LONDON (Reuters) - Tourists flock from all over the world to gaze at Britain's Stonehenge -- but the famed circle of huge stones is as much the work of 20th century engineers as prehistoric man.

Researcher Brian Edwards has uncovered photographs showing fallen stones at the site in southern England being hauled into place using cranes and scaffolding during facelifts over the last 100 years.

Now there is pressure for official guide books to be rewritten instead of presenting tourists with the idea that the stones have been standing untouched for thousands of years.

``For too long people have been kept in the dark over the Stonehenge restoration work,'' Edwards, a post-graduate research student at the University of the West of England, was quoted as saying by British newspapers on Tuesday.

``What we have been looking at is a 20th century landscape which is reminiscent of what Stonehenge might have looked like thousands of years ago,'' he said.

``It has been created by the heritage industry and is not the creation of prehistoric people.''