Archaeologists have found evidence of a 4,000-year-old “Woodhenge,” which they said shares a common lineage with Stonehenge. The ancient artefacts—including 45 wooden posts spaced 30 metres apart—came from a building site in the Danish town of Aars, with experts using DNA sampling to date the ruins to the late Neolithic period, 2000 BCE.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery,” stated Sidsel Wåhlin, curator at the Vesthimmerland Museum: “When we opened a new section of the excavation, (what we expected to be a) house and some fence quickly turned out to be the entrance area of a very well planned, slightly oval structure.”
“To my knowledge, this is the first of its kind that we can study properly.”
Sidsel Wåhlin, curator at the Vesthimmerland Museum.
According to Ms Wåhlin, stone and wooden henges were ritual centres for ancient European communities that worshipped the sun and conducted agriculture-related rituals. Archeologists have already discovered henges in Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, and Russia, with the structures playing a key role in uniting early farming communities during periods of mass migration across Europe.
Starting last week, Ms Wåhlin is now leading a team of archaeologists to excavate the site further to determine its lifespan and function: “We are looking for ritual deposits, such as flint arrowheads, scythes, or daggers. We will implement a massive sampling strategy,” Wåhlin said, with the team focusing on the circle’s interior to identify a smaller circle.
The discovery comes after Wood Central last year reported that the oldest examples of bows and arrows used olive wood, reed wood and birch bark – with archaeologists finding a treasure trove of ruins from the early Neolithic period: “The identification of these bowstrings marks a crucial step in the study of Neolithic weaponry,” said Ingrid Bertin from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), who used advanced microscopy and biomolecular analysis to “redefine the limits of knowledge about Europe’s earliest agricultural societies.”
