VIDEO * (GPR), and a 3D laser
scanner at Stonehenge * Using powerful ground-penetrating radar, investigators working around Stonehenge have
detected a trove of previously unknown burial mounds, chapels, shrines, pits — and most remarkable of all — a
massive megalithic monument made up of more than 50 giant stones buried along a 1,082-foot-long c-shaped
enclosure. After four years of painstaking effort, and by using a magnetometer, a ground-penetrating radar (GPR),
and a 3D laser scanner, archaeologists have shown that Stonehenge was once a sprawling complex that extended for
miles.
And then there's the previously unknown "super henge," a monument located just two miles from Stonehenge. Scans
suggest that each buried stone is about three meters (10 feet) long and 1.5 meters (5 feet) wide. The stones are
positioned horizontally, not vertically, but it's conceivable that they originally stood upright like other
standing stones. The archaeologists suspect they were brought to the site shortly before 2,500 BC. The c-shaped
enclosure – more than 330 metres wide and over 400 metres long – faced directly towards the River Avon. The
monument was later converted from a c-shaped to a roughly circular enclosure, now known as Durrington Walls –
Britain's largest pre-historic henge, roughly 12 times the size of Stonehenge itself.
As a religious complex, it would almost certainly have had a deeply spiritual and ritual connection with the
river. But precisely why is a complete mystery, although it is possible that that particular stretch of water was
regarded as a deity.
As for the other henge-like Neolithic and Bronze Age religious shrines, they range between 10 and 30 meters ( 32
to 100 feet) in diameter. Scans also revealed around 20 large ritual pits, each up to five meters (16 feet) in
diameter. More than a half dozen Bronze Age burial mounds were discovered, along with four Iron Age shrines or
tombs, and a half dozen Bronze Age and Iron Age domestic or livestock enclosures.
http://io9.com/archaeologists-have-made-an-incredible-discovery-at-sto-1632927903