Avebury – Photos of the Incredible Neolithic Stone Circle

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Magnificent Avebury Stone Circle – Photos of the Incredible Neolithic Stone Circle of Avebury, England. Photos by Paul E Williams. (TIP: Use the small icons below the slideshow for info & thumbnails)

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Photos of The Inspiring Avebury Stone Circle

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Photos of Avebury Neolithic henge and stone circle, England. Avebury is a huge Neolithic henge monument that surrounds the present day village of Avebury.

A henge is a circular ditch and bank and at Avebury the ditch and bank are a formidable 21 metres (69 ft) wide and 11 metres (36 ft) deep and date from about 3300–2630 BC.

Inside this henge are 3 stone circles the outer of which, dating from around 2900 BC, has a massive diameter of 331.6 metres (1,088 ft) with stones that vary from 3.6 to 4.2 m high. From this henge runs the West Kennet Avenue which is an avenue of two parallel lines of stones 25m wide and 2.5 km in length.

This leads to Silbury hill which is a man made neolithic monument 40 metres (131 ft) high[4] and covers about 5 acres (2 ha) which took an estimated took 18 million man-hours, or 500 men working for 15 years, to build. It is the same height as some of the smaller Egyptian pyramids.

Avebury is an incredible site and the amount of effort which went into its construction points to a well ordered sophisticated civilisation that could work together on these monumental projects.

The stones at Avebury are not dressed and seem to have been chosen for their shape. Theories abound about their morphology and some academics have suggested that different stone sizes and shapes represent men and women.

Theories about the uses of all of the Neolithic sites of Britain are constantly evolving as new archaeological methods allow a deeper insight into how they were constructed.

New finds at Stonehenge (only 20 miles ( 32KM) away,) and Orkney are opening up the neolithic archaeological record and seem to be pointing towards the importance of ancestor worship for these neolithic people.

It has been suggested that Avebury was used for ancestor worship on a monumental scale. The alignment of the sites also seem to point to stars like Deneb as well as sun alignments.

Sadly we never actually know how the sites were used but the vast scale they were built on tells us that 5000 years ago Neolithic peoples were more sophisticated than they were once given credit for.