A German Stonehenge?

The German news Web site Deutsche Welle reports that scientists are hailing the discovery of a German version of Stonehenge  as a "milestone in archaeological research."

Located near the village of Pömmelte-Zackmünde, in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, the site may date back to as far as 5,000 B.C., which would make it the oldest astronomical observatory on the European continent. It may be even older than Stonehenge, which was built around 3,100 B.C., though ritual activity at the British site may have started several thousand years before that.

Archaeologists discovered the site last September, but waited until recently to make their findings public.

The researchers used carbon dating of artifacts found within the site’s circular compounds to determine its age. Francois Bertemes of the University of Halle-Wittenberg estimated the site to be around 7,000 years old. He described its significance as "one of the oldest holy sites" discovered in Central Europe.

Deutsche Welle reports that compared to the approximately 200 other similar prehistoric mound sites strewn throughout Europe, the observatory site has striking deviations. Instead of the usual four gates leading into the circular compounds, the observatory has just three. The walled-compound also consists of an unusual formation of concentric rings of man-high wooden palisades. The rings and the gates into the inner circles become narrower as one progresses to the center, indicating perhaps that only a few people could enter the inner-most ring.

Unlike Stonehenge, the German monument was built of wood, which has long since rotted away, though traces of the structure remain.

Wolfhard Schlosser, an astro-archaeology expert at the Ruhr University Bochum, believes the site's southern gates marked the sunrise and sunset of the winter and summer solstice and enabled the early Europeans to determine with accuracy the course of the sun as it moved across the heavens. Schlosser thinks the site was constructed for the observation of astronomical phenomena, such as the movements of the sun, moon and stars, and for keeping track of time. These celestial cycles would have been important for the sowing and harvesting of crops in the early civilization.

Beyond that, however, Schlosser and other scientists believe that the Goseck site was also used for religious purposes. The arrangement of human bones, for instance, is atypical of burial sites, and telltale cut marks on them indicate that human sacrifice was practiced at the site.

According to another German media outlet, Spiegel Online International, human remains found at the site include those of a child between the ages of 5 and 10, who was found buried in a fetal position, and an adult who appears to have been a higher-ranking dignitary.

According to Deutsche Welle, archaeologists are intrigued by parallels between the observatory an another important discovery in the same region, the Nebra disc. The latter, a bronze artifact dating to 1,600 B.C., is decorated with gold-leaf symbols representing the moon, sun and stars, including a cluster of seven dots believed to represent the constellation Pleiades as it appeared 3,600 years ago. Schlosser believes the disc was created using observations by ancient astronomers, which possibly were made at the recently discovered observatory. The Nebra disc was found by treasure hunters in 1999 in a forest about 25 kilometers from the observatory.