5.3 Europe: 3000 to 1500 b.c.  (Page 5/6)

Before the next phase of Stonehenge was constructed, the Bell-beaker people arrived from the continent (2,500-2,300 B.C.) with their copper working skills and their arrow-heads and daggers. Tin was discovered in Cornwall and a bronze industry could soon develop. It was these same Beaker folks who subsequently bridged the transition in Ireland from the Neolithic period to the Bronze Age between 2,000 and 600 B.C., introducing copper and gold ornamentation. These people also migrated into Scotland to fuse with the earlier flint users who had come from Ireland and Norway at about 3,000 B.C. McEvedy (Ref. 136 ) calls the Bell-beaker people of the continent "Celto-Ligurians" and although we dislike getting involved in semantics, we feel that they were definitely not Ligurians and probably not rightly called Celts, as the latter were not yet definitely separated from the general mass of Indo-European speaking peoples of central Europe.

But to return to Stonehenge, Phase II dates to about 2,100 B.C., with the placement of a double Bluestone Circle, with stones six feet apart in the center of the original construction. Part of this, however, was never completed. The amazing thing is that 82 of these ophitic dolorite stones were somehow brought from their only source, the Prescelly Mountains of Dyfed, Wales, - some 135 miles "as the crow flies" or 240 miles by sea and land, each weighing several tons, to Stonehenge. Professor Gerald Hawkins

The most spectacular part of the Stonehenge display, however, is Phase III, which consists of the Sarsen Circle of thirty uprights and lintels, some weighing up to 45 tons. These massive stones came from near Avebury and almost of necessity had to be moved on ice about the year 2,000 B.C. when England was much colder than before or since.

Professor Alexander Thom, astronomer and mathematician, although differing from Hoyle as to many details, is equally sure that these ancient stone builders were able to predict eclipses, and after many years of study believes that all the menhirs (long stones) and cromlechs (curved stones) of Britain and Brittany as well, are similar in purpose. There are of course other stone circles, some 900 all together, to be found throughout the British Isles. One, known as Durrington Walls, is two miles north of Amesbury and was built by skilled carpenters of about 2,500 B.C. probably with a sloping, cone-shaped roof and a central courtyard open to the sky. It is 1,720 feet in diameter. Areton(?) warriors undoubtedly inhabited these regions after about 1,900 B.C. forming a ruling power aristocracy which lasted some 600 years. The mysterious stone ring of Brogar on one of the Orkney Islands as well as the great tomb at Maeshowe date to 2,300 B.C., the same time as the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. Later, at about 1,600 B.C., there was a time of high sea levels, and the coastal forests of Britain were inundated by the sea. (Ref. 176 , 178 , 224 , 7 )