Some of the rocks at America's Stonehenge

America's Stonehenge, once known as Mystery Hill, is the site of a number of large rocks and stone formations scattered around roughly 30 acres (120,000 m²) in the town of Salem, New Hampshire, in the northeast United States. Photo of part of Americas Stonehenge, taken September 1993 by User:Stan Shebs File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Photo of part of Americas Stonehenge, taken September 1993 by User:Stan Shebs File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Sedimentary, volcanic, plutonic, metamorphic rock types of North America. ... Salem is a town located in Rockingham County, New Hampshire. ...

The site has become a popular tourist attraction, with appeal to believers in New Age systems. Some say the site could be an astronomical observatory built by some unknown, pre-Columbian civilization. A tourist attraction is a place where tourists, foreign and domestic, normally visit. ... New Age describes a broad movement characterized by alternative approaches to traditional Western culture. ... Astrology: the study of the positions of the celestial objects relative to the Earth and how these positions affect happenings on the lives of cultures, nations and the natural environment. ... Observatory of Strasbourg An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial and/or celestial events. ... The term Pre-Columbian is used to refer to the cultures of the New World in the era before significant European influence. ...

They argue that some stones are encased in trees that may have sprouted before the arrival of the first colonists, point to similarities between the ruins and Phoenician architecture, and say that marks on some stones are ancient words. The late Dr. Barry Fell of Harvard University did extensive work on the inscriptions at the site, which he claimed were Ogham, Phoenician and Iberian Punic script. He detailed his finds in his book America B.C. Phoenicia was an ancient civilization in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plain of what is now Lebanon and Syria, between the Lebanon Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. ... Howard Barraclough Fell (born June 6, 1917 in Lewes, Sussex, England and died on April 21, 1994, of heart failure in San Diego) more commonly known as Barry Fell, was Professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ...

On the other hand, artifacts found on the site lead many mainstream archaeologists to think that the stones were assembled for various reasons by farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, a much-discussed "sacrifical stone," which contains grooves that some say channeled blood, looks very much like "lye-leaching stones" found on many old farms that were used to extract lye from wood ashes, the first step in the manufacture of soap. In archaeology, an artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human culture, and often one later recovered by some archaeological endeavor. ... Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... Farmer spreading grasshopper bait in his alfalfa field. ... Lye is a caustic solution, rich in potassium carbonate (potash), used for glass and soap making. ... SOAP is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over a computer network, normally using HTTP. SOAP forms the foundation layer of the web services stack, providing a basic messaging framework that more abstract layers can build on. ...

The site's history is muddled partly because of William Goodwin, an insurance agent who bought the area in 1936 and became convinced that Mystery Hill was proof that Irish monks lived there long before Christopher Columbus. He moved a lot of the stones around to support his idea, and the current owners, the America's Stonehenge Foundation, say his efforts are "one of the reasons the enigma of Mystery Hill is so deep". 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A Roman Catholic monk A monk is a person who practices monasticism, adopting a strict religious and ascetic lifestyle, usually in community with others following the same path. ... Christopher Columbus (conjectural image by Sebastiano del Piombo). ...

External link

• America's Stonehenge homepage

Books

Barry Fell, America B.C. 1989 (2nd edition), Pocket Books: ISBN 0-671-67974-0 tegtqaghgw4egtrhju;