Since prehistoric times, people have created works of art and sculptures to represent the world around them. In the study of astrology, much of what we discover about the knowledge and ideas that the ancients had is through artifacts left behind. The most special and expository for us are the architectural structures. People have been studying the sun, moon and planets for thousands of years. Many of these archaeological structures created by the Neolithic are based on what people saw in the sky. They studied the movements of celestial bodies and represented them in their sculptures. One of the best known and first discovered structures is Stonehenge. Although it is a household name today, the structure is surrounded by mystery. Its purpose, its function and even the provenance of its stones are a matter of debate among modern astrologers and historians. In this article we will discuss the most popular theories and those that have the most credence regarding the function of Stonehenge, according to the book Archaeoastronomy: Introduction to the science of stars and stones by Giulio Magli. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay First, it is crucial to discuss the visual impact and physical presence of Stonehenge to later analyze how its structure lends itself to functioning. Stonehenge was built in what is now Whiltshire England, in an area called Salisbury Plain. The structure sits on a stretch of land called a bank, or mound, that extends about 300 feet across. It is surrounded by a narrow moat, which gives the illusion that the structure is elevated. Outside this runs an avenue, which looks like a corridor up to the entrance to the mound. Inside the Avenue, the entrance appears to be marked by a Heel Stone. Today, only one of these heel stones still stands. However, historians speculate that the structure, when fully formed, had two Heel Stones. These sister heel stones, just a few feet apart from each other, were thought to allow sunlight to peak between the two of them during the solstices. At the end of the avenue, entering the circle and appearing to be the beginning of the structure's outermost circle, is the Slaughter Stone. Inside the main mound of the entire structure, we can see two main concentric circles. These circles are made up of vertical stones. The outer circle is made up of a series of sarsen stones, the structure of which includes 30 trilithons (that is, two parallel vertical rock slabs with a smaller horizontal rock slab lying on top of it), each about 20 feet high. In the book Archeoastronomy, Magli writes, “it is difficult to escape the idea that the outer stone circle of Stonehenge was intended to suggest a sphere” (Magli, 130). Furthermore, the inner circle is made up of much smaller individual rocks called bluestone, a mystery in itself because we cannot truly know how the Neolithic people acquired stones that were not local to the site. Inside these two concentric circles we see, closer to the center, two concentric horseshoe shapes. These horseshoes have an opening that aligns with the driveway. The outer horseshoe is also made of sarsen stone trilithons, but they are larger and fewer in number than the outer trilithons. These larger ones are about 30 feet tall. The inner horseshoe is once again filled with small single bluestone stones. In addition to this, outside these horseshoes and circles, but still within the mound of the structure as a whole, are the station stones. Although only two of them are still standing, they appear to have been used to form the cornersof what would have been an imaginary quadrilateral inside the mound. The entire structure is intricate and elaborate, and historians agree that it is very intentional. It closely mimics another structure, Woodhenge, which is made of wood rather than stone. It is important to note, however, that Stonehenge was built and modified over several thousand years, and we can now examine only its ruins. There is no written history of the Neolithic period, so we can only make our best guesses as to what its original architectural structure would have been. Stonehenge is veiled in further mystery. One mystery is the idea of ​​how the stones arrived on Salisbury Plains. As far as we know, the Neolithic had no wheels or other technology to transport giant bluestone rocks from 150 miles away to Wales. However, somehow they were able to use those stones in the structure. There are two main schools of thought that speculate how this might happen. Some historians believe that glacial movement may have influenced the location of the rocks - that is, the bluestone rocks that are not currently found near the Salisbury Plains were very close to the location, but the change in our mass of ice and land over long periods of time it has ensured that those rocks are only now found naturally so far from Stonehenge. The other argument, which seems to be a more widespread belief, is the idea that glacial movement could not have had such a drastic impact. Neolithic peoples, on the other hand, had methods or tools that we are still unaware of today with which to move stones. Both of these hypotheses give us more questions than answers. Namely, why was this blue stone specially chosen? What gave it a special meaning for Neolithic people? What did they know that we don't know? The greatest and most debated mystery about Stonehenge, however, is that of the function it served for the Neolithic people. Neolithic people looked to the stars, moon and sun to predict the weather and also the results of crops and the quantity of food supply. Because of the specific architecture of Stonehenge, we can, even today, see the sunset of the winter solstice and the sunrise of the summer solstice align very closely with openings built into the rocks. However, the question historians ask is: is the purpose of Stonehenge to see the winter solstice or the summer solstice? If we stand in the center of the Stonehenge cairn and look towards the Heel Stones and the avenue, we can see the summer solstice aligns within a few degrees between the current Heel Stone and what its sister Heel Stone would be if it were still active Today. Because of this alignment, historians initially believed that Stonehenge was created to commemorate and identify the summer solstice. However, when we look at the structure from a different point of view, we can see another ideology of thought emerge. If we stand inside the Avenue and look towards the center of the entire structure, we can see the winter solstice aligning inside the larger central trilithons. Not only that, but the rest of the stones around it form a sort of "dome" or wall that blocks all the surrounding light from that observation point. This creates an even more intense visual display than the summer solstice, another reason why highlighting the winter solstice may be its intended function. This ideology, that Stonehenge was created to commemorate the winter solstice, is supported by its relationship to a Neolithic other. structure. Woodhenge, located just a couple of miles from Stonehenge, was thought to be architecturally very similar to.