The area where stands the megalithic site of Stonehenge, in the South-West of England, has not yet delivered all its secrets. A team of archaeologists british had in fact discovered an extensive structure of prehistoriclocated a few kilometers from the famous set of stones circular.
This new discovery, “unique”, according to experts, was announced Monday by thescottish university of St Andrews. Together this forms a circle of more than two kilometres in diameter.
“Field work and analyses of the recent past have highlighted the presence of more than twenty excavations in massive prehistoric, with a diameter of over ten meters and five meters deep“it said in a press release the university who worked on the site with other institutions of higher education, including the university of Bradford, in the north of England.
These excavations form a circle of more than two kilometres in diameter around the two other sites already identified in the region : the pregnant (“henge” in English) neolithic Durrington Walls and the site of Woodhenge, both of which are located about three kilometers from Stonehenge.
They would have been dug there more 4 500 years, around the time that Durrington Walls was erected. The implantation of the stones, the “bluestones” of Stonehenge are they dated 2 400 years before our era.
Concerning the new structure discovery, according to archaeologists, these excavations would have marked the boundaries of a sacred area to the neolithic, associated with the appearance of the first farmers in Britain and sometimes the erection of very large structures ritual.
“However, there is no structure to the prehistoric in the United Kingdom around an area as large as the circle of excavations at Durrington, and this structure is currently single“stresses the press release.
To Richard Bates, of the school of environmental sciences at the University of St Andrews, this discovery “gives us a glimpse of the past that shows a society still more complex than we could ever imagine“.
“Practices clearly sophisticated demonstrate that the people were in harmony with the natural events into such an extent thatwe can hardly conceive it in the modern world in which we live“, he added.
The announcement of this discovery comes just after the celebrations of the summer solstice on the site of Stonehenge, which together usually thousands of people but are being held this year on the internet due to the pandemic of novel coronavirus.
Stonehenge and other sites in the region, including the cromlech (a alignment circular menhirs), Avebury, have been the subject in 1986 d‘inscription on the world heritage list of Unesco.
Nick Snashall, archaeologist for the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site, has hailed this discovery “amazing“that “we offer a new vision on the life and beliefs of our ancestors of the neolithic“.
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