Atkinson, one of the most respectable Stonehenge archaelogists, presumes that transport of one of the heaviest stones from Marlborough Downs would have needed about 600 men continuously employed over the complete route, but even then the task would have taken more than a year to complete! Professor made an interesting experiment together with his students in 1954 - they tried to transport one of the smaller, seven-tonnes stone from Preseli Mountains to Stonehenge. As probably also the contructors did, they used boats on Bristol Channel, then they moved it on sledges and rollers. It took them several months not including the time for preparing the boats.. Then erecting the stones and raising the lintels - also it is possible without modern technology, using only wooden scaffolding, ropes, levers, about 200 men and very good organization. Yet the construction and exact setting of the stones had undoubtedly to take several decades of years, probably much more than an average lifetime then.
How strong had to be the incentives of such long work if we consider the common picture of neolitic man who probably hadn't many more interests than hunting animals, picking the products of nature and protecting his life. He had mainly to survive, so what could force him to bother about some silly stones? And for that age extremely large group of six hundred people - where from? And all of them working together fifty, hundred or more years? Why that immense effort? Can it be explained only by worship motives or is there something we don't see? So many ancient nations on the Earth lived successfully and survived without such things. Mr. Atkinson suggests a brave thought - that the exact alignments of the stones perhaps weren't intended by the primitive neolithic people who raised the stones, that those had only a symbolic meaning for them. Who was the inventor, then, and how was such terrible work achieved only for some symbols? Are we even able to understand the way of thinking of the people in that dark, long past history?
After the mysterious stone-civilization was gone and also the Druids ended their rituals there, nobody else has used it regularly. But it doesn't mean nobody cared about it. Though the time and erosion couldn't bring it to harm, the human stupidity is infinite and nothing can resist it, so from time to time there were attempts to destroy Stonehenge saying it's the Devil's place. Also simple-minded people living nearby were systematicaly breaking the stones to build their houses and roads since the Middle Ages. Later on, surviving even to this century, it has been a meeting place for various extraordinary religious groups practising their own rituals there, always somewhat connected with drinking alcohol.