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Stonehenge Theories:

Celestial Observatory

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Several theories proposed a connection between Stonehenge's purpose and astronomy.

Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, the renowned English scientist and astronomer who was the co-discoverer of the element helium and founded the scientific journal Nature, also dabbled in antiquities. Lockyer developed a theory that ancient temples were aligned according to the position of the sunrise at the time they were built. In 1901, he wrote a paper in which he assumed that portion of Stonehenge known as the Heel Stone had been originally aligned with the Summer Solstice, and on that basis calculated—incorrectly, as we now know-- that the monument had been built in 1800 BC. In 1906, he published a book, Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments Astronomically Considered, in which he pointed to astronomical similarities between Stonehenge and Egyptian temples, and argued that the English monument had been built by people from that region. 57 years later, American astronomer Gerald Hawkins used a computer to do a much more elaborate and exacting study of Stonehenge's astronomical alignments. His analysis, first published in Nature and later in the 1965 book Stonehenge Decoded, found 165 points on the structure associated with movements of the Sun and Moon (but not any stars or visible planets). He proposed that Stonehenge was in itself a sort of ancient computer, designed to predict lunar eclipses.

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