Researchers in Poland have unearthed a Stone Age monument that may change history books. The location was seen by a paraglider in 2015 at Nowe Objezeierze near Cedynia in northwest Poland, not far from the German border. An archaeologist named Marcin Dziewanowski was looking over satellite images from Google Earth when they noticed the impressions in the ground.
“The contours of the enclosure were so clear that they looked like the crop circles made by aliens in science fiction movies.”
(via YouTube)
Teams from the Universities of Gdańsk, Szczecin, Warsaw, and Poznań have joined to uncover this structure and its purpose.
The site has been classified as a ‘roundel’ due to its circular shape. Thus far, at least 130 other roundels have been found in Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. They were believed to have been built for religious purposes and even astrological calendars. This find has been considered the greatest one of them all.
(via Marcin Bielecki/PAP)
“It consists of a central area surrounded by three gates that lead to the interior. It then has four ditches circling it. Each ditch is larger and deeper than the last, and it appears they were dug at relatively regular intervals.”
Lech Czerniak, the project leader, from the University of Gdańsk, said discovering the roundel in Poland is significant from an archaeological and historical perspective:
“This is quite sensational, given the fact that it coincides with the dating of structures located on the Danube, considered the oldest. It seems equally important that the four ditches surrounding the central area of the structure probably did not function simultaneously, but every few dozen years, a new ditch with an ever larger diameter was dug.”
“The primary focus of the project are questions about the social aspects of the functioning operation of roundels, including what prompted the inhabitants of a given region to make a huge effort in building and maintaining the roundel, where the idea and knowledge necessary to build this object came from, and how often and for how long the object was used.”