In Dartmoor, a large area of somewhat lonely hills in the woodlands of Devon in southern England, scientist Alan Endacott has spent the past 20 years looking for new stone circles. For the next day, Endacott’s efforts have produced interesting results, as he and a group of volunteers only recently unearthed the ruins of two 5, 000-year-old stone circles in Taw Marsh near Belstone, a little village in north Devon.

Endacott refers to this gigantic stone circle as the Metheral rock circle because it is the most popular one near Metheral Hill. This monumental circle includes 20 stones, most of which have fallen, and it measures 130 feet by 110 feet ( 40 meters by 33 meters ) in size. Interesting to say that the newly discovered formation’s architecture and layout resemble Stonehenge a little bit.

Endacott’s study task, which is the focus of his doctoral thesis, is component of a larger larger study that includes his continuous search for new stone circles in Dartmoor. On the whole of Dartmoor, there are an amazing number of stone circles, and Endacott’s theory claims that many of them are clustered together to form a complex network of interconnected” sacred arcs” that represent a huge-scale sacred landscape architecture from the Neolithic phase.

Metheral Hill is located quite close to Alan Endacott’s discovery of the Metheral stone circle. ( Derek Harper/CC BY-SA 2.0).

In an interview with the Guardian, the scientist claimed that Dartmoor would have been drastically different if there had been much more jungle cover. They may have been environment symbols because they saw the higher ground and wanted to kind of encircle it, they thought.

Sacred Mysteries of Dartmoor Revealed

Thus far, Alan Endicott’s research has focused on the northern part of Dartmoor in particular, where he believes the design of this divine circle is most noticeable. The second group he and his team discovered is located just outside the current design, while the newly discovered group at Metheral Hill perfectly fits into the map he has been creating of the surrounding landscape. Endacott operates from the premise that this circle might have served as the gateway or entrance to a larger spiritual arc, given its intriguing location.

The newly discovered lines on Dartmoor are likely to have been constructed in roughly 3, 000 BC, like many other marble lines. The inhabitants of the area who wanted to leave behind their own divine and imaginative legacy for upcoming generations to behold could have altered them during the Bronze Age.

” It]the Metheral circle ] is suggestive of a Neolithic henge monument of a similar form to the Stipple Stones on Bodmin Moor, the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney, or even the earliest phase of Stonehenge”, Endacott explained, demonstrating his immense knowledge of the UK’s ancient monument builders. People frequently traveled far away during that time, therefore Stonehenge and perhaps Orkney might have been home to the people who built the marble circle at Metheral. They made a lot of links with buying and other things, and they traveled quite a bit.

Just the second and third additional new circles discovered on Dartmoor in the last ten years, the Metheral group and its partner, are any longer. Fittingly, it was Alan Endacott who also found the first, back in 2007 when he uncovered the ruins of an undocumented circle near Sittaford Tor, about five miles ( eight kilometers ) to the south of Metheral Hill.

Endacott expanded his search to demonstrate the validity of his sacred arc theory in response to his discovery of the Sittaford circle, which is located at a higher altitude than any other monumental formation in southern England ( 1, 720 feet, or 525 meters ). Given the curiosity of Soon Neolithic and Bronze Age peoples with the creation of lasting rock monuments with spiritual and celestial connections, his hypothesis does seem to have more new evidence in the fresh circles.

One Boy’s Mission: To Get All the Stone Lines of Dartmoor

The Museum of Dartmoor Life, which is based in Okehampton, was founded and run by Alan Endicott. He is determined to do everything in his power to promote the wonders of his native country, which he claims is generally deserted but a center of activity both during the Neolithic and Bronze Age.

His unwavering search for more jewel lines and attempts to interpret their real significance reflect his desire to discover every secret Dartmoor is also hiding.

” Since Sittaford I’ve been doing plenty of comprehensive requests”, he said. ” You’ve got to get off the beaten trail to find anything new on Dartmoor”.

In the field close to Metheral Hill is Alan Endacott and the staff. ( Alan Endacott: Sittaford Stone Circle and Dartmoor Ritual Landscape Project/Facebook ).

But when he discovers something fresh, he is persuaded that more hidden circles are waiting strategically along his divine circle.

These excavations “exceeded my anticipations and revealed new information that will aid in our knowing,” according to the author. In the end, these explorations also raised more concerns about the purpose of their construction. I want to following up on various websites undoubtedly. We wo n’t be stopping any time soon”.

Top image: The kiss-in-the-ring rock group near Hartford in Devon, one of the many stone loops found on Dartmoor. Origin: Guy Wareham/CC BY-SA 2.0).

By Nathan Falde