I am not religious but am from a loosely Anglican background and as far as I know the Church of England has always respected this and the many other ancient monuments around the country as impressive works but of unknown purpose.
Obviously it was a well-organised society that built Stonehenge, Avebury Stone Circle not far away, and many other smaller structures, but as a professional archaeologist once told me when we were admiring the remains of a long barrow in Scotland, we can have no idea what those people believed, not what sites like Stonehenge were for and how.
Not must we try, as the Victorians rather romantically tried, to think for them.
I don't have any religion but I am nonetheless pleased that constructions like Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury Hill, the Uffington White Horse, etc., still exist.
Stonehenge and the Pyramids are not very old in terms of the age of Homo Sapiens so the people who built them would have been rather like us.
Well, that was my mate that built that. He meant it to be a greenhouse but could not get the glass to fill in the gaps...Then the whole 'greenhouse affect' became a thing so he abandoned the idea.
@LowBorn Probably not. They were clearly as intelligent and creative as us, but we genuinely do not and can not know how their societies worked, what they believed, etc.
I visited this place. Stonehenge, they call it. They couldn't figure out how those stone lintels were lifted and placed on the pillars. It is a prehistoric structure built before man evolved from apes. You could not train two chimps to carry a log to place across a stream to make a bridge. Cooperative effort is a unique human capability. This is why Stonehenge evokes mysticism.
you say you have no beliefs, but what about your belief that homo sapiens is not a species?
Did I say we are homo sapiens? I don't know what we are. It is a mystery. Seriously. I am not trying to lure you into an inane argument. I have to live a conventional life and going along with conventional beliefs just to get my food from the groceries or get past immigration with without delay.
Stonehenge doesn't have any known purpose to humans but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a purpose. Remember religion is a very warped/twisted view of beliefs.
The same can be said for the rock faces of Easter Island.in Chile.
@SpudMuffin the skeletons I am talking about came from North America. Native America lore also mentions giants whom the natives drove into a cave and set fire to the giants in the cave. Although the skeletons look human they had double rows of teeth. From some of the stories I have heard the Smithsonian took the skeletons and won't put them on display. However there are pictures of them that predate AI.
