Judy Kocherhans, age 76, of Kearns, Utah, for her question of the week:

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT STONEHENGE?

An ancient monument, perhaps an astronomical observatory from a long past age, was discovered in England when archaeologists from Edinburgh University came upon two underground holes which probably were ritual pits. Tests made on some charcoal found in the pits in the early 1950s indicated the area was in use in 1848 B.C., give or take 275 years.

The ancient monument called Stonehenge and established as being more than 3,500 years old was found on the Salisbury Plain in Wilshire, England. It proved to be a group of huge, rough cut stones. The stones, found only in western Wales 300 miles away, were probably carried to the site by ancient residents.

For hundreds of years, archaeologists figure, the stones gradually fell and some were carried away by people to be used for making dams or bridges. But from the stones remaining, it was possible to guess how the original monument probably appeared.

Scholars say Stonehenge probably had an earth wall about 320 feet in diameter surrounding a monument that was made up of 30 blocks of gray sandstone, each standing about 13 and a half feet above the ground and each averaging about 28 tons. The tall blocks stood in a circle 97 feet in diameter and a continuous circle of smaller blocks stood on top of them. Inside this circle stood another circle of 60 blue stones with two horseshoe shaped sets of stones inside it facing toward the northeast.

In the center of the Stonehenge stones was a flat sandstone block 16 feet long which probably served as an altar and may have stood upright. Eighty yards east stands a stone marker which throws a shadow onto the altar at dawn on the day of the summer solstice  about June 21  probably indicating that Stonehenge was somehow connected with study or worship of the sun.

Gerald Hawkins of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory calculated the directions of the lines joining the various stones at Stonehenge in 1963. He found that the monument may have served as an astronomical calendar, able to predict the seasons and even eclipses of the sun and moon. With an electronic computer, he found an amazing correlation between the directions of these lines and the directions of the rising and setting of the moon and sun. The chances of these correlations being coincidental is about one in 100 million.

British government scientists and archaeologists conducted a restoration program of Stonehenge. Some of the scattered stones found in the area were put back as they probably had originally stood.

The British government now takes care of the monument and another one in Wiltshire called Woodhenge. This second monument, figured to be 3,000 years old, is a wooden monument similar to Stonehenge.