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Archaeologists Discover Stonehenge’s Timber Twin
Stonehenge, that ancient and mysterious circle of giant obelisks on England’s Salisbury Plain, may once have had a nearby wooden “twin,” according to a pioneering new archaeological survey.
“The idea of finding something as significant and dramatic as this monument, so close to Stonehenge, is just brilliant,” Henry Chapman, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham and a member of the team that made the discovery, told AOL News. “It will completely change the way we think about Stonehenge and the surrounding landscape.”
The discovery of the timber henge (a term used to describe any British circular ritual site dating from 3,000 to 2,000 B.C.) was made by a multinational team of archaeologists, who started surveying the land around Stonehenge two weeks ago with sensors that provide a high-definition 3-D view of what’s under the ground. “Every time you excavate, you damage the site by moving material,” Chapman says. “With the technology we use, such as ground-penetrating radar, there’s no need to dig.”
Archaeologists discover another Stonehenge-like structure close to the original
A week after they started examining the area, the team spotted what appeared to be a circle of 24 post holes under the ground, less that 3,000 feet to the northwest of Stonehenge. The ring measured about 82 feet in diameter — just 17 feet less than Stonehenge — and was enclosed by an inner ditch and possibly an outer bank.
“The post holes are up to a meter in diameter, which suggests that the timbers they’d have held would have been at least 10 feet high,” Chapman says. He adds that the towering structure was likely built “about 4,500 years ago, on the basis of comparing it with similar sites.” That’s approximately the same time that Stonehenge’s world-famous trilithons — a prehistoric structure with two upright stone blocks supporting a third placed across the top — were erected.
And curiously, the newly discovered monument mirrors a similar henge some 4,270 feet southeast of Stonehenge, which was first uncovered in 1937. Like the newly discovered site, that circle overlooks the ancient stone structure and has two entrances. All three henges appear to have been deliberately aligned.more
Another Woodhenge Identified in … Ohio?
Within only a few days of each other, two eerily similar discoveries were made in quite diferent parts of the world. Only 900 meters (roughly 2,900 feet) away from the original Stonehenge, scientists using radar detection have found that there is another henge, this one seemingly made of wood, still buried under the ground. And just days ago the Internet was flooded with news that scientists investigating a timber circle realized that it bore a very striking resemblance to England’s Stonehenge’s structure, except this timber circle is in Cincinnati, Ohio. Can we all just please agree that this is really weird?
For England’s timber henge, the resemblance to Stonehenge is nearly exact. The structure was constructed on the same orientation in relation to the cardinal directions, and debunks the idea that Stonehenge was constructed as a solitary pinnacle. This will also likely lead to an acceleration of research in the area, which now could potentially just be a hotbed of henges. At the very least, researchers will need to start investigating and excavating the newly discovered henge site.
And the British woodhenge isn’t the only one aligned in conjunction with Stonehenge. What makes this whole story all the more remarkable is that, according to Ohio excavation leader Robert Riordan, their woodhenge is aligned for seemingly exactly the same purpose:
But the model revealed that the alignment is such that, during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice—the longest day of the year—the sun appears to rise in the gateway, as seen from the center of the circle, Riordan said.more
