Miniature Stonehenge Discovered In Wiltshire, UK

CmdrGravy weighs in with exciting archaeological news, "one of the most important prehistoric finds in decades" according to the article: a miniature Stonehenge a mile from the famous site. "Bluehenge," as the find is being called because of the assumed color of its (now-missing) stones, is believed to have been put up around the time of Stonehenge, 5,000 years ago. "All that remains of the 60-ft.-wide Bluehenge are the holes of 27 giant stones set on a ramped mount. Chips of blue stone found in the holes appear to be identical to the blue stones used in Stonehenge. The four-ton monsters, made of Preseli Spotted Dolerite — a chemically altered igneous rock harder than granite — were mined in the Preseli Mountains in Pembrokeshire and then rolled, dragged, and floated the 200 miles to the site on the banks of the Avon in Wiltshire."

Comments

Recent Stonehenge Excavations

[RotateLeftByte]

I live 50miles from Stonehenge but pass it regularly on my way to customers.

Over the past two years ther have been a huge amount of archaeology excavation work in the Stonehenge area. Last year it was mostly close to the henge itself.

This year the excavations have been off to the North West up the A344 closer to Airmans Corner

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=412500&Y=142500&A=Y&Z=120

Even this article is published in the "Daily Wail" I suspect there is a lot more details to emerge over the coming months.

Re:Recent Stonehenge Excavations

[Don_dumb]

Of course the other local secret we don't tell people is that Stonehenge isn't half as good as Avebury, about 30 miles North of Stonehenge. If anyone is going to have a look at stone circles and old mysterious things. I would say that the better place is the one with the pub in the middle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury.

One of the most important finds ? have a look :

[unity100]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Its lowest layer is dated 9130-8800 BC. That's fucking 11,130 years ago. its the oldest place of worship. Also :

 

Göbekli Tepe is the oldest human-made place of worship yet discovered.[2] Until excavations began, a complex on this scale was not thought possible for a community so ancient. The massive sequence of stratification layers suggests several millennia of activity, perhaps reaching back to the Mesolithic. The oldest occupation layer (stratum III) contains monolithic pillars linked by coarsely built walls to form circular or oval structures. So far, four such buildings, with diameters between 10 and 30m have been uncovered. Geophysical surveys indicate the existence of 16 additional structures.
 
Stratum II, dated to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) (7500 - 6000 BC), has revealed several adjacent rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime, reminiscent of Roman terrazzo floors. The most recent layer consists of sediment deposited as the result of agricultural activity.

Moreover, this is more important - it seems to be the place where mankind first domesticated wheat :

While the site formally belongs to the earliest Neolithic (PPN A), up to now no traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found. The inhabitants were hunters and gatherers who nevertheless lived in villages for at least part of the year.[7] Schmidt speculates that the site played a key function in the transition to agriculture; he assumes that the necessary social organization needed for the creation of these structures went hand-in-hand with the organized exploitation of wild crops. For sustenance, wild cereals may have been used more intensively than before; perhaps they were even deliberately cultivated. Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild wheat found on Mount Karaca Da 20 miles away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated.[8]

enjoy.