10,000-Year-Old Stonehenge-Like Sculpture Discovered at the Bottom of a US Lake

The Stonehenge is one of these confounding monoliths. Dating back more than 5,000 years, the massive rock statues are stacked on top of each other, and there is no possible way to move them. A new mystery was added to the repertoire when divers discovered a similar monument at the bottom of Lake Michigan in the US.

There have been plenty of speculations as to what Stonehenge stood for—monument, cemetery, or simply an expression of power and wealth. How the ancient Druids constructed the archeological site still baffles scientists, who have long considered every possible scenario. The only plausible solution is that some ancient cultures actually had more sophisticated building techniques than previously thought.

The monument was found to be more than 5,000 years older than the world-famous Stonehenge. The site was discovered in 2007 by a team of archeologists. Mark Holley, the lead on the team and a professor of underwater archeology at Northwestern Michigan College discovered the structure.

The team noticed a series of stones placed in a deliberately arranged circular pattern. Later testing would suggest that humans made the pattern out of rocks weighing up to 3,000 lbs.

Scientist Rob Nelson explains, “Whilst they do seem to form a perfect geometric shape, they aren’t stacked or connected in the same way. “

There are even several stones arranged in a long line over one mile long.

“And while there is evidence that prehistoric tribes roam to the Great Lakes for thousands of years, very little is known about them,” Nelson added. He also said that there isn’t anything “remotely resembling this formation in the archaeological record.”

The tribe’s prehistoric hunter-gatherer forbearers settled the area following the last Ice Age, the Pinedale, which lasted from 30,000 to 10,000 years ago. Today, the Anishinaabe people occupy the territory around the Great Lakes, from Manitoba to Montreal and as low as Chicago.

Holley also pointed out that the area was above ground around 10,000 years ago and agreed that communities had indeed settled the area on the exact spot where the stones were laid. “It would’ve been a wonderful place for people to live – near the coastline, close to resources, transportation’s easy,” the archaeologist told Nelson.

Advanced technology, such as stereo photogrammetry, was used to assemble large 3D renderings of the area so that the researchers could analyze the information. The renderings showed that the carvings and engravings on some of the stones were images of Mastodons.

They lived during the Pleistocene Epoch, which lasted from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. Drawings of these animals clearly connect to the time when the people who made them lived.

Humans around the world used drive lanes as ways to herd large groups of animals along a set path leading to a kill zone, where other hunters with large spears would lie in wait to capture the large beasts.

Until the purpose is finally revealed, more information is needed on what type of activities and engineering abilities certain prehistoric cultures had access to.

Holley points out that many experts prefer to investigate such stones in person to authenticate them, but these experts aren’t necessarily trained scuba divers, which slows down the authentication process.

Lake Michigan is not the only lake in the state to house one of these ancient hunting lanes.

Researchers discovered the site on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge, beneath 121 feet of water southeast of Alpena, Michigan.

“This site and its associated artifacts, along with environmental and simulation studies, suggest that Late Paleoindian/Early Archaic caribou hunters employed distinctly different seasonal approaches,” said John O’Shea, the Emerson F. Greenman Professor of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan and lead author of the article.

Workers built the stone lane on a level of limestone bedrock, creating a road that led to a cul-de-sac made of natural cobble pavement. The builders incorporated three circular hunting blinds into the stone lines, using them as both blinds and obstructions to corral caribou.

“It is noteworthy that V-shaped hunting blinds located upslope from Drop 45 are oriented to intercept animals moving to the southeast in the autumn,” O’Shea said.

“This concentration of differing types of hunting structures associated with alternative seasons of migration is consistent with caribou herd movement simulation data indicating that the area was a convergence point along different migration routes, where the landform tended to compress the animals in both the spring and autumn,” O’Shea said.

The evidence also suggests that our way of thinking about early humans could be incorrect as they had social and economic organizations to live in specific locations for some time.

“The smaller V-shaped hunting blinds could be operated by very small family groups relying on the natural shape of the landform to channel caribou towards them.”

The wall’s discovery indicates that a group that lived in the Great Lakes area had enough claim to the now-submerged land to construct and use massive architecture.

Researchers also found evidence of their skilled hunting in pits beneath Stonehenge. These pits, which predate the structure by thousands of years, were likely hunting traps for large game like red deer, boar, and aurochs.