It's one of the world's most famous sights. Yet, so much about Stonehenge (in the UK) remains¹ a mystery. But are we finally getting closer to understanding?

 

它是世界上最著名的景点之一。然而，有很多关于英国巨石阵的事情仍是个谜。但我们是否终于即将解开这个谜团？

 

It's this site, two miles away, that archaeologists have been examining. An area known as Durrington Walls. Using ground-penetrating radar², they've been able to look deep into the earth and discovered what could be one of the UK's largest prehistoric³ sites.

 

A ring of around twenty shafts⁴, dug more than 4,000 years ago, around the time Stonehenge was built nearby.

 

These are 20-metre diameter, at least five-metre deep - sometimes even deeper, we think, shafts or pits that have been dug into the chalk and are oriented in a kind of an arc both to the south and the north of Durrington Walls. The orientation⁵ of them, and the spacing of them, would suggest that they have some organised, ritualistic reason for being there.

 

The task for historians now is to work out how the newly discovered outer ring of pits is connected to Stonehenge itself.

 

The National Trust has described the find as 'astonishing'. What further secrets will it now reveal?

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