Britain's famed Stonehenge monument may have probably been a place of worship 500 years before the first stone was erected, a new study has suggested.
The research being conducted by archaeologists from the universities' of Birmingham, Bradford and Vienna massively increases the evidence that Stonehenge is linked with pre-historic solar religious beliefs.
The investigations have also triggered archaeologists to supposedly recreate the detailed route of a possible religious procession or other ritual event which they suspect may have taken place annually to the north of Stonehenge.
The new archaeological evidence was unearthed during on-going survey work around Stonehenge in which archaeologists have been 'x-raying' the ground, using ground-penetrating radar and other geophysical investigative techniques, the Independent reported.
As the archaeological team from Birmingham and Vienna were using these high-tech systems to map the interior of a major prehistoric enclosure (the so-called 'Cursus') near Stonehenge, they discovered two great pits, one towards the enclosure's eastern end and the other nearer its western end.
When they replicated the association between these newly found Cursus pits and Stonehenge on their computer system, they realised that, viewed from the so-called 'Heel Stone' at Stonehenge, the pits were aligned with sunrise and sunset on the longest day of the year ?" the summer solstice (midsummer's day).
According to researchers, the chances of those two alignments being purely coincidental are very low.
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