United Kingdom: a vast archaeological site discovered near Stonehenge

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Twenty wells forming a vast circle of more than two kilometers in diameter were discovered near the famous site of Stonehenge in England. They could have marked the limits of a sacred area in the Neolithic era and offer a new vision on the beliefs of the ancestors of the British people.

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With our correspondent in London, Muriel Delcroix

Archaeologists are still shocked by their discovery. They admit that they have not yet measured its full extent, but already know that this prehistoric structure is the largest ever discovered on British soil and that it could be one of the keys to understanding a society with many aspects remain mysterious.

These are about twenty pits ten meters in diameter and five meters deep. These excavations form a circle of more than two kilometers around the already known site of Durrington Walls, another "henge", that is to say a prehistoric enclosure three kilometers  from Stonehenge.

According to the researchers, these wells dug more than 4,500 years ago would have served as limits to a sacred site in the Neolithic era, associated with the appearance of the first British farmers and sometimes with the erection of very imposing ritual structures.

► Read also: From Stonehenge to the Egyptian or Mayan pyramids, how to draw inspiration from the astronomies of the past?

For one of the archaeologists from the Scottish University of Saint Andrews, one of the six universities involved in the project, this discovery "  gives a glimpse of the past which reveals a society even more complex than what we imagined, with the practices sophisticated and on a scale hitherto unsuspected  ”.

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• United Kingdom
• Archeology
• History