Newly discovered ‘superhenge’ dwarfs Stonehenge

[LazyLion]

Researchers have discovered a major prehistoric stone monument 3km away from the famous Stonehenge standing stones.

The enormous Durrington Walls “superhenge” dwarfs Stonehenge and may have as many as 90 large standing stones associated with it.

Built about 4,500 years ago it has remained hidden for millennia. The use of non-invasive geophysical technologies including ground penetrating radar have begun to reveal the superhenge’s secrets.

Details of the work by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project were revealed today, on the first day of the British Science Association’s annual festival of science. The festival is hosted this year by the University of Bradford.

Durrington Walls is one of the largest known henge monuments yet discovered. It has a 500m diameter and a 1.5km circumference. Massive effort would have gone into its construction, as it is surrounded by a ditch up to 17.6m wide.

Full Article here...
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/educ...1.2342318?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=facebook

 

[HavocXphere]

YAY!

This is so cool.

 

[Aquila ka Hecate]

YAY!

This is so cool.

Yes, it is.

I wonder what this, and other anomalous archealogical sites such as Gobekli Tepe, mean?

That our forebears were not quite the dumb savages history books portray them as?

 

[supersunbird]

Yes, it is.

I wonder what this, and other anomalous archealogical sites such as Gobekli Tepe, mean?

That our forebears were not quite the dumb savages history books portray them as?

Depends on the time and place mentioned in the history books...

 

[Arthur]

That our forebears were not quite the dumb savages history books portray them as?

Depends which history books you read. Humanity has been getting progressively stupider as the millennia tick by... We are living in perhaps the most idiotically backward time in history.

 

[Necropolis]

I wonder what this, and other anomalous archealogical sites such as Gobekli Tepe, mean?

That our forebears were not quite the dumb savages history books portray them as?

I suppose we will never truly know, which sucks.

 

[Nick333]

Yes, it is.

I wonder what this, and other anomalous archealogical sites such as Gobekli Tepe, mean?

That our forebears were not quite the dumb savages history books portray them as?

Depends when the books you read were published. The idea of the dumb savage has been steadily eroded for decades now.

 

[grok]

Pfft, it is but the ancient parking lot for Stonehenge. Druids needed space for their horses & carriages when they came to voodoo the stones.

 

[Aquila ka Hecate]

Depends which history books you read. Humanity has been getting progressively stupider as the millennia tick by... We are living in perhaps the most idiotically backward time in history.

This is largely true. Most days I despair as soon as my consciousness registers humans.

 

[Aquila ka Hecate]

Depends when the books you read were published. The idea of the dumb savage has been steadily eroded for decades now.

..except among the "ancient astronaut" sect, of course.

 

[Nick333]

The one thing that these discoveries don't tell us is that the ancients had electricity and computers and internal combustion engines. What they do tell us is that humans have had pretty much the same brain that we have now for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. We've been the socially intelligent creatures we are now for a very long time. We've been able to do clever, complex things with the materials we've had at hand for a long time and we've been capable of organising and sharing knowledge in ways that allow us to do things on a vast scale for a long time. The one thing we hardly ever have is particularly good reasons for doing the things we do. The primary reasons we've had for doing big impressive things seem to have been gods and greed. That the most impressive things we built throughout the dark and middle ages were cathedrals and castles attest to that.

 

[Nick333]

..except among the "ancient astronaut" sect, of course.

Ja... see my last post for my opinion on that.

 

[Wasabee!]

This was the first ancient dominos.

 

[supersunbird]

Yes, it is.

I wonder what this, and other anomalous archealogical sites such as Gobekli Tepe, mean?

That our forebears were not quite the dumb savages history books portray them as?

Just to expand on my comment about time and place mentioned in the history books and also on what Nick333 said.

Civilizations rise and fall, they might reach heights of glory and excel at technical fields and then fall apart due to various reasons, to become more primitive (aka savage) again. Some areas the inhabitants never developed in what we would call great civilizations but lived in sustainable harmony with the natural environment, at the cost of shorter general lifespans and infant mortality and such.

 

[Nick333]

Just to expand on my comment about time and place mentioned in the history books and also on what Nick333 said.

Civilizations rise and fall, they might reach heights of glory and excel at technical fields and then fall apart due to various reasons, to become more primitive (aka savage) again. Some areas the inhabitants never developed in what we would call great civilizations but lived in sustainable harmony with the natural environment, at the cost of shorter general lifespans and infant mortality and such.

Ja, the sustainable harmony with the natural environment bit is a bit of a myth imo. The closest any species comes to that is limited impact on the environment. Native Americans chased entire herds of buffalo over cliffs, killing way more animals than they could eat. Amazonian tribes practiced slash and burn agriculture long before American corporations. The only difference between then and now is that when those tribes inevitably moved on or were wiped out the environment recovered. The idea we have of Native Americans as noble savages living in harmony with nature and taking only what they need is from the fact that the Europeans who colonised the new world encountered the remnants of peoples that had been almost entirely wiped out by plague and disease brought to the continent by the first European explorers a century earlier. The natural abundance of North America at the time of European settlement was the result of the environment bouncing from centuries of human exploitation. American Indians were environmental engineers on a massive scale. The garden like environment of North America at the time of European settlement was a result of "gardening". Look into how the Indians created the great plains.

Elsewhere the appearance of living in harmony with nature is a case of peoples not having the technology of efficient agriculture. The tribal people of Papua New Guinea farm bananas and other things. The problem for them is that their crops are very low yield and time intensive. If they'd had a high yield crop and/or herd animals they'd have burnt down the jungle ages ago. Without agriculture you don't have big enough population levels to have much of an impact on the environment. People living in those conditions aren't living in harmony with nature, they're struggling to survive in it. Lacking agriculture and modern medicine the human survival instinct is to have many children and kill and collect as much food as you can. Not to kill and collect only as much as you need. It's just silly to think otherwise.

 

[Jings]

People traveled to the moon 46 years ago but a massive structure on earth was left undiscovered until now?