An exciting discovery in the German Stonehenge

During excavations in Pömmelt, Germany, archaeologists discovered the remains of a ritual complex dating back to the Bronze Age, interesting objects reminiscent of the British Stonehenge complex.

Archaelogy reports that this complex was discovered in 1991 during the study and analysis of aerial photographs, and it consists of several rings in the form of trenches or earthen barricades with a unified center. In terms of dimensions, this complex is similar to the British Stonehenge Complex, where the outer trench is about 115 meters in diameter, but instead of stone columns, wooden columns were used in the German complex, so scientists called it Woodhenge.

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Archaeologists discovered inside the complex a cemetery containing the remains of a number of men and dozens of women and children bearing signs of violence, apparently they were killed and thrown into the trench. According to experts, their death was according to the ritual sacrifice.

Beside the complex, archaeologists found mass and solitary graves that were used according to radiocarbon analysis during 400 years from 2400 to 2050 BC. That is, at the same time as British Stonehenge.

Excavations in 2020 revealed the presence of a settlement next to this complex, consisting of 65 rectangular buildings, each building ranging between 15 and 30 meters in length, and all of them are similar, and face from the west towards the east, and its entrance is on the southern side, and is protected from the wind by a kind of corridor.

According to experts, 20-30 people lived in each house, meaning that the population of the settlement exceeded a thousand, and this is a large number in the early Bronze Age. It appears to have been the largest settlement in central Germany at the time. The radiocarbonate analysis showed that the settlement existed at the time of the ritual complex, and this is what distinguishes it from the British Stonehenge, as archaeologists have not found any evidence indicating the existence of a settlement near it.

These discoveries indicated that Stonehenge was not a local British phenomenon, but rather a tradition that spread among the peoples of Europe at the end of the Neolithic period – the beginning of the Bronze Age. This opinion confirms the pottery vessels found on the German site, which date back to the civilization of the bell cups (the civilization of the bell pots) that were spread in the regions of Western Europe and Britain, 2800-1900 years BC.

The results of the analysis of DNA samples taken from the remains discovered at the German site showed that it is genetically close to what was found in the Stonehenge area, which confirms that the people that migrated from the Black Sea plains region to Germany in the twenty-eighth century BC, some of them migrated from there. To the British Isles.

Source: Novosti

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