The science and art of designing and constructing buildings and other physical structures has
been of man's interest since his very beginning.
Civil works have cultural rooting and symbolise the thinking of the society.
When we look at the constructions of old days, we see wonders built by men with no technology.
These wonders, built after dedicated efforts of decades, stand as a symbol of admiration
and amazement.
Stonehenge is a prehistoric, mysterious circle of upright stones in southern England.
Construction on the Great Monument began 5,000 years ago.
The Great Age, massive scale and the mysterious purpose of Stonehenge draw over 800,000 visitors
per year and several thousand gather on the summer solstice to watch the sunrise at this
ancient and mystical site.
The stones are aligned almost perfectly with the sunrise on the summer solstice and it
is almost unquestioned that Stonehenge was built as a spectacular place of worship.
Documented as one of the most famous places in the world to visit, there are no written
records as to why Stonehenge was built.
Some theory it was a place of dying, while others theory it was a place of healing.
Some reason Stonehenge was built for human sacrifice, while others speculate it's all
about astronomy.
Stonehenge has been the subject of much archaeological and scientific inquiry and research, especially
in the last century.
The modern account of the construction of Stonehenge is based primarily on excavations
done since 1919 and especially since 1950.
The native Neolithic people of England began construction of Stonehenge 1 by digging a
circular ditch using deer antlers as peaks.
The circle is 320 feet in diameter and the ditch itself was 20 feet wide and 7 feet deep.
Stonehenge 1 seems to have been used for about 500 years and then abandoned.
Construction of Stonehenge 2 began around 2100 BC.
In this phase a semi-circle of granite stones, known as blue stones, was assembled within
the original bank and ditch circles.
Several aspects of this phase are intriguing.
First, the blue stones come from the Presley Mountains in South Wales nearly 250 miles away.
There were about 80 of them, weighing up to 4 tons each.
How they were transported is not known.
Although scholars don't regard the feet as impossible, various theories have been presented
It is intriguing to wonder, however, what makes the Stonehenge site so special that
so much effort would be expended to drag the giant stones 250 miles instead of constructing
the monument near the quarry.
It's a huge exercise just to get the stones here and then actually to build the monument
and there's no metal technology, there are no computers, there are no machines.
This temple is built with blood, sweat and tears.
80 stones were transported 250 kilometres from north temperature to this site we're
standing on to build the first Stone Stonehenge.
Stonehenge 3 is the stone circle that is still visible today.
During this phase, the builders constructed a circle of upright sarsened stones, each
pair of which was topped with the stone lintel.
The lintels are curved to create a complete circle on top.
There were originally 30 upright stones, 17 of these still stand.
20 stones came from the Marlborough Downs, 20 miles to the north, are 7 feet tall and
weigh 50 tonnes each.
The outside surfaces of all these stones were pounded smooth with hammers and dovetail
joints fastened the lintels to the Uprights.
Within the stone ring was erected a horseshoe formation of the same construction using 10
upright stones.
There the trilithion stands separated from one another in 5 pairs.
The horseshoe shape opens directly towards the storta stone and down the avenue.
About a century later, approximately 20 blue stones gathered from Stonehenge 2 were placed
in a horseshoe shape inside the sarsen horseshoe.
Less than half of these remain.
Some shuffling around of the blue stones and digging of holes occurred around 1500 BC.
The altered stone is the biggest of these newly arranged blue stones that remains.
Around 1100 BC, the avenue was extended all the way to the river Avon, around 9,000 feet
from Stonehenge, indicating that the site was still in use at that time.
William Stucley, one of the founders of Field Archaeology, pioneered the archaeological
investigation of the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge.
He was also a significant figure in the early development of the modern movement known as
neodrudry.
Stucley was born at Holbeach in Lincolnshire and studied medicine at Cambridge University.
While still a student, he began making topographical and architectural drawings as well as sketches
of historical artefacts.
It may be his medical education that gave him his acute eye for detailed observation,
a quality that makes the itinerarium a valuable record of monuments, buildings and towns before
they were subjected to the ravages of the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
In 1718, he became the first secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
His activities in the field included excavations at Stonehenge and Avebury.
He was enthralled by the druids and made complex descriptions of their practices and beliefs.
However, he was also the first to recognize the alignment of Stonehenge on the solstices
and saw the value of exploring the wider relationship between monuments and putting them into their
landscape context.
Although the fate of the Stonehenge builders predates any known religion, the site throughout
the 20th century has become a place of pilgrimage and worship for neo-pagans who identify themselves
with the druids or other forms of Celtic paganism.
Stonehenge began to be revived as a place of religious significance by adherents of neo-pagan
and new age beliefs, particularly the neo-druids.
The historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that it was a great and potentially uncomfortable
irony that modern druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the
ancient druids from it.
The first such neo-druidic group to make use of the megalithic monument was the ancient
order of druids who performed a mass initiation ceremony there in August 1905.
Throughout recorded history, Stonehenge and its surrounding monuments have attracted attention
from antiquarians and archaeologists.
John Aubrey was one of the first to examine the site with a scientific eye in 1666.
William Stukley continued Aubrey's work in the early 18th century but took an interest
in the surrounding monuments as well.
He also began the excavation of many of the barrows in the area and it was his interpretation
of the landscape that associated it with druids.
Stukley was so fascinated with druids that he originally named disbarrows as druids
barrows.
It's the landscape around Stonehenge, it's made us understand that Stonehenge wasn't
just standing alone, it's part of a much bigger landscape so you had the burials all around
on the hills all around.
You have other ritual sites, you could say temples nearby of similar dates, some of earlier
dates, so we can understand the whole development of the landscape over several thousand years.
By the beginning of the 20th century many of the blue stones were leaning precariously,
probably due to the increase in curious visitors clambering on them during the 19th century.
Additionally, two of the trulathons had fallen over during the modern era.
Three phases of conservation work were undertaken which rited unstable or fallen stones and carefully
replaced them in their original positions using information from antiquarian drawings.
The first of the significant excavations at Stonehenge was led by Colonel William Hawley
and his assistant Robert Newell after the site had come into state hands in 1911.
He excavated portions of most of the features at Stonehenge and was the first to establish
that it was a multi-phase site.
In 1950, the Society of Antiquaries commissioned Richard Atkinson, Stuart Piggett and John F.
Stone to carry out further excavations.
They recovered many cremations and developed the phasing that still dominates much of what
is written about Stonehenge.
They can be no doubt that the construction of this awe-inspiring site which still stands
strong today is one of man's greatest achievements.
The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt.
The pyramid we refer to as the Great Pyramid has drawn travellers since time immemorial
to wonder at its sublime simplicity in line and the obvious genius of its architect Imotep.
Most pyramids were built as tombs for the country's pharaohs and their consorts.
The estimate of the number of workers it took to build the pyramids have a wide range from
a few thousand up to one hundred thousand.
The most famous Egyptian pyramids are those found at Giza on the outskirts of Cairo.
The pyramid of Khufu at Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid.
It is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still in existence.
Built for the second ruler of the fourth dynasty, it has stood for almost 4,500 years.
It has withstood earthquakes, man's feeble efforts at demolition when most of the casing
stones were removed for the building of the city of Cairo and an attempt to blow it up
in search of the pharaohs' treasury of funerary goods.
Everything else including the mummy of Khufu himself disappeared sometime in antiquity,
leaving us actually no record for who this incredible structure was built, except for
some graffiti left by the workers and a simple kartush bearing his name, carelessly painted
in red.
The interior of the pyramid is perhaps even more of an architectural and engineering
masterpiece than the exterior.
While we understand how the pyramid was built, we still do not fully understand the purpose
of many intriguing interior features, such as the so-called air shafts that don't actually
reach the outside, but were placed at such seemingly purposeful aligned positions, but
to serve what purpose and aligned for what reason.
These as yet unanswered questions add to the ignigma and mystery of the pyramid for many.
There have been many hypotheses about the Egyptian pyramid construction techniques.
These techniques seem to have developed over time.
Later pyramids were not built the same way as earlier ones.
There is good information concerning the location of the quarries, some of the tools used to
cut stone in the quarries, transportation of the stone to the monument, levelling the
foundation and levelling the subsequent tiers of the developing superstructure.
Workmen probably used copper chisels, drills and swords to cut softer stone, such as most
of the limestone.
The harder stones such as granite and basalt cannot be cut with copper tools alone.
Instead, they were worked with time-consuming methods like pounding with dollorite, drilling
and soaring with the aid of an abrasive such as caught sand.
Blocks were transported by sledge likely lubricated by water.
Building the foundation may have been accomplished by use of water filled trenches or through
the use of a crude square levelling.
Most of the construction hypotheses are based on the idea that huge stones were carved with
copper chisels from stone quarries and these blocks were then dragged and lifted into position.
In addition to the many unresolved arguments about the construction techniques, there have
been many disagreements as to the kind of workforce used.
The Greeks, many years after the event, believed it must have been built by slave labour.
Archaeologists now believe that the great pyramid of Giza was built by tens of thousands
of skilled workers who camped near the pyramids and worked for a salary or as a form of tax
payment until the construction was completed.
One of the major problems faced by the early pyramid builders was the need to move huge
quantities of rock.
Suggested methods include rolling the stones using a cradle-like machine that had been
excavated in various new kingdom temples.
This done by the Obayashi Corporation with concrete blocks showed how 18 men could drag
the block over a 1 in 4 incline ramp at a rate of 18 metres per minute.
It is still not known whether the Egyptians used this method but the experiments indicate
it could have worked using stones of this size.
As the stones forming the core of the pyramids were roughly cut, especially in the great pyramid,
the material used to fill the gaps was another problem.
Huge quantities of gypsum and rubble were needed.
The filling has almost no binding properties, but it was necessary to stabilise the construction.
To make the gypsum mortar, it had to be dehydrated by heating, which requires large quantities
of wood.
According to Egyptologists, Egypt may have had to strip its forest and scrap every bit
of wood it had to build the pyramids of Giza and other even earlier fourth dynasty pyramids.
Imotep is one of the few Egyptian gods other than the pharaohs who was actually a real
person.
He was skilled in all areas of administration, royal enterprises and was also a priest, writer,
a doctor and a founder of the Egyptian studies of astronomy and architecture.
As one of the officials of the pharaoh Joza, Imotep is credited with being the first to
conceive the notion of stacking mastabas on top of each other, creating an edifice composed
of a number of steps that decreased in size towards its apex.
The result was a step pyramid of Joza at Sakara in Egypt, which was designed to serve as a
gigantic stairway by which the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens.
As an instigator of Egyptian culture, Imotep's idolized image lasted well into the Tollimak
period.
The Egyptian historian Manethal credited him with inventing the method of a stone-dressed
building during Joza's reign.
Though he was not the first to actually build with stone, stone walling, flooring, lintels
and jams had appeared sporadically during the archaic period.
Though it is true that a building of the step pyramid size and made entirely out of stone,
had never before been constructed.
Such was the importance of Imotep's achievements that he was deified by later Egyptians and
was one of only a few comillars ever to be accorded divine status after death.
Ancient times affect modern ones, as the influences of the past can mingle with those
of the present.
Ancient Egyptian art and architecture influence design choices of today, but contemporary
designs achieve a modern feel with upgraded material and different textures.
The shapes, lines and elements of Egyptian architecture come through in several design
eras.
Art Deco picked up the Egyptian motif in its room furnishings as ancient pieces and in
architecture by following the linear step design of the pyramid in its construction.
The Louvre Pyramid in Paris and Rosie Khrushy in Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California
are modern-day examples of Egyptian revival structures.
And is a fortunate species.
Over thousands of years our intelligence has given us tools and technology, art and science,
society and civilization.
We now possess a treasure house of man's greatest achievements.
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