London – Researches recently unearthed evidence of a hidden site believed to be the remains of a major neolithic stone monument near the Stonehenge ruins. Experts said that the monument was built around 4,500 years ago and had about 100 standing stones, some originally measuring up to 15 feet.
The discovery was made near Durrington Walls, also known as “superhenge” located 2 miles away from Stonehenge. For the finding, the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project used remote-sensing technologies to unearth the monument. The site might have been used in Neolithic times for rituals or as an arena.
“Durrington Walls is an immense monument and up until this point we thought it was merely a large bank and ditched enclosure, but underneath that massive monument is another monument,” explained Vincent Gaffney, of the University of Bradford.
The discovery was made by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which is a collaboration between the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology.
The newly discovered stones are thought to have been covered with the bank of the later Durrington Walls henge built over them. The monument, which lies in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, is one of the largest known henges ever found, until now. It measures 500 m across and more than 1.5 km in circumference.
Wolfgang Neubauer, director of the Viennese LBI ArchPro and leader of the project, said the discovery was “very important and fantastic” and claimed that the site could originally have as many as 200 stones.
Source: USA Today