A. Listening comprehension – Fill in the blanks
Read the article ‘Wish You Were Here’ about Callanish Stones on page 42 of
English Now
No. 124. Then watch the video and fill in the blanks with the words you hear.
“After several days of sailing, the Darwin 200 team arrives in the sea of the Hebrides, home to dozens of islands and famed for their ancient history. Our first stop is the Isle of Lewis, where we set out to explore onshore.
Welcome everyone to the spectacular standing stones of Callanish, on the Isle of Lewis in
. This incredible group of standing stones is over
years old, which is older than the pyramids in Egypt. These stones, they are huge. This is probably the biggest one of all here in this structure, it’s over 5 metres tall. Just look at the size of this thing! They’re arranged in this inner circle here, then with four arms like a
. These two being really long, that one is over 80 metres, this one I guess is about 30-40 and the same two smaller sidearms. Then in the centre, there’s this incredible ring of these giant
. No one really knows when they were put here exactly or why. They say they’re believed to be over 5,000 years old and for over 1,500 years, they were used as a site for rituals and
. No one knows really how they are transported. Can you imagine trying to move blocks of granite like this, I mean look this is as wide as me and two or three times as tall and obviously, there’s obviously a section down in the ground as well. So, the
of these things, dragging them up these hills to make these structures is just incredible. Just goes to show the importance to what it must have been to these bronze age people that made them, all those centuries and centuries and centuries ago.
There’s lots of
beliefs, some people believe that they were for the stars or for aligning to different times in the lunar cycle. The truth is, no one really knows. There’s a lot of old traditional beliefs as well here on the island. Some people call them ‘false men’, men that were turned to stone although I’m not quite sure about that belief to be honest, personally. It’s also believed that there is a mythical creature called ‘the shining one’ that walks through these stone circles on just one day a year, so whether that’s true or not, I’m not really able to tell you. There’s another belief that these also were people that were turned to stone after not believing in
, not converting to Christianity so that’s another belief as well. Just walking around them you can see that they’re all different shapes and all different sizes but most of them are quite thin, they’re relatively thin and broad. So, they’re obviously selected and carved for those exact purpose and those exact shapes. Just
around them here in the middle, there’s a little depression, look here, this I mean this looks as if it could have had a perhaps an altar. Perhaps there is a big stone slab that went across here as the centre of the ceremony, in the centre of the
that took place here.
Walking down this, you can see this long corridor of stones, I mean I think there’s over a hundred in total. It’s pretty amazing to see and just to remember, they’re 5,000 years old and older than the
in Giza. It’s pretty amazing to think.
Stone has been used here in Scotland for centuries and centuries and centuries and our next stop is the traditional houses on the Isle of Lewis, the black houses. So, let’s go check those out.”
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