Scientists find larger monument buried under Stonehenge

Researchers said on Wednesday that they have produced digital maps of what is beneath Stonehenge, Britain’s ancient and mysterious circle of megaliths, or giant stones. The scientists used an array of ground-penetrating radar and other techniques to peer deep into the soil, finding an array of even more monuments beneath the famous stone circle.

The project produced detailed maps of 17 previously unknown ritual monuments and a large timber building thought to have been used for burial ceremonies, researchers from the University of Birmingham said. Stonehenge is about 4,500 years old.  

"New monuments have been revealed, as well as new types of monument that have previously never been seen by archaeologists," said the research project’s leader, Vincent Gaffney.

"This is not just another find," Forbes magazine quoted Gaffney as saying. "It’s going to change how we understand Stonehenge."

One of the most interesting discoveries the scientists found under the monument is a 1,000-foot-wide collection of 60 gigantic stones, dwarfing the Stonehenge that is visible above the ground.

The digital survey also discovered a burial mound more than 90 feet long and 6,000 years old, Forbes reported. Some scientists believe ancients used this structure, which is similar to others in England, for excarnation, the ritual stripping of flesh and organs from bodies.

Today’s aboveground Stonehenge aligns with the sun at certain times of the year, and some experts believe it served as a sort of ceremonial sundial, used by people whose dominion over Great Britain would fall to the invasion of Celts from mainland Europe more than a thousand years later.

The project found large prehistoric pits, some of which appear to be aligned with the sun, as well as new information about Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman settlements and fields, the university said.

The four-year study was one of the most thorough surveys scientists have ever done on the site, in western England. The discovery implies a connection between Stonehenge and another mysterious nearby structure called the Cursus.

Professor Wolfgang Neubauer of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Vienna said the new maps make it possible "for the first time, to reconstruct the development of Stonehenge and its landscape through time."

Archaeologists and others have been digging and theorizing at Stonehenge since the 1620s. The monument, 85 miles southwest of London, attracts more than 1.2 million visitors a year — including, last week, President Barack Obama.

The universities of Nottingham, Bradford and St. Andrews in the United Kingdom and the University of Ghent in Belgium were also involved in the project.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press