The solstice alignments of Stonehenge, explained.
Join the Vox Video Lab: http://www.vox.com/join
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Note: A previous version of this video referred imprecisely to "Neolithic Britain" when discussing the Newgrange tomb in Ireland. We have removed that phrasing. My apologies to the Irish.
Stonehenge is a popular destination for summer solstice celebrations because the 5,000-year-old monument points toward the summer solstice sunrise on the horizon. However, it also points to the winter solstice sunset in the opposite direction and there's good reason to believe that this may have been the more important alignment for the Neolithic people who built Stonehenge.
We investigate by constructing a tiny model of the Stonehenge monument.
Sources:
https://www.amazon.com/Stonehenge-Understanding-Mysteries-Greatest-Monument-ebook/dp/B00BBF8FLY/ref=sr_1_1
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BPEITG2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
http://media.astronomicalheritage.net/media/astronomicalheritage.net/entity_000006/ras_stonehenge_factsheet.pdf
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/history/#
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall07/nats101s31/lecture_notes/sunpaths.html
https://archive.org/details/themysteryofstonehenge
Newgrange photos by:
Sean MacEntee https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/22454487890
Pdbreen https://www.flickr.com/photos/pdbreen/3796235534
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com
Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
Or on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
