Oxford, is one of the UK's most popular tourist attractions. Every year it draws in a startling 800,000 tourists.

If you have never been or heard of Stonehenge, picture in your head 'thirty upright stones (sarsens, each over ten feet tall and weighing 26 tons), aligned in a circle, with thirty lintels (6 tons each) perched horizontally atop the sarsens in a continuous circle. There is also an inner circle composed of similar stones, also constructed in post-and-lintel fashion.'

'Archaeologists believe that they were placed at this site between 2000 and 3000 years BC, and were once used as a burial ground. The Druids then used Stonehenge as a temple, and the large stone lying in the center was their alter. the Druids were thought to be the Priests of the ancient Britons and Stonehenge was an ancient British temple.'

Druids still exist to this day, and "well over 5,000" of them made their way to Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice earlier today, and what a celebration it was! A solstice is an astronomical event that occurs twice each year as the Sun reaches its highest or lowest excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Click on the image below to read more.



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