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::: Gigantic Concentric Circles Found in Italy

Last July 2007 an excavation for a new hospital Sant'Anna near Como Italy uncovered a "double concentric circle of ancient stones".  It may date back to 3000 BCE and "the site is a "highly articulated prehistoric structure that could be either an ancient astronomical observatory or a sacred space," according to Stefania Iorio, Archaeological Superintendent of the region."  The diameter of the circles is around 229 feet and they are divided by a pathway of paved stones. 

The site is a rare site with no similar examples in Northern Italy. Giancarlo Frigerio, chairman of the Società Archeologica Comense theorizes that it may be an ancient tumulus.  What makes this tumulus so unusual is size since it covers an area of approximately 13,000 feet, over 2 miles, while other tumuluses found in the same region average a diameter of 13-16 feet. Tumulus is Latin for mound or small hill that was typically a man-made, mound formation erected over a grave site.

There are now plans to protect the area and create a park where visitors can access the site.

News Source: Archaeo News

 

::: Ancient Temple Dating Back to Ninth Millennium B.C. Unearthed in Northern Syria

Saturday, September 30, 2006 - 09:10 PM

The French-Syrian Archeological Mission for Excavations working at Ja'adat al-Maghara site in Manbej on River Euphrates in northern Syria unearthed a great temple dating back to the 9th millennium B.C. in Modern Stone Era, so far the most ancient discovery in Syria and the Middle East.

Head of the Mission French Archeological expert Eric Kiniou said the great temple consists of pieces of stones, bone appliances, walls decorated with geometrical shapes, in addition to an ox head with two horns in red, black and white colors still in their freshness.  He said the ox painting indicates that this kind of animal was worshipped in that period.

Minister of Culture Riad Na'asan Agha visited the site and inspected the underway excavation works and the findings discovered during the 9-meter-depth excavations. Among the findings there were tools made of basalt stones available in that area like spears, head of arrows used in hunting.

The Minister told reporters at the site that the discover of the site is a "breakthrough and it's a pride for us in Syria and the for the humanity in general…this discovery and possible later excavations could allow us to re-read the story of civilization."

He added that "what we have seen in this site assets that people in Syria were the makers of history and civilization…and that the Syrian man-since most ancient periods- had been innovative man who was able in that period to exploit the basalt stone and turn it into tools used in everyday life."

The French-Syrian Mission has so far excavated for 16 successive seasons in this site as part of an international campaign to rescue archeological sites from waters of the lake of Tishreen Dam on River Euphrates.

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::: Gigantic ancient pyramid in Europe managed to escape experts’ notice

BRADLEY T. LEPPER

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Archaeologists working in Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina, about 20 miles northwest of Sarajevo, discovered what might prove to be a European pyramid four times taller than the Great Pyramid of Egypt.

Bosnian archaeologist Semir Osmanagic, in an interview with the Associated Press, cautioned against jumping to conclusions, but preliminary investigations suggest some ancient culture, perhaps the Bronze Age Illyrian people, carved a natural hill into a pyramidal shape. The hill is 2,120 feet high and, according to Osmanagic, has "all the elements" of an artificial structure: "four perfectly shaped slopes pointing toward the cardinal points, a flat top and an entrance complex."

Once the hill was shaped, it appears to have been faced with concretelike blocks made from an "unnatural mixture of gravel."

Local residents long have referred to the hill as a pyramid, but no archaeologist seriously seems to have considered the possibility that the hill was in any way artificial until recently.

This might seem incredible, but the largest American Indian mounds in eastern North America were not always recognized as artificial constructions. Monk’s Mound in Illinois, the largest earthen structure in ancient America north of Mexico, once was dismissed as a natural hill, in spite of its pyramidal shape. Mississippian peoples built this 100-foot-tall temple mound about 1,000 years ago.

More recently, archaeologists in Indiana failed to recognize the Mount Vernon Mound as a mound until construction crews began to dig into it to obtain fill dirt.

The Mount Vernon Mound had been a loafshaped structure similar to Ohio’s Seip Mound, in Ross County. The Mount Vernon Mound was about 400 feet long, 170 feet wide and 20 feet high. Seip Mound is 240 feet long, 130 feet wide and 30 feet high. A people known to archaeologists as the Hopewell culture built both mounds about 2,000 years ago.

Although these Native American mounds are dwarfed by the Bosnian "pyramid," the Illyrians evidently only modified an existing hill, while the ancient Americans built their mounds from the ground up without metal tools. Each of these sites shows us that ancient peoples built monumental architecture that can surprise us today. For more information on the Bosnian site, including images of the striking pyramid, see www.bosnianpyramid.com. For additional information about Seip Mound, see www.ohiohistory.org/places/seip/. Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society. blepper@ohiohistory.org
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