Archaeologists unearth 4,000-year-old ‘Stonehenge of the Netherlands’

Dutch archaeologists have unearthed an approximately 4,000-year-old religious site – nicknamed the “Stonehenge of the Netherlands” – that includes a burial mound that served as a solar calendar.

The mound, which contained the remains of about 60 men, women and children, had several passages through which the sun shone directly on the longest and shortest days of the year.

The town of Tiel, where the site was discovered, said on its Facebook page: “What a spectacular archaeological discovery! Archaeologists have found a 4,000-year-old religious sanctuary on an industrial site.”

It added: “This is the first time a site like this has been discovered in the Netherlands.”

Digging on the so-called open-air sanctuary started in 2017 in the small village, about 31 miles (50km) south-east of Utrecht, and the results were made public on Wednesday.

Studying differences in clay composition and colour, the scientists located three burial mounds on the excavations, a few miles from the banks of the Waal River.

The main mound is about 20 metres (65ft) in diameter and its passages are lined up to serve as a solar calendar. “People used this calendar to determine important moments including festival and harvest days,” the archaeologists said.

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

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

They made another fascinating discovery: a single glass bead inside a grave, which after analysis was shown to have originated in Mesopotamia – present-day Iraq.

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

“Glass 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, a professor at the University of Groningen.

He told the NOS 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.