Digital Stonehenge – Still Mysterious After All These Years 

Shrouded in mystery, Stonehenge looms on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England. 

Built in stages from about 3700 to 1600 B.C., from the very first this famous monument was used as a burial ground for cremated remains.

 But was it also a temple for the worship of long forgotten earth deities, a healing site, or an astronomical observatory used to predict solstices and eclipses? And who built it – Druids, Phoenicians, Atlanteans, Romans, Egyptians, maybe even Merlin?

 Well, if you don’t quite understand something, best digitize it for closer study. 

 And that’s just what the folks at Geomagic have done.  Using their 3D imaging and reverse engineering software, Geomagic Studio, they have created the highest resolution, most dimensionally accurate 3D digital model of the 5000 year old monument.  Not only did they image the visible faces of the standing and falling stones, but they also digitally captured the tops and faces of the lintels to a resolution of +/- 0.5mm. They even imaged the surrounding landscape.

 You’ll want to read the press release here, and watch an English Heritage animation based on the Geomagic work here. And for more information than you’ll ever want to know about Stonehenge, there is always Wikipedia.