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It stands alone, silent. Its purpose is still a mystery.

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The stones stand there as though they're saying something and folklore has built up around it century after century.

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It took thousands of years to construct, but no one can say for certain who built it.

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There's something quite magical about it. I have the feeling that the people who built it had something very strong in mind, maybe more than the astronomy.

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It may be a place of burial, a temple, a sophisticated observatory, or perhaps all of these and more. It is called Stonehenge.

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Beyond what is known as an unexplored world of shadows and phantoms, a land that knows no limits of time or space.

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From the dawn of discovery to the nightfall of catastrophe, journey to a universe that we unexplained. The unforeseen, the unbelievable.

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A place beyond reality where no question will go unanswered. A place where myth and legend are all superstition assigns.

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It's time for our journey to begin.

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What is your purpose? How old were you built?

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Stonehenge and Enigma.

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Knowledge surrounds these library walls, and with these instruments that knowledge can be ours.

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All that can be learned from them is that they are. The author of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, wrote those words in the 1700s about a strange monument that was ancient even then.

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Stonehenge. That place has become a metaphor for the magnificent, the unfathomable, and the mysterious.

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There's much we do know about this handful of huge stones, strewn in geometric precision, on Salisbury Plain in England.

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It seems as if Stonehenge has always been here. When the Romans occupied Britain around the time of Christ, Stonehenge was waiting for them.

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They built their camps nearby and battled the fierce Celts who occupied the area.

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It was the Romans who first associated Stonehenge with the Celtic High Priests called Druids, an association that has stubbornly persisted ever since.

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The first modern description we have of Stonehenge comes from an archdeacon in 1130 who wrote that,

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No one can conceive how such great stones have been raised aloft or why they were built there.

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And like the Druid myth, that statement too has lived on.

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The word Stonehenge comes from two old English words. The first, Stan, meaning a stone, and the second, Henge, meaning hinge.

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Stonehenge was already known by that name even in medieval times.

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And during those dark ages many theories were propounded as to how it was built.

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The biggest theory I suppose is that in the time of King Arthur, Merlin the Wizard was asked to build a great monument in the south of England for slain nobles.

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How they move them is a mystery. I doubt that Merlin did it with magic. I think that it was hard work, but I don't know how they did it.

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The best explanation for getting those stones to the vicinity of Stonehenge probably involves the dragging on sledges of these stones overland.

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Probably the real clue is winter. If you're going to move stones around, it's going to be a lot easier to do it on sledges if you have a snowy icy surface just like with skis.

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And it may be that people who had to rely on their ingenuity did just that.

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Stonehenge was constructed in three distinct phases spanning 2,000 years. Phases that began in a period known as the Late Bronze Age.

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How a group of technically unzophisticated farmers were able to transport and direct these huge stones has been widely debated, but Stonehenge stands today.

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And several theories about this construction are worth pursuing.

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Many arguments center on the huge sarsen stones that give Stonehenge its unique shape. They're not found near the chalky plain of Salisbury, so they had to be brought from afar.

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It's thought that they followed this route, dragged by sledges or perhaps brought down this river.

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Once at this site, the multi-tunned sarsens were thought to have been lifted by the use of carefully stacked mats and brute force.

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These unyielding stones could only be carved by using tools from the same material, and they were put together like furniture with carved dowels and holes to receive them.

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The ancients built well, and the length of time it took to build Stonehenge indicates countless hours of effort.

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It's incredible to think that men dedicated their lives and the lives of their children and their children's children to such a monumental task, but the proof is there.

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Why was Stonehenge built? What purpose could inspire such incredible diversion and persistence?

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As we have seen, one of the most enduring myths of Stonehenge is that it was a place of druid worship. This is untrue.

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The who of Stonehenge is pretty well established in the local people, and it certainly was not repeating not the druids.

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In the first place, they liked forests. Stonehenge is on a pretty bad plain. Second place, they weren't there.

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Third place, they weren't even in existence when Stonehenge was first built.

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Other theories ranged from a Roman monument to a graveyard to a temple of the Phoenicians to a construction bed and of wandering architects from the lost city of Troy.

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But in 1965, the first credible theory was proposed, not by an archaeologist, but by an astronomer, Gerald Hawkins.

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First, I went to Stonehenge and took photographs of the sunrise, and I looked through the archways to see that there was a clear view to the horizon.

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And then the National Geographic funded an aerial survey in which I was able to take exact measurements and calculate what would have been seen around 2000 BC.

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I had done a lot of calculations by hand, and I used the computer to check out what I'd done and calculate a few more of what we call alignments.

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And I found that Stonehenge was connected to a pattern in the sky. The sun and moon make a pattern, and Stonehenge and its structure are locked to that pattern.

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And so one could call Stonehenge a sort of marker for the seasons of the year and the seasons of the moon.

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The great British archaeologist, Jacketta Hawks, who has absolutely no use for Hawkins and his theories, she says, quote,

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Every age has the Stonehenge it desires and deserves, end of quote. I do believe that's exactly right.

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The possibility of actually knowing what they intended is just about zero because they didn't write anything down.

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So you're free to speculate, and the Hawkins speculation is about as good as any to date.

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I have the feeling that the people who built it had something very strongly in mind, maybe more than the astronomy and the worship.

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And I wish the goodness on you what it was, and maybe I never will.

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Stonehenge is fantastic, but not completely unique.

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England is literally covered in circles of stone seemingly scattered about the countryside, but they and Stonehenge may be a part of a network of powerful magnetic lines called lay lines,

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a web that some say still has power over the lives of men. Could these lines exist?

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Why was the location of Stonehenge the site for 2000 years of construction?

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And why do some places get the reputation for being power spots while other places are avoided?

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The answer may be found in something called a lay line.

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On June 30th, 1921, an English businessman named Alfred Watkins had what could only be described as a mystical experience.

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While slowly in the countryside near Herefordshire, he suddenly perceived a network of straight tracks or lays running through the land.

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He believed that these lines represented something known as Tulluric energy, a kind of magnetic force that the ancients were closely attuned to, and his theories have attracted many believers.

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There are a number of interesting lay lines that radiate out from Stonehenge and impinge on other megalithic sites elsewhere in the area.

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A number of people who think that lay lines are sort of avenues for the transmission of power of some kind.

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Now, what kind of power? It's sort of a psychic power.

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There are so many mounds and stones in the Stonehenge area that if you draw a line almost anywhere, it would line up with something.

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And yet, there seems to be a charm that some of these lay lines really mean something.

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It's easy to discount one man's mystical vision. It's harder to dismiss scientific investigation.

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The Lay Line Theory may complement, not contradict the concept of Stonehenge being some sort of observatory.

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Stonehenge is not the only mysterious stone structure in England.

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There are hundreds of stone rings around the countryside, and there alignment may reinforce this Lay Line Theory.

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This line is no coincidence. It exists. If Stonehenge was conceived as an ancient observatory, its orientation along this path may have some yet undefined meaning.

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Like so many things about Stonehenge, we can only guess.

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Stonehenge is not the only ancient observatory.

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Six thousand miles away near a mountain range in Arizona in the United States, there's another.

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Independent of the master builders of Stonehenge, other men have constructed very similar observatories.

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At first glance, this seems as far from Stonehenge as it is possible to get.

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This is southern Arizona, and nearby this marker is a structure built by a group of Indians called the Ho Ho Khun 650 years ago.

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It is called Casa Grande or the Big House.

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Many theories exist about the purpose of this edifice. It could have been a residence for Indian nobles, perhaps a town hall, or something more sublime.

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For cutting into the wall is something fantastic. A port that precisely aligns with the summer solstice.

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There are eleven rooms inside the Big House. Three of them have special openings that we call observation holes.

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These observation holes point towards the horizon in different directions.

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There's one opening, one of the observation holes, which faces the setting sun.

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It's the window that we sometimes call the solstice window. It marks the setting point of the sun at the time of the summer solstice,

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which most of us would think of as the first day of summer, or the longest day of the year, that's June 21st.

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It is a natural beginning or ending point in the sun's early cycle.

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The people all around the world have commemorated one another. Soon after the summer solstice is a gathering season and a round of ceremonies leading up to the rainy season.

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So it's a very important time of the year for the Indians of the desert.

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Could there be a connection between Casa Grande, built in the New World, and Stonehenge, constructed in the old?

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Some of the alignments in the Big House are the same as the alignments at Stonehenge.

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The connection, if there is any, is in the Sun and the Moon itself.

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Anybody observing the Sun and the Moon will come up with the same conclusions about what they appear to do, what their cycles are.

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Stonehenge is the most famous. Ours is not quite as famous.

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The ancients had a 20,000-year legacy behind them.

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Traditions that began when they first looked up from the firelight and watched the turning of the stars.

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At the time that these observatories were constructed, the rhythms of the heavens were an integral part of their lives,

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and they recorded and enshrined their knowledge in ways that are still beyond our comprehension.

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Casa Grande is proof that different cultures living in very different times are alike in their capacity to deal with the infinite.

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In New Hampshire, in the United States, there's another unusual structure which remains an enigma.

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By most accounts, it should not exist. Its name, appropriately, Mystery Hill.

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There are many people who believe in a metaphysical world just outside the boundaries of normal perception.

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There are many people who do not believe.

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Stonehenge and other ancient structures have been a battleground for conflict between these belief systems.

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Many misconceptions have arisen as a result.

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In New Salem, New Hampshire, in the United States, there exists a strange stone structure that has caused a great deal of controversy for at least 200 years.

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This is Mystery Hill, a collection of carved stones laid out with mathematical precision in this forest,

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and according to some true believers, it is a truly ancient place of power.

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America's Stonehenge is perhaps the oldest and largest megalitha complex that's ever been found in North America.

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It dates back to about 2000 B.C. It's a massive stone-built complex made by ancient man.

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This site has a great deal of common with Stonehenge in England, but it also has a great deal of difference.

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The major point that they both agree on is that ancient man had the ability to set up giant stones and use them as an astronomical calendar.

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Some people have said that nobody came here before Columbus, and we say they did.

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They came from Phoenicia. They came from a lot of different places, and there was massive trade four and five thousand years ago between our country and Europe.

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The proof of the pudding is we did our carbon dates. We've done a series of carbon dates.

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The first one we got that was any good at all was 173 B.C., and we did another carbon date in another area, and that turned out to be about 1525-26 B.C.

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If this site is a European intrusion into America four thousand years ago, what we have is a higher technology level globally than anyone has previously anticipated.

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And that rewrites the entire history book.

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I don't believe that there is any reliable evidence to confirm that people in antiquity traveled the oceans from the Old World, came to New England, and built the Mystery Hill site.

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I'm not sure for certain who built it and when, but I think it is most likely that it is relatively recent and probably the most, the greater part of it, no older than a few centuries and a product of colonial inhabitation of the New World.

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These mysterious spots have mystically attracted men and women for thousands of years. If Mystery Hill is in fact ancient, it forces us to reconsider our views on the early settlement of the United States.

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If it was built in the 1700s, then it's a fascinating glimpse of man's obsession with the powers of the heavens.

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The ancients possess knowledge that it has long since been lost. Surely Stonehenge's proof of that.

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So what can modern man learn from these magnificent achievements? Can we regain any of that lost knowledge to transform our world today?

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I think now the evidence is sufficiently in for us to conclude that whatever Stonehenge is, it is not a precise astronomical observatory.

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It is probably what the archaeologists have said all along, a major center of the civilization that built it that fulfilled primarily a religious function, so it's a temple, but probably a public function in the sense of a center of government or at least of power, and maybe an economic and social function as well.

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To go back 5,000 years and try to understand what was in the mind of those people is really impossible. One would need a time machine. They had an experience that we do not have. They lived really in the open air under an open sky.

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They were part of what they called the universe. It hurt them, it hit them. They were vitally involved in the changing sky.

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The continuing subtext in the study of Stonehenge are the doubts on how a backward culture could conceive and execute such a magnificent design, but it's arrogance for us to assume that we have absorbed all the knowledge of our ancestors, and perhaps they would think we are the backward culture.

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For their intimate understanding of their physical world is something that we may never possess again.

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Stonehenge is unique. There are lots of stone piles and monuments around the world, but there's nothing like Stonehenge in England. The biggest single mystery is why it has such power over people. It's a brooding place beyond understanding and fascinating.

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Outside of its, outside of reason, it's not that big. It doesn't seem to be that special, but it does it to you.

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Stonehenge is a monument to the artist in man, to the genius that lives inside humanity. By doing the impossible, by capturing and translating a dream to stone, the ancient builders of Stonehenge left their descendants a symbol of how art and ambition can become close to eternal.

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Man built Stonehenge and is still in orbit. What monuments shall we leave behind?

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Secrets and mysteries presents information based in part on theories and opinions, some of which are controversial. The producer's purpose is not to validate any side of an issue, but through the use of actualities and dramatic recreation relate a possible answer, but not the only answer to this material.

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