Ancient Italian ‘Stonehenge’ accidentally discovered by friends

[Roma_Victrix]

Ancient Italian ‘Stonehenge’ accidentally discovered by friends: the group of amateur archaeologists were mapping World War II bunkers when they made the surprising discovery

This is interesting. Dating back to the Neolithic period (6000-3000 BC), it apparently worked as a sundial and gauged the lengths of the seasons.

In your face, England.

[Himster]

Yes, in your face England.

[Roma_Victrix]

Surprise twist: this thread is going to have a big Irish fan base.

[Cyclops]

My neighbour has a sundial, its metal and the size of a dinner plate but apparently AUSTRALIAN STONEHENGE!!!!!!

[sumskilz]

More importantly, Druids protest at Stonehenge over plans to ban alcohol and charge £15 for parking.

The people who built these megalithic stone circles are descendants of the first farmers. That's really no longer a matter of dispute. For example:

The Neolithic and Bronze Age transitions were profound cultural shifts catalyzed in parts of Europe by migrations, first of early farmers from the Near East and then Bronze Age herders from the Pontic Steppe. However, a decades-long, unresolved controversy is whether population change or cultural adoption occurred at the Atlantic edge, within the British Isles. We address this issue by using the first whole genome data from prehistoric Irish individuals. A Neolithic woman (3343–3020 cal BC) from a megalithic burial (10.3× coverage) possessed a genome of predominantly Near Eastern origin. She had some hunter–gatherer ancestry but belonged to a population of large effective size, suggesting a substantial influx of early farmers to the island.

The now submerged Atlit Yam along the coast of modern Israel, occupied 6900-6300 BC:



Atlit Yam is one of the earliest sites to exibit what is called the agro-pastoral-marine subsistence system. It seems to me, that most Megalithic sites aren't far from the coast. I think this is the reason why:



Neolithic people probably first arrived in the British Isles via migration up the Atlantic coast of France. There are also megalithic stone circles in the Horn of Africa, Eritrea at least if I remember correctly, along with a significant influx of Neolithic Levantine farmer DNA accounting for >40% of the modern population's genome.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Wow! That's quite interesting, always nice to learn something I never had the faintest clue about.