Stonehenge as long been regarded as a mystery in early human culture and technology. Although the monument has been studied extensively by archeologists, many questions still remain on who built Stonehenge and for what reason. Geologists have concluded that the rocks at Stonehenge did not come from the local area, adding questions about how the rocks were transported to their current location in the Salisbury Plain so that the monument could be built.

Archeologists have established that Stonehenge was built in stages. The current state of the Stonehenge monument is what is left from the last stage of development, which occurred about 4,500 years ago. During this final stage of configuration, the stones were arranged so that they frame the sun rising during the summer solstice and the sun setting during the winter solstice.

The Rocks of Stonehenge

Salisbury Plain itself is underlain with a soft chalk formation that was deposited during the Cretaceous period. The stones that make up the monument are of two rock types: sedimentary and igneous. The sedimentary rock is called sarsen sandstone. This sandstone was deposited over much of southern England at the beginning of the Tertiary period about 60 million years ago. These are the larger stones that make up the outer circle of the monument and rock beams across the top of the standing stones. This sandstone is not native to Salisbury Plain and petrological analysis has suggested its source as being an outcrop located at Marlborough Downs 30 kilometers away.

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