Stories about strange giant crop circles in England, Canada and in the Scandinavian countries have long become the talk of the town, but to believe in inexplicable phenomena and otherworldly forces is the lot of people with little education, scientists have a purely practical approach to such phenomena. Local archaeologists, who, to their surprise, discovered a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex on the site of one of these abandoned fields, began to explore similar "fields with circles" in the south of England
According to preliminary data, the new find is even larger and older than the famous English Stonehenge. Researchers say that the found ceremonial complex was built 1,000 years earlier than Stonehead. Researchers so far say that the new complex included at least several wooden temples and two massive tombs that are about 6,000 years old.
Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham archaeological project, which is excavating, admits that it is a real miracle to find such a burial after so many years. A group of archaeologists from the University of London in Kingston does not rule out that analogues of Stonehedge and the new burial may be found in other parts of the country in the future.
The 6000-year-old complex occupies about 200 hectares in area, it is located near the village of Damerham, 25 km from Stonehedge. The discovery of the complex was possible only thanks to aerial photography carried out by the England Heritage Foundation, sponsored by the Government of the country.
“We noticed that in the filming area, plants and trees grow in an unusual way, at angles, intermittently and not as densely as in neighboring regions. Later it was found that archaeological structures buried underground were interfering with normal growth, says Joshua Pollard, a study participant. "It is extremely strange that not a single building of the complex has been discovered before."
In the center of the archaeological complex there are two 70-meter tombs, which have turned into mounds. The tombs are just over 6,000 years old. British scientists say that earlier tombs of the same time period were also found on the territory of the country, but they were all significantly smaller in size.
The last finds of a similar scale in the UK were made in the 1950s, when scientists also discovered fragments of a 6,000-year-old complex.
The tombs at Damerham have yet to be explored by archaeologists, but scientists are almost completely certain that the inside of the tombs is divided into many small chambers, which are fortified with wooden log cabins and solid floors. Inside the chambers, there are most likely human remains. “We believe that people left these places at the end of the Stone Age, after which only birds and animals lived here,” says Pollard.
At the same time, the researchers also have an alternative point of view, according to which this complex actually had two lives - the second period of its habitation was during the Bronze Age (2000-700 BC). Part of the complex was already built during this period. In the immediate vicinity of the complex, archaeologists also found traces of agricultural land, which the researchers believe appeared at the same time as the first Romans landed on the territory of Britain in the first century BC.