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5 votes
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Archaeologists have just unearthed an inscription in Pompeii that suggests the Ancient Roman city might have been destroyed a full two months later than previously thought
10 votes -
Dirty dishes reveal what ancient civilizations ate. Food scraps on 8,000-year-old ceramic shards found in Turkey include barley, wheat, peas, and bitter vetch.
12 votes -
Cheese played a surprisingly important role in human evolution
10 votes -
Earliest known drawing found on rock in South African cave. Researchers believe the pattern on the fragment of rock is 73,000 years old, but are perplexed as to what it might represent
6 votes -
1600s Native American fort is one of the most important Northeast finds
4 votes -
Ancient Egypt: Cheese discovered in 3,200-year-old tomb
7 votes -
How one of archeology’s great mysteries was solved: uncovering China’s lost warriors.
7 votes -
Looted Iraqi antiquities return home after UK experts crack cold case
3 votes -
Walrus bones provide clues to fate of lost Viking colony
4 votes -
Earliest version of our alphabet possibly discovered
6 votes -
Drone reveals massive Stonehenge-like circular monument in Ireland
2 votes -
Coin found off Arnhem Land coast could be among Australia's oldest foreign artefacts
2 votes -
World's oldest bread found at prehistoric site in Jordan
3 votes -
Archaeologists and astronomers solve the mystery of Chile's Stonehenge
7 votes -
Crop circle reveals ancient ‘henge’ monument buried in Ireland
8 votes -
The location for Stonehenge may have been chosen due to the presence of a natural geological feature
I watched a documentary about Stonehenge tonight, and it proposed the theory that the location for Stonehenge was chosen because of a natural geological feature in the area. There's a man-made...
I watched a documentary about Stonehenge tonight, and it proposed the theory that the location for Stonehenge was chosen because of a natural geological feature in the area.
There's a man-made path that proceeds south-west towards Stonehenge: "The Avenue". This path was built around the same era as Stonehenge itself. If you walk westward along The Avenue on the winter solstice, you'll be facing the point on the horizon where the sun sets. However, under The Avenue, there's an old natural geological formation from the time of the Ice Age: a series of ridges in the rock which just coincidentally align with the sunset on the winter solstice (an "axis mundi"). Before Stonehenge was built, there was a chalk knoll on that location. That meant that you could walk along a natural geological path towards the sunset on the shortest day of the year, and there was a local geological landmark in front of you.
The theory is that these natural geological formations coincidentally aligning with an astronomical phenomenon made the site a special one for early Britons. That's why there was a burial site there, and later Stonehenge was built there.
Here's the article by the archaeologist who discovered the Ice Age ridges: Researching Stonehenge: Theories Past and Present
13 votes -
Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital
7 votes