The mysterious "wheel of giants" refers to the ancient race of giants mentioned in the Bible.
Driving past one of the most mysterious structures in the Middle East, it's easy to miss
The prehistoric stone monument has gone unnoticed for centuries in a bare field in the Golan Heights.
After Israel seized this territory from Syria in the 1967 war, archaeologists studying aerial photography spotted a sample of stone circles not visible from the ground. Subsequent excavations have shown that it is one of the oldest and largest structures in the region.
Known as the "Wheel of Spirits" in Arabic, Rujm el-Hiri, meaning "pile of stones of the wild cat," the complex has five concentric circles. The largest of these is over 500 feet (152 m) wide, with a huge burial chamber in the center. The Hebrew name for the complex, Gilgal Rephaim, or "wheel of giants," refers to the ancient race of giants mentioned in the Bible.
The structure is about 5000 years old, which, according to most estimates, makes it a contemporary of English Stonehenge. Unlike the more famous monument, which consists of about 100 huge stones topped with lintels, the Golan structure is made of piles of thousands of small basalt rocks, which together weigh over 40,000 tons.
