Stonehenge was the site of the celebrations of the summer solstice for Millenia. Credit: Andrew Dunn/Wikimedia
Stonehenge, the notorious stone circle on the Salisbury plain, in the United Kingdom, dates back to the 2500 AC the monument is aligned so that if you are standing in the center of the ring on the summer sultice (which can be on 20, June 21 or June 22), the sun rises on the heel stone; It is believed that the celebrations of the solstice took place there for millennia. In the 1960s, the astronomer of the Boston University Gerald Hawkins hypothesized that he was a sophisticated astronomical observatory used to predict eclipses. A few years later, Alexander Thom, a retired Oxford engineering professor, claimed a stunning level of astronomical precision in over 900 stone clubs through the British Isles. While these most extreme ideas have been rejected by archaeologists and its precise astronomical purpose remains debated, today the circle is largely accepted to be a method to monitor the sun and the moon, although less precisely than what Hawkins and Thom said said. The most recent theories suggest that they work as an ancient solar calendar, possibly for ritual or agricultural purposes. Thousands of people still gather in Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice.
