This article puts it all into perspective and, for me, makes me feel more connected.

Stonehenges all around us

Architectural relics and modern structures show that we may not be much different than our ancestors.

By Craig Childs, CRAIG CHILDS is the author, most recently, of "House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest."

February 16, 2007 ARCHEOLOGISTS recently discovered what appears to be the other half of Stonehenge, illuminating what they believe is a much larger Neolithic complex than has long been envisioned. What is coming to the surface seems strangely familiar. Looking closely at Stonehenge and other Neolithic sites, we find the formative patterns of our modern world.

Step out of your house and you might notice your street is fixed on a cardinal grid: north, south, east, west. This pattern defines many American and European cities, as well as Neolithic sites such as Anyang in China and the Mexican city of Teotihuacan.

FOR THE RECORD:
Stonehenge: A Feb. 16 commentary about Stonehenge stated that a megalithic structure in the Sahara dating back 6,000 years was the oldest in the world . A site in Turkey known as Gobekli Tepe dates back more than 11,000 years. -

The new discovery, two miles from Stonehenge itself, is an elaborate residential compound now being excavated. It is a site where the builders of Stonehenge may have lived and where pilgrims may have stayed while attending feasts and ceremonies. Fascinating tidbits have been unearthed: a timber version of Stonehenge, evidence of different kinds of occupations in the 4,600-year-old village and a processional "road" leading to the nearby Avon River. These finds add to the picture of an enigmatic Neolithic religion, in which stone-paved roads are aligned with celestial features and great circles frame the rising and setting sun at key times of the year.

This all has an uncanny resemblance to Neolithic sites in different parts of the world. The Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, dating back several hundred years, is a complex celestial calendar, its 28 spokes of aligned stones pointing to risings and settings of the sun and various stars. This medicine wheel, in turn, is similar to the Nonakado Stone Circle of Japan, from the 1st millennium BC, where standing stones mark important, calendrical events on the horizon.

My friend and colleague, Kim Malville, recently discovered an Egyptian Stonehenge in the Sahara dating back more than 6,000 years. Malville believes that it acted as both a calendar and a temple for people living along the edge of an ancient lake, and it is the oldest known megalithic site in the world.

My personal favorite Stonehenge look-alike - at least in concept - is in northern New Mexico, where in the 11th century, the Chaco culture built hundreds of miles of processional "roads." Rather than rings of giant standing stones, the Chacoans erected enormous masonry temples known as great houses. Many of these great houses are aligned to view celestial events through portals and windows.

Looking at the way ancient people assembled themselves, archeologists see cults and primitive, celestial religions. But how primitive were these people's beliefs, and how different from them are we?

I once ambled around the Colorado Capitol in Denver with a compass and notebook in hand. I had come to a modern landmark to apply the same questions we had been asking at ancient sites. I found that every aspect of the building's neoclassical architecture has alignments you see at many Neolithic ceremonial centers. Every bench is symmetrically arranged around the cruciform building, which is, in turn, set to cardinal directions. It lies within an array of other government buildings and open processionals, each holding to the same cardinal patterns.

At the Chaco site, certain ruins were found swept clean, while nearby buildings were loaded with trash. The same thing was just unearthed near Stonehenge: some buildings littered with broken pottery and discarded bones - what archeologists believe to be the leavings of feasts and pilgrimage - and others remarkably clean.

Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester commented that these clean rooms near Stonehenge may have belonged to special people, chiefs or priests. He also suggested that they were possibly shrines and cult centers.

That day in Denver, tens of thousands of people were gathered in an open area at the foot of the Capitol for some kind of weekend fair. The atmosphere boomed with music and smelled of food cooking in numerous tents. What was I seeing? Pilgrims, feasts and cult centers? Were the meticulously kept buildings erected for priests and chiefs?

The same kind of architecture can be seen in Washington, where countless astronomical alignments are constructed into the Capitol and its surrounding buildings and monuments. Most recently, Gerald Ford joined a long line of presidents whose bodies have lain in state inside the majestic, symmetrical Rotunda. Will future archeologists imagine the worship of ancient leaders whose bodies were kept within circular chambers before burial?

So often we see ourselves as a lonely, cultural pinnacle, superior beyond all comparison. But if recent excavations at Stonehenge offer anything, they put our era in perspective, reminding us of an unbroken lineage shared across continents and cultures. We are simply an extension of an ancient age, living now in the next lost civilization.

One more reason to leave Stonehenge the frack alone!

Study: For centuries Stonehenge was a burial site

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - England's enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates.

Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday.

And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.

"It's now clear that burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages," said Mike Parker Pearson, archaeology professor at the University of Sheffield in England and head of the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project.

In the past many archaeologists had thought that burials at Stonehenge continued for only about a century, the researchers said.

"Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead," Parker Pearson said in a statement.

The researchers also excavated homes nearby at Durrington Walls, which they said appeared to be seasonal homes related to Stonehenge.

"It's a quite extraordinary settlement, we've never seen anything like it before," Parker Pearson said. The village appeared to be a land of the living and Stonehenge a land of the ancestors, he said.

There were at least 300 and perhaps as many as 1,000 homes in the village, he said. The small homes were occupied in midwinter and midsummer.

The village also included a circle of wooden pillars, which they have named the Southern Circle. It is oriented toward the midwinter sunrise, the opposite of Stonehenge, which is oriented to the midsummer sunrise.

The research was supported by the National Geographic Society, which discusses Stonehenge in its June magazine and will feature the new burial data on National Geographic Channel on Sunday.

The researchers said the earliest cremation burial was a small group of bones and teeth found in pits called the Aubrey Holes and dated to 3030-2880 B.C., about the time with the first ditch-and-bank monument was being built.

Remains from the surrounding ditch included an adult dated to 2930-2870 B.C., and the most recent cremation, Parker Pearson said, comes from the ditch's northern side and was of a 25-year-old woman. It dated to 2570-2340 B.C., around the time the first arrangements of large sarsen stones appeared at Stonehenge.

According to Parker Pearson's team, this is the first time any of the cremation burials from Stonehenge have been radiocarbon dated. The burials dated by the group were excavated in the 1950s and have been kept at the nearby Salisbury Museum.

In the 1920s an additional 49 cremation burials were dug up at Stonehenge, but all were reburied because they were thought to be of no scientific value, the researchers said.

They estimate that up to 240 people were buried within Stonehenge, all as cremation deposits.

Team member Andrew Chamberlain suggested that that the cremation burials represent the natural deaths of a single elite family and its descendants, perhaps a ruling dynasty.

A clue to this, he said, is the small number of burials in Stonehenge's earliest phase, a number that grows larger in subsequent centuries, as offspring would have multiplied.

Parker Pearson added: "I don't think it was the common people getting buried at Stonehenge - it was clearly a special place at that time. One has to assume anyone buried there had some good credentials."

The actual building and purpose of Stonehenge remain a mystery that has long drawn speculation from many sources.

What is wrong with people?  I'm spechless ...

LONDON (AFP) - Vandals used a hammer and screwdriver to vandalize England's world-famous Stonehenge ancient monument, the first such incident for decades, officials said Thursday.

The night-time attack by two men last week involved the central megalith in the 5,000-year-old ring of standing stones, said the conservation body English Heritage, adding that they could have been looking for a souvenir.

A chip of stone about the size of a large coin was removed, while a 2.5-inch- (6.5 centimetre-) long scratch was left on the Heel Stone, at the centre of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, near Salisbury, southwest England.

"Thanks to the vigilance and quick action of the security team at Stonehenge, very minimal damage was caused," said a spokeswoman for English Heritage.

"A tiny chip was taken from the north side of the Heel Stone with a screwdriver and hammer, but as soon as the two men were spotted by security guards they escaped over the fence and drove off.

"This is now a matter for the police," she added.

A spokeswoman for Wiltshire Police said: "Two male offenders were seen disturbing the monument with a hammer and screwdriver... It is believed they could be two men seen acting suspiciously on a previous occasion."

Stonehenge is one of the world's best preserved prehistic monuments. In around 2,600 BC, 80 giant standing stones were arranged on Salisbury Plain, where there was already a 400-year-old stone circle.

Around two centuries later, even bigger stones were brought to the plain.

Today, only 40 percent of the originals remain. But around 850,000 visitors per year come to marvel at the 17 stones which are still intact.

The biggest stones came from a quarry some 30 kilometres (18 miles) away, while some of the others come from a range of hills in south-west Wales, a 250-kilometre (150 mile) journey away.

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More photos from my homeward bike route:

It's hard to distinguish the babies but a family of Canada geese were feeding by the bike path.  A runner went past just as I was taking this pic and the geese retreated.

The Mighty Mississip!  Not really, just a very swollen Olentangy River.

I found this bunny just inside the OSU Wetlands.  There is something going on with the local raccoon population.  They're sick!  I'm not sure if it's rabies but I have seen two of them in about the same location in the wetlands and both were out in the daytime, looking dazed.  One was sitting in the middle of the path and the one I saw yesterday was sitting in the grass.  They almost look drunk, all glassy-eyed and tottery.

The wetlands.  Sometimes you can see herons here.  Yesterday I just saw an assortment of ducks and geese.

I don't know who lives in this tree but I think we're related!  I just love Northmoor Park and I'm so lucky I live nearby!

This tree, also in Northmoor Park, has built-in bookshelves!  The line of trees behind this one is also very appealing.  They're in the same park as the Sisters, but on the other side of the bike path.  Maybe these are the Brothers?