Mike Parker Pearson on scrapping Stonehenge road tunnel plans
23 June 2020
Mike Parker Pearson has commented in the media on the need for the Stonehenge road tunnel plans to be scrapped in light of the significant discovery nearby of the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain.
A giant neolithic structure, created 4,500 years ago, has been uncovered just under 2 miles north-east of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain near Amesbury, Wiltshire. Following geophysical prospection, ground-penetrating radar and magnetometry, a series of enormous shafts 鈥 each more than five metres deep and up to 20 metres across 鈥 were found to have been aligned to form a circle 1.2 miles in diameter.
Mike had previously suggested that Durrington Walls lay within a 鈥渄omain of the living鈥 separated from a 鈥渄omain of the ancestors鈥 centred on Stonehenge. The neolithic structure that has recently been discovered appears to have been a boundary guiding people to a sacred area, because Durrington Walls, one of Britain鈥檚 largest henge monuments, is placed at its centre.
Vincent Gaffney (University of Bradford), co-principal investigator of the听Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which made the discovery while surveying the landscape, has described the discovery as unprecedented.
According to Mike:
鈥This is just another reason to give up this disastrous white elephant of a scheme.The potential for technology to reveal so much more is enormous because only a tiny percentage has been explored so far. What鈥檚 really pleasing for me is that it鈥檚 over 20 years now since we put that hypothesis together. Vince has found it. Fantastic. We鈥檝e really got a good idea of what Stonehenge is all about. What a find.鈥
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