Tag Archives: Stonehenge

Science weekly: Pre-Stonehenge complex found…


(photo taken from news.nationalgeographic.com)

…via “Crop circles”.

Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government’s historic-preservation agency, the “crop circles” are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth.

A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among “Britain’s first architecture,” according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project.

The central features are two great tombs topped by massive mounds—made shorter by centuries of plowing—called long barrows. The larger of the two tombs is 70 meters (230 feet) long.

The Damerham tombs have yet to be excavated, but experts say the long barrows likely contain chambers—probably carved into chalk bedrock and reinforced with wood—filled with human bones associated with ancestor worship.

(Read the full article by James Owen, posted on June 15, 2009 at news.nationalgeographic.com)