AwesomeO said:
monkey skipper said:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/stonehenge-prehistoric-religious-ceremonial-centre-discovered-archaeologists-a7425346.html
Vast 5,600-year-old religious centre discovered near Stonehenge
The centre was built more than 1,000 years before the stones of Stonehenge were erected
More in the article. Seems like an elaborate find to me and suggests Stonehenge was potentially an extension and after thought of a much larger religious and cultural centre.
Probably ceremonial.
“The newly discovered complex, just over a mile and a half north-east of Stonehenge, appears to have consisted of around 950m of segmented ditches – and potentially palisaded earthen banks – arranged in two great concentric circles.
So far, archaeologists have located and excavated around 100 metres worth of the outer ditch. It is not yet known how much, if any, of the rest of the monument has survived.
The new discovery shows that hundreds of years before Stonehenge existed the entire area was even more sacred and ritually active than archaeologists had thought.
Up till now, apart from more than 20 giant tombs – the so-called ‘long barrows’ – the only known early Neolithic monument in the Stonehenge area was a large circular religious and ceremonial ‘causewayed enclosure’ nicknamed Robin Hood’s Ball, 2.5 miles north-west of Stonehenge”
