How to Build Stonehenge

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Icon of the New Stone Age, Stonehenge is a sculptural and engineering marvel that symbolizes national pride. This remarkable arrangement of sarsen and bluestone slabs draws visitors worldwide, yet it raises profound questions about its origins: who built it, why, and how? While numerous theories about its purpose abound, there has been less focus on the methods of its construction. Over millennia, elements of Stonehenge have endured damage from machinery, traveled to Florida and back, and faced exposure to radioactive sodium. However, the challenge of erecting the stones using Neolithic technology has remained largely unexplained—until recent groundbreaking discoveries. In the last decade, advancements in scientific techniques have traced the origins of the bluestones in Wales, prompting inquiries into their journey to Salisbury Plain. How did laborers, without machinery or pack animals, transport them 150 miles? What methods were used to carve joints into the exceptionally hard sarsen boulders and raise them? Drawing on a lifetime of study, Mike Pitts provides insights into these questions, illustrating how Stonehenge was not an isolated monument but part of a broader megalithic cosmology, rich in belief, ritual, and creativity. The work is complemented by 109 illustrations.