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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Huge Pre-Stonehenge Complex Found via "Crop Circles"


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Etched into crops, the outlines of Bronze Age burial mounds surround a roughly 190-foot (57-meter) circular Stone Age temple site about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge in southern England in an undated aerial photo.

Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government's historic-preservation agency, the "crop circles"—actually crop marks—are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth. True crop circles are vast designs created by flattening crops.

The features are part of a newfound 500-acre (200-hectare) prehistoric ceremonial site which was unknown until the aerial survey, archaeologists announced in June 2009.

Photograph by Damian Grady/English Heritage