Pits 10,000 years old found in the heart of Stonehenge: the oldest trace of land use

When scientists from the Universities of Ghent (Belgium) and Birmingham (UK) studied the deep layers of soil around the ancient megaliths of Stonehenge using electromagnetic soil scanning methods and a specially created semi-automatic data interpretation programme, it turned out that there were hundreds of large and thousands of smaller prehistoric pits.

Archaeological Science writes about it.

The scientists put forward a theory about their anthropological origin and were right. The largest - more than four metres wide and two metres deep - was dug in chalk rock. It is very difficult to dig so many stone tools into relatively hard rock.

The pit is more than ten thousand years old, meaning it was dug by Early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who inhabited Britain after the last ice age. It is an example of the oldest trace of land use discovered at Stonehenge.

In total, the archaeologists found more than 400 large pits filled with earth (each more than 2.5 metres in diameter), six of which were excavated from the Early Mesolithic period (approximately eight thousand years BC) to the Middle Bronze Age (approximately 1300 BC).

As for the Mesolithic pit, scientists assume that it was dug as a trap for large game. It is not only one of the earliest of the few Mesolithic sites near Stonehenge (but also the largest known early Mesolithic pit in northwest Europe.

Read also: A huge cemetery almost 4.5 thousand years old unearthed in Britain

The period between the earliest and latest pits is seven millennia. At the same time, Stonehenge itself is no more than 3,200 years old. So, the activities of the people who lived here changed, but they continued to dig pits. Their purpose is still unclear. And while we can believe in the Mesolithic trap pits, similar Neolithic formations look strange, because at that time there was not much game and the focus of attention shifted to agriculture.

Scientists are still looking for answers to these questions.

As a reminder, a poem by Virgil engraved on an 1800-year-old Roman amphora was found in Spain.

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