Lydia O'Connor of the Huffington Post has an article about new discoveries at Stonehenge:
Archaeologists announced recently that they've discovered the remains of another prehistoric stone monument, less than two miles from Stonehenge, and it's completely reshaping how researchers understand the history of the area.
The arrangement, believed to be over four thousand years old, was revealed by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project on the first day of the British Science Festival at the University of Bradford.
It is composed of about thirty intact stones and sixty fragments of possible stones buried three feet beneath the Durrington Walls "super-henge", thought to be a Neolithic ritual site. The stones, some of which stand up to fourteen feet high, appear as if they were once lined up to form a C-shaped "arena" surrounding a valley and springs leading to the River Avon:
None have been excavated, and they were found using "non-invasive geophysical prospection and remote sensing technologies", according to a press release from the project.
The archaeologists believe this new discovery could predate Stonehenge, and presents the possibility that monumental architecture was happening in the area earlier than previously thought.
"The extraordinary scale, detail, and novelty of the evidence produced by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which the new discoveries at Durrington Walls exemplify, is changing fundamentally our understanding of Stonehenge and the world around it," Paul Garwood, the principal prehistorian on the project, said in the press release. "Everything written previously about the Stonehenge landscape and the ancient monuments within it will need to be re-written."
It may also be the largest Neolithic site yet discovered. “What we are starting to see is the largest surviving stone monument, preserved underneath a bank, that has ever been discovered in Britain and possibly in Europe,” Vince Gaffney, who leads the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape project, told The Guardian. “This is archaeology on steroids.”
Brittany Jones Cooper has more at Yahoo:
If you thought Stonehenge was impressive, wait until you see Superhenge!
On 7 September 2015, scientists at the British Science Festival unveiled evidence showing the presence of an ancient Neolithic monument buried beneath the ground. The rock formation is located just two miles away from Stonehenge and, while scientists have yet to dig it up, they believe the rocks at this site are taller and possibly older than Stonehenge.
As we wait to see just how big this discovery is, here are eleven things you need to know about Superhenge:
1. This thing is big.
This large Neolithic settlement is being referred to as Superhenge because it’s five times the area of Stonehenge.
2. It’s old… like, really old.
Researchers predict that that the rock formation could be as old or older than Stonehenge. That means the monument was likely built nearly five thousand years ago.
3. It has six times more stones than Stonehenge.
The Neolithic monument consists of a row of ninety standing stones. The main structure of Stonehenge has just fifteen large standing stones.
4. It could be taller than Stonehenge.
The tallest rocks of Stonehenge measure thirteen feet. Researchers predict that some of the newly discovered stones may have originally measured up to fifteen feet.
5. You can find it just around the corner (map, above).
Located just two miles away from Stonehenge, this newly found monument is located along the lower edge of Durrington Walls, a Stone Age enclosure and one of the largest known henge monuments.
6. The rocks were hiding.
The stones are currently buried about three feet under the earth and were detected using ground penetrating radar. It appears as if they were (probably intentionally) pushed over and a bank of earth was built over them.
7. It’s cut from the same stone.
Stonehenge is made of sarsen stones, sandstone blocks that are found in large quantities on Salisbury Plain in the United Kingdom. While researchers still need to dig out the newly discovered monument, they believe that Superhenge is also made of the same stone.
8. The rocks were used in rituals.
It’s believed that Superhenge was used as a Neolithic ritual site, and incorporates lunar and solar alignments.
9. This finding is important to science.
With the discovery of these stones, scientists are learning more about Stonehenge, the surrounding landscape, and the builders of the time.
10. We still don’t know exactly how it was used.
This new finding, along with Stonehenge, Durrington Walls, and seventeen other ritual sites found in the area likely have a relationship with each other. However, researchers still don’t know what it is.
11. Researchers were shocked to find it.
“We don’t think there’s anything quite like this anywhere else in the world,” said lead researcher Vince Gaffney of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute. “This is completely new, and the scale is extraordinary.”
No comments:
Post a Comment