Stonehenge

At eleven this morning, I found myself shivering my way around the remains of Stonehenge as part of a trip hosted by USC to visit the colossal archaeological site and the nearby town of Salisbury. It was a great trip; the stones are pretty fascinating. Apparently the rocks used in their construction were brought from over two hundred miles away, and some of them weigh over fifty tons! And the whole structure took fifteen hundred years to build! And nobody knows why it was built! Just imagine how many generations of people were dedicated to erecting this structure! Apparently building began on Stonehenge as early as 3100 BC and the entire thing was completed around 1600 BC (and it went over budget. Hahahahaha). It was a very fascinating trip and our tour guide for the day used the words “mind-boggling” at least thirty times to describe the giant stones. But they were pretty mind-boggling, so I guess she wins this round.

Salisbury was also an experience. In the thirteenth century, the town, then known as Sarum, was located on the top of a hill near the town’s current location. The townspeople decided they wanted to move the town to the current location for easier water access and better protection from the wind, so they asked the town bishop if that would be okay, and he said it would, as long as the first thing they built in the new town was a church. So, today we visited the 700-year-old Salisbury Cathedral, and it was quite a sight. First of all, it was huge. It was at least one hundred yards long inside, and the vaulted ceiling rose high above our heads, ornate with pale stone decoration and flanked on either wall by beautiful, colorful stained-glass windows. We saw many interesting things in the cathedral, such as the oldest working clock in the world, which was a contraption of gears and pulleys which rang a bell to call the Salisburians to church. Curiously, the church is also the home of one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta, an ancient document establishing fundamental civil rights. It was brought back by a famous knight who fought in the Crusades and was entrusted with a copy of this sacred document in 1215, or roughly 250 years before Columbus discovered America and 650 years before Abraham Lincoln would grant similar rights to African Americans. And that’s not even very old over here! Stonehenge is 5000 years old, and there are chunks of rock smattered around London which have been around since the Romans inhabited the city! It’s amazing! Isn’t it!?