A quick note to my blog followers. I’ve gotten feedback on the three chariot sessions, wanting me to finish the story for developments after Abraham. I will do that in the near future, but, for now, I’ll introduce the next topic. The background revolves around the question: The Bible records Abraham’s founding of Judaism. It is based on fact, whereas all other Near Eastern religions of the time were myth-based. The question is: were there other fact-based religions earlier or contemporary with Abraham? The answer is yes, and the location may surprise you: Stonehenge in England.
Blog-04 Stonehenge: Religion Based on Fact
The Stonehenge site bears the world’s oldest tradition of religious history. Although its standing stones were erected by mankind, they were not on the original site. When modern man first set foot in England, Stonehenge was already there. Stonehenge actually dates to the last ice age twelve thousand years BCE.
Glaciers covering the entire island of England carved the original site, defined as Stonehenge Phase I. It was a thirty-foot-wide raised road with ditches on both sides. It was straight as an arrow thousands of feet long. The unique aspect of it was that the road aligned with the summer and winter solstices. If you stood at the end of the road now occupied by the standing stones and looked down the road to the far side at the summer solstice, the sun would rise at the middle of the road on the far side. Likewise, standing at the other end of the road at the winter solstice.
What was its religious significance before the advent of writing? Since there are no records, we don’t know. However, archaeological artifacts indicate mankind was occupying the area around the site as early as four-thousand five-hundred BCE. Whether they used the road simply for agricultural reference for planting or for other religious purposes is unknown.
Three thousand BCE marks the construction of Stonehenge Phase II, built by a dark-skinned people referred to as the Windmill Hill culture from a site near Amesbury. It was constructed at the north-east end of the original road. Since they cremated their dead and the heat destroyed their DNA, we don’t have good evidence for their ancestry. Their Stonehenge was a dug out ditch and bank enclosing fifty-six pits, laid out in a circle using a square pattern of rope. There is some evidence the pits originally contained standing timbers; however, we know that bluestones later replaced them. By using these timbers in a repeating cycle, the inhabitants were not only able to predict the seasons of the year, but also sun and moon eclipses.
The unique location of Stonehenge is due to the fact that only at the latitude of Stonehenge can this pattern be constructed using ropes laid out in a square. Theoretically, it is possible to construct the ring at any place around the globe at that latitude, but it was only actually done in England. Going as little as twenty miles north or south, it isn’t possible.
For example, we know that circular rings of standing stones were erected throughout Europe and as far as the Middle East, but these could only be used to predict solstices, not eclipses. Did these have any ongoing relationship to the England Stonehenge? We have no information to know one way or the other. However, it is an intriguing question.
Around 2400 BCE a new people arrived, a culture we call the Beaker people, named for their style of pottery. Within a generation, the Windmill people disappeared from history, probably dying out from disease, since there is no evidence of foul play. This people constructed the Stonehenge Phase III we have today. We know that Stonehenge had a religious significance for them; however, since they left no writing, we cannot be certain of its details or its practices. (As an aside, the Beaker people constructed Stonehenge before the Egyptians built the Great Pyramid of Khufu.)
What we can be certain of is their religion was based on the fact of the site. It was not simply a myth of the imagination. It was the world’s first fact-based religion.