Tagged “prehistoric”
Göbekli Tepe
How did hunter-gatherers with no metal tools, pottery, or agriculture organize the labor to quarry, move, and raise multi-ton carved pillars, and why?
c. 9600-8000 BCE (Pre-Pottery Neolithic) · Şanlıurfa, Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey
Newgrange
How did a farming community without writing, metal tools, or (as far as the evidence shows) any recorded mathematics engineer a 19-meter passage to funnel winter-solstice sunrise into a chamber with such precision, and what did the tomb mean to the people who built and used it?
c. 3200-3100 BCE (Neolithic) · Brú na Bóinne, County Meath, Ireland
Serpent Mound
Which Native American culture actually built Serpent Mound and when, and what did its serpent form and solstice alignment mean to the people who raised it?
disputed: c. 300 BCE (Early Woodland/Adena) or c. 1000-1100 CE (Late Prehistoric/Fort Ancient) · Adams County, Ohio, United States
Stonehenge
How did people without wheeled transport, draft animals, or metal tools quarry, move, and precisely erect stones weighing up to 30 tonnes from as far as Wales and Scotland, and what was the monument actually for?
c. 3000-1600 BCE (Neolithic to Bronze Age) · Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England