On England’s Salisbury Plain, south and west of London, stand
the enigmatic monolithic structures known as Stonehenge (meaning,
“Hanging Stones”). No one can say for sure who constructed these
massive stone pillars and arches, set in concentric circles, but it is believed
the work was accomplished by an unknown method some time
before 1500 B.C.

Among the ideas put forward over the centuries as to the purpose
of Stonehenge are that it was a Roman monument, a Danish inaugural
site, a Saxon tomb, or that it was a temple to the gods used as a meeting
place for the performance of sacred rites by Celts, Druids, Picts, or
other assorted early English tribal societies. But by the Seventeenth
Century, some had become aware of the astronomical alignments of
the stones and they concluded that Stonehenge was used for calendrical
calculations.

An intensive study of the site was begun in 1964 and collected data
was fed into a computer. Now after years of continuing research, it has
been decided that Stonehenge itself is a giant computer, built by an early,
star-oriented society that was unbelievably sophisticated in engineering,
mathematics and astronomy.

With its precise circular placement of markers, Stonehenge could
have been used to indicate the summer and winter solstices, vernal and
autumnal equinoxes, eclipses of the moon, a fifty-six year cycle of
moon motion which modern astronomers had not been aware of, and
possibly even the precession of the equinoxes caused by a subtle motion
of the earth, a wobble on its axis. One such “wobble” requires 26,000
years, wherein our pole star changes from the present Polaris, in the
constellation Ursa Minor, around through the Cepheus constellation,
near Deneb in the constellation Cygnus, near the constellation Vega, to
Thuban in Draco, and circles back to Polaris.

All this can be deduced from the positioning of Stonehenge’s immense
formations. Just who had the skill, the mechanical and technical
abilities to quarry, transport, and set such monoliths is still unknown.

Stonehenge gave an insight into a puzzle on our side of the Atlantic,
for in southern New Hampshire, near North Salem, there is a similar
construction of stones. Although Mystery Hill does not feature the
huge monoliths of Stonehenge, nonetheless, native fieldstone was piled
in perceptible groupings to obtain the same results.

Who stacked these rocks in such a fashion? Again, there are uncertainties;
however, radiocarbon testing of the sport gives a date of approximately
2000 B.C., and it is considered to be older than Stonehenge.

Mystery Hill is a 200 foot natural prominence, crowned by a large
circular stone wall. In the exact center of this circle, and from this
point, one can look out along lines of sight to the several, oversized,
pointed stones set in the wall which line up with Polaris, the other cardinal
directions, the solstice and equinox points, and again, possible
markers for the eclipses of the moon.

Although Mystery Hill is of obscure origin, some conclusions may
be drawn about its builders. Besides, or rather along with, their star
gazing and following of the seasons, they probably indulged in human
sacrifice. The construction at the very center of the stone circle is
capped by a flat rock weighing 4½ tons. This slab is grooved around
the edge in such a manner that it appears immolations were performed
on its surface and the blood flowed off in the trough. One can picture
such rites at the exact moments of solstice and equinox as the solar disk
topped the appropriate marker and bloodletting was demanded to propitiate
the sun god.

Under the sacrificial stone, there is a speaking tube that connects
with a subterranean chamber, reached by a stairway. It may be supposed
that priests or oracles hid within to speak with the voice of the
gods during religious ceremonies.

Among the 22 interesting stoneworks scattered over the top of
Mystery Hill is the “Tomb of Lost Souls.” This enclosure is very similar
to those built by ancient Mediterranean peoples for interment of
cremated ashes.

There is a swampy area outside the entrance to Mystery Hill and
the remains of a fire-pit of considerable size. During the site’s occupancy,
yellow clay was obtained from the swamp and worked into pottery
which was fired in the pit. Remains of this earthenware resemble
Bronze Age Mediterranean vessels, rather than that of American Indians.

There are at least three theories concerning the undeniable similarities
between such places as Stonehenge and Mystery Hill. One is that
there were extensive Phoenician colonies along our Eastern Seaboard,
and even as far south as Brazil.

Supporting this is the carving of a Phoenician or Minoan ship
found in 1957, on a boulder below the waterline in Lake Assawompset,
Massachusetts. The petroglyph was revealed only when the water level
was abnormally low because of a drought, as were the seas lowered
thousands of years ago when more of the world’s water was locked in
glacial ice.

This is not an isolated instance, for hundred of constructions and
inscriptions, of probable Mediterranean origin are to be found underwater
off the Atlantic coast and for miles inland.

In line with another idea, many believe Mystery Hill to be the work
of an early Indian culture that flowered before 4000 B.C. when these
people crossed the north Atlantic to bring their technology to the Scots
and Irish of prehistory. The great megalithic complex at New Grange in
Ireland has been dated at 3300 B.C., 700 years before the accepted date
of the Great Pyramid of Egypt and 1800 years before the Minoan sea
empire of Crete.

Inland and southeastward from New Grange, megalithic sites become
progressively younger with more advanced workmanship. Stonehenge
was built between 2200 B.C. and 1700 B.C., during a late, declining
period of the civilization

By 2000 B.C., voyagers, descendants of the original emigrants, returned
to the American shores and it was they who built Mystery Hill.

Yet another theory holds that there was an Atlantean center of culture,
Atlantic — a brilliant, advanced technological society that existed
for thousands of years. It was from this focal point that civilization diffused
throughout the entire perimeter of the Atlantic Ocean and the
Mediterranean.

This would explain certain similarities of language, architecture,
pottery, religious worship, and huge stone constructions such as pyramids
and earth mounds and standing monoliths between such diverse
peoples as Greeks and Mayans, Egyptians and Toltecs, Phoenicians
and New Hampshire Indians.

A credible feature of this idea is that American Indians insist their
ancestors came from the east, rather than from Asia over a land possage
of what is now the Bering Straits.

Atlantis was fully described in the famous Dialogues of Plato in
the Fifth Century B.C. Plato maintained that his work was based on his
study of written records kept by Egyptian priests.

In their writings and oral traditions, other civilizations on both
sides of the Atlantic “remember” Atlantis, its golden cities and glittering
sophistication, which was said to be drowned by cataclysmic downwarping
of the ocean floor about 11,000 years ago. This corresponds
nicely with the great glacial meltings from the last ice age, which caused
the level of the oceans to rise more than 600 feet.

Undersea archaeologists are becoming aware of many sunken cities
off the present shorelines of the Mediterranean and the Aegean
Seas, both coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, and around mid ocean islands,
such as the Azores, Bahamas, and the Canaries. Other ancient metropolitan
centers are sure to be discovered in the future.

Mystery Hill and Stonehenge are not isolated examples of the work
of megolithis societies. In New England and New York State, at least
two hundred sites of ancient stoneworks are recorded, including one on
a mountaintop in the Berkshires that features standing monoliths and
Pole Star orientation. Beyond the scope of this writing, deserving mention,
are the hundreds of mounds and pyramids dotting the United
States, Mexico, Central and South America, all of which require further
study.

The British Isles abound with stone constructions, including Glastonbury,
near Stonehenge, with its stone circle of 30 miles in circumference.
Brittany in France has miles of stones, many rows deep, standing
in straight lines, extending even out under the sea. Other related works
extend down through Europe and eastward to Russia’s Ural Mountains.

So Mystery Hill is but a part of a world-wide mystery, a vast
space/time continuum of ancient knowledge undeciphered by our present
day civilization.