The World of Stonehenge - 3

Episode 3, the ancient peoples' beliefs were shaped by astrology.  Our ancestors started looking to the sky.  The landscape helped facilitate the ancestors religious believe.  Neil is brought up to the top of a mountain and is shown where the Ancient Britons worked stone axes.  

It was not the Age of Cosmology where instead of looking to the ground, the ancestors looked to the sky for worship.  It was a new way of thinking for the ancestors.  It made them build stone circles.  Stone circles are unknown outside of Britain and Ireland and they were set in dramatic landscapes.  They were places where the ancestors could make spiritual connections.

Oliver travels to Orkney to show the best preserved stone age monuments.  Orkeny is made of stone and the people built with stones.  Skara Brae is a site that shows how life was lived in the Stone Age.  It was occupied for 600 years and contained 8 houses.  Everything was made of stone, the hearth, bed, toilet, and dresser.  It was designed to keep the drafts out.  It gives a picture of what life was like.

The ancestors started building monumental architecture and tied it to both the landscape and the sky.  The sky was the biggest different in the new building.  It helped the ancestors understand their place in the world.  Stonehenge was one of the monuments that the ancestors built.  Today it has different meanings to different people, but to the ancestors Stonehenge was made up of special rocks.  Over the decades, Stonehenge undergone changes, the blue stones were moved from out of the circle to in the circle, inside the Saracens.  They marked the spring and autumn.  It was a place that marked the land of the living and the land of the dead.

To continue to learn more, continue to watch the documentary.

For use in the classroom: just highlight, copy and paste into a word document or a google document for use in the classroom.  You can easily format these questions to your specifications.  All questions should fit onto one page after formatting.

You can find the link for the YouTube video here.

The World of Stonehenge Episode 3 Questions:

1. What were the people looking for?
2. What is called a “roughout?”
3. Where did these people focus their beliefs?
4. How did they manifest their beliefs?
5. Where are stone circles exclusive to?
6. What happened to the trees on Orkney Island?
7. What is Orkney Island rich in?
8. The stone helped preserve what?
9. What was built in stone in the house?
10. What did the archaeologist find in one of the houses?  How did they know?

The World of Stonehenge Episode 3 Answers:

1. What were the people looking for? - Green Stone
2. What is called a “roughout?” - Unfinished axe
3. Where did these people focus their beliefs? - Astrology
4. How did they manifest their beliefs? - Building stone monuments
5. Where are stone circles exclusive to? - Britain and Ireland
6. What happened to the trees on Orkney Island? - Cut down by farmers
7. What is Orkney Island rich in? - Sandstone
8. The stone helped preserve what? - houses
9. What was built in stone in the house? - Bed, Hearth, Dresser
10. What did the archaeologist find in one of the houses?  How did they know? - Toilet, poo in it