Stonehenge

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men to come to England that are identified as Stonehenge architects came

when the massive mountains of sheet ice that were then blocking England and France melted

around 12,000 B.C. After their safe journey through the barrens, people came from the

mainland, and had great influence on those already living there.

The first Tribe involved in the construction of Stonehenge was the Windmill Hill Tribe

who arrived in the Neolithic Era of time. These people were semi-nomadic agriculturalists who

mainly just fed and maintained their flocks of cattle, sheep, goats, and wild dogs. Not

only were they agriculturalist, but they also hunted, mined for flint, crafted and bartered axes, and

could almost be called early industrialists. The Windmill Hill people had a very strong ties and

beliefs in their religion with a great respect for their dead and their ancestors. They have

exceptional collective graves, in the form of long burrows, or long manmade piles of dirt,

sometimes 400 feet long. Many riches such as food, tools, and pottery were buried with the dead.

The next group to contribute to Stonehenge was the Beaker people; known for the

beaker-like pottery they would frequently bury with their dead. These people did not practice the

ritual of collective burials, rather single or double burials, and the dead were accompanied by

more items used as weapons during the time, such as daggers and battleaxes. These single burials

were in the form of round barrows. The Beaker people were well organized, active, and powerful,

and also probably more territorial. They practiced commerce with other cultures, and their graves

give an impression of there being an aristocracy in the society.

The last major group to put time into the construction of Stonehenge was the Wessex Tribe.

They arrived on Salisbury plain around 1450 B.C., and were involved in building t...