Archaeologists discover a massive Stonehenge made of wood

Archaeologists have excavated a historic structure of international significance just two miles from Stonehenge.

(Image credit: Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

published 15 August 2016

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe to have been an enormous arrangement of giant wooden timbers, 1,640 feet in diameter, just two miles northeast of Stonehenge, The Independent reports.

An abrupt halt in the construction of the circle, however, appears to indicate ancient religious and political strife in the region. The complex, called Durrington Walls, was a contemporary of Stonehenge, although it was five times larger in diameter than the famed English stones. Durrington Walls was apparently never completed, with work ceasing around 2460 B.C. even though the complex was almost finished. Curiously, the timbers were then removed and shortly thereafter, the postholes were deliberately filled in:

Two of the postholes have just been fully excavated — and, at the bottom of one, the prehistoric people who decommissioned and buried the site, formerly occupied by the giant timber circle, had placed one of their tools (a spade made of a cow's shoulder blade) at the bottom of the post hole before it was filled in. […] It was as if the religious "revolutionaries" were trying, quite literally, to bury the past. [The Independent]

The deconstruction of the Durrington Walls circle occurred at practically exactly the same time that the Stonehenge circle was changed from a large diameter of medium-sized stones to the tight circle of gigantic stones that remains today. Two other ancient religious sites — Avebury, an avenue of standing stones, and the large artificial mound at Silbury Hill — were also built during this time, indicating some sort of major religious, and thereby political, change in the ancient world.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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