Two weeks into a 4-year exploration on July 16, without so much as unearthing a single shovel of dirt, scientists have used magnetometers, radar imaging and a video game to discover the location of an ancient ring of timbers below the ground that mirrors the iconic Stonehenge that stands in the middle of the English countryside, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
The UNESCO world heritage site attracts more than 750,000 visitors each year and none are any closer to knowing for sure what was the purpose of this most well-known of all prehistoric monuments. Was it a grand burial ground, a timekeeper, an astronomical observatory, or a site for ritual sacrifice? Who knows, but scientists are hopeful that the timber circle of what’s being called Timberhenge a mere 3,000 feet away from the visible stone version might unlock the mystery. It is believed the wooden version consisted of 24 obelisks, 2.5 feet in diameter and 26 feet high surrounding a burial mound.
“What we are doing is mapping out what remains of what used to exit. The structures must once have held posts, for example, and those posts have gone — but the pits that held them remain and we can see them,” says Vince Gaffney, a University of Birmingham professor who is part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project team, a three year mission to map 5.5 square miles of land surrounding the 5,000 year old Stonehenge site.
Gaffney was involved in using an early version of this technology in the late 1990s to map an ancient Roman city in Britain and has since, along with his team, improved its imaging capacity exponentially. Without disturbing these ancient sites by digging, this allows future generations of scientists and their technology to reexamine the site with even better ability.
Last fall, it was reported that a smaller stone circle, dubbed Bluestonehenge was found less than two miles away near the River Avon, further puzzling scientists.
“No one has any idea if these were circles of posts, stones or just pits. Nor do we know what date they are other than broadly 3000-1500 BC. They are both great finds but we know too little about them as yet to say how they will change our understanding. As we found last year with Bluestonehenge, there is still much to be found around Stonehenge,” says Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield and the director of The Stonehenge Riverside Project.
Photo by dannysullivan via Flickr.