Archaeologists from southern Portugal have discovered the remains of a 4,500-year-old Stonehenge monument, built without stone yet of wood.
“We interpret it as a position of rite and we prefer to designate it as wooden circles” than as the “Woodhenge”, more striking but less precise,” says Valera, who led the excavations for the archaeology society Era Archaeology, to Owen. Jarus of living science.
The prehistoric monument is located in a much larger archaeological landscape called the Perdiges complex. First known in 1996, when a local winery to domesticate new land for grape development, the 40-acre archaeological site is located in the district of Evora in southern Portugal. Excavations recommend that travelers from across the region accumulate there for ceremonies, festivals and funerals between 3500 and 2000 BC, writes Ed Whelan for Ancient Origins.
As reported through Portugal News, archaeologists have discovered wooden circles in the center of a trench complex in the Perdiges complex. According to Live Science, researchers estimate that they have discovered about one-third of the calculated interruptions in the structure. Other discoveries come with animal bones and ceramic fragments.
“It is possible that the interior of this design is oriented towards the summer solstice, reinforcing its cosmological character,” Valera told Portugal News.
Other monolithic monuments across Europe have a percentage alignment, he adds, “underlining the narrow dating between these architectures and the Neolithic perspectives of the world.”
Given the great resemblance between wooden circles and wooden monuments discovered in Central Europe and the British Isles, archaeologists recommend that late Stone Age villages may have interacted with, see or view drawings of Portuguese monuments. Examples of similar monumental structures come with Woodhenge, a Neolithic site near Stonehenge that also had concentric rings of wooden poles; the circle of stones of Avebury in the south-west of England; and the Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.
As Valera says to Portugal News, “this discovery reinforces the already greater clinical importance of the Perdiges compound complex in the foreign context of European Neolithic studies while expanding its heritage relevance”.
Theresa Machemer is an independent company founded in Washington DC. His paintings have also made the impression on National Geographic and SciShow. Website: tkmach.com