Stonehenge mystery thickens
Researchers have discovered what may be the largest surviving Neolithic stone monument in the U.K. — an enormous ‘superhenge’ with as many as 100 large standing stones — about three kilometres from the famous Stonehenge.
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| Tourists at the Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in England. |
The remains of the monument are buried under a thick, grassy bank and are thought to have been hauled into position more than 4,500 years ago.
The hidden arrangement of nearly 100 huge standing stones formed part of a C-shaped Neolithic arena that bordered a dry valley and faced the Avon river directly.
Researchers used ground-penetrating radar to image 30 intact stones measuring up to 4.5 metres tall.
The fragments of more buried stones, or the massive foundation pits in which they stood, show the full extent of the monument, the Guardian reported.
“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,” says Vince Gaffney, an archaeologist at Bradford University, who leads the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape project.
The recumbent stones were lost beneath a huge bank and were incorporated as a somewhat clumsy linear southern border to the otherwise circular “superhenge” known as the Durrington Walls.
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