Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – Dutch archaeologists have unearthed a remarkable ancient structure that has been nicknamed the Stonehenge of the Netherlands”.

Scientists say the intriguing 4,000-year-old structure includes a burial mound that served as a solar calendar. Inside the burial mound, archaeologists came across the remains of some 60 men, women, and children had several pᴀssages through which the sun directly shone on the longest and shortest days of the year.

Credit: Gemeente Tiel

“What a spectacular archaeological discovery! Archaeologists have found a 4,000-year-old religious sanctuary on an industrial site.

This is the first time a site like this has been discovered in the Netherlands,”  the town of Tiel, where the site was discovered, said on its Facebook page.

“Diggings around the so-called “open-air sanctuary” started in 2017 in the small village about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of Utrecht, with the results made public on Wednesday.

Studying a difference in clay composition and color, the scientists located three burial mounds on the excavations, a few kilometers from the banks of the Waal River.

The main mound is about 20 meters (65 feet) in diameter with its pᴀssages lined up to serve as a solar calendar,” the AFP reports.

NOS, the national broadcaster, added: “This hill reminded one of Stonehenge, the well-known mysterious prehistoric monument in Britain, where this phenomenon also occurs.”

At the site, scientists also discovered two other smaller mounds. The three mounds were used as burial sites for about 800 years, the archaeologists said.

They made another fascinating discovery: a single glᴀss bead inside a grave, which after analysis, was shown to have originated in Mesopotamia, today’s Iraq.

“This bead traveled a distance of some 5,000 kilometers four millennia ago,” said chief researcher Cristian van der Linde.

“Glᴀss was not made here, so the bead must have been a spectacular item as for people then it was an unknown material,” added Stijn Arnoldussen, professor at the University of Groningen.

He told the NOS that the Mesopotamian bead may have been around for a long time before eventually ending up in the area around Tiel, called the Betuwe in Dutch.

“Things were already being exchanged in those times. The bead may have been above ground for hundreds of years before it reached Tiel, but of course, it didn’t have to be,” Arnoldussen said.

Written by Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com Staff Writer